XXI 



PLANT-ANIMALS AND ANIMAL-PLANTS 



FOR more than two hundred years botanists and 

 zoologists have been trying to determine defi- 

 nitely with which of the kingdoms, animal or 

 vegetable, certain peculiar plant-animals or animal- 

 plants should be classed. Many forms of the vege- 

 table kingdom have so skillfully simulated the col- 

 our, shape, and various habits of certain plant-ani- 

 mals as to have themselves classed as animals. No 

 one but a skilled botanist, when observing some of 

 these darting around in the water, could doubt that 

 he was seeing a tiny animal. 



There goes the fantastical, weird Euglena 

 viridis, with its exquisite, pale-green body, with 

 lace-like draperies forming the delicate neck, and 

 with its pink eye looking for all the world like that 

 of a gold-fish now floating nymph-like through 

 the water, now diving toward a rock at the bottom, 

 and now leisurely opening out its shawl-like arms! 

 How like an animal it is ! Yet this is not an animal, 

 but a real plant. 



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