250 THE MOUNTAIN. 



of simpler and more homogeneous elements, revealing a less 

 intricately complicated morphology, or, in other words, fewer 

 of the wonder-workings of that same strange cytoblast, 

 from "those minims of the vegetable world," single-cell 

 plants, to the more complicated structure of tree ferns, but 

 all propagated by spores, or simple reproductive cells. 



These CELLULARES, or cellular plants, are an inte- 

 resting department of the vegetable world. Here com- 

 mences the mysterious circulation of "organic water," and 

 the protean power of that magical "protoplasm," with 

 generative fiat, starts the whirl of the brute elements through 

 the harmonious gyrations of Life. Here the formative 

 forces of vitality assume their simplest attitudes of nutri- 

 tion and reproduction; and here the "vegetable vesicle" 

 stands the witness of the first erotic approach of the pon- 

 derable and imponderable. This is also the realm in which 

 the two great kingdoms, the vegetable and animal, ap- 

 proximate and touch circles in a series of surprising analogies, 

 in the first simple mechanisms of life, for the cell is the re- 

 sult of the ultimate analysis of both. 



" The starting-point of both is the same ; for the embryo 

 of the animal up to a certain grade of its development, con- 

 sists, like that of a plant, of nothing else than an aggre- 

 gate of cells. The lowest class of animals, the micro- 

 scopical animalcula, or the invisible inhabitants of stagnant 

 water, appear to be identical with the simple cellular plants, 

 already referred to (Volvox globator.")* 



" Kutzing does not admit any essential distinction between 

 animals and vegetables. f He maintains that the same being 

 may, at various periods of its development, assume one na- 

 ture or the other. The following is his theory in a few 

 words : Every organic being is constituted of vegetable 

 elements and animal elements, and, according as one or 

 other prevails, the being becomes an animal or a vegetable ; 



* Go ad by. 



f See quotation from B,obert Smith, at end of catalogue. 



