FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 261 



placed here belong to the one kingdom of nature or the 

 other. Whatever errors of observation may have occurred, 

 these very errors, to say nothing of the true ones, show the 

 extreme difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of pointing 

 out the exact frontier of either kingdom."* Whereupon 

 the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, startled "by these astounding 

 statements," remarks : " The same species may assume a 

 vast variety of forms according to varying circumstances, 

 and it is highly instructive to observe these changes ; but 

 that the same spore should, under different circumstances, 

 be capable of producing beings of almost entirely different 

 nature, each capable of producing its species, is a matter 

 which ought not to be admitted generally without the 

 strictest proof." In the Zoogeny of Oken it is written, 

 (paragraph 1715,) " Every organic originates from a mucus- 

 point. If this mucus-point occur in the darkness, it thus 

 becomes a terrestrial organism, a plant ; if it enter into the 

 light, which is only possible in the water and in air, it thus 

 becomes a solar organism, independent of the planet, self- 

 moving around itself like the sun, an animal." "The ani- 

 mal is a whole solar-system, the plant only a planet. The 

 animal is, therefore, a whole universe, the plant only its 

 half; the former is microcosm, the latter micro-planet." 

 (Idem, paragraph 1180.) So sparkle the philosophers on 

 the origin of things, particularly of plants and animals, and 

 all this from the contemplation of the wonderful life-mani- 

 festations of the Algals. The streams, pools, springs, and 

 moist spots of the mountain, abound in numerous fresh- 

 water genera and species of this widely-distributed order 

 of plants. 



Thus endeth the story of the plant. In stately and ma- 

 jestic repose the mountain folds about itself this many- 

 tissued, many-tinted garment of living fibres, each microscopic 

 alga, each imperial tree, quickened by that worker of per- 

 petual miracles, life. For what ends exist this immea- 



* See observations of Menegliini and Goadby, p. 250. 



