VI ANIMALS AND PLANTS 177 



sentative of the line of Zahdarm, whose epitaph is 

 written in " Sartor Resartus." 



Here is our last hope of finding a sharp line of 

 demarcation between plants and animals; for, as 

 I have already hinted, there is a border territory 

 between the two kingdoms, a sort of no-man's- 

 land, the inhabitants of which certainly cannot 

 be discriminated and brought to their proper 

 allegiance in any other way. 



Some months ago. Professor Tyndall asked me 

 to examine a drop of infusion of hay, placed 

 under an excellent and powerful microscope, and 

 to tell him what I thought some organisms 

 visible in it were. I looked and observed, in the 

 first place, multitudes of Bacteria moving about 

 with their ordinary intermittent spasmodic 

 wriggles. As to the vegetable nature of these 

 there is now no doubt. Not only does the close 

 resemblance of the Bacteria to unquestionable 

 plants, such as the Oscillatorice and the lower forms 

 of Ficngi, justify this conclusion, but the manu- 

 facturing test settles the question at once. It 

 is only needful to add a minute drop of fluid 

 containing Bacteria, to water in which tartrate, 

 phosphate, and sulphate of ammonia are dissolved ; 

 and, in a very short space of time, the clear fluid 

 becomes milky by reason of their prodigious 

 multiplication, which, of course, implies the 

 manufacture of living Bacterium-stufif out of 

 these merely saline matters, 



198 



