122 Evolution of Vegetal Life. 



and so down to the ground, — a long and narrow road to per- 

 dition for uneducated or too dissipated insects. There, also, 

 are the Venus' fly-traps, — more ambitious relatives of the 

 sundew, — greedy plants, Avhich are not always cautious 

 enough about what they attempt to devour. It is said that 

 one of them, being fed by a waggish investigator with a 

 piece of cheese, had a most disagreeable dyspepsia there- 

 from. 



Mr. W. T. Thistleton Dyer, in the " Encyclopaedia Brit- 

 annica," draws this distinction between animals and plants : 

 " If we compare a plant and animal reduced to their sim- 

 plest terms, and consisting therefore in each case of a sin- 

 gle cell, i. e. of a minute mass of protoplasm invested with a 

 cell-wall, while the unicellular plant draws its nutriment b}' 

 simple imbibition through the cell-wall from the surround- 

 ing medium, — a process which implies that all its nutri- 

 ment passes into it in a liquid form, — the unicellular animal 

 is able to take in solid nutriment by means of interruptions 

 in the continuity of the cell-wall, and is also able after- 

 wards -to reduce this solid food, if of a suitable composi- 

 tion, to the liquid state." 



We do not have to go very far above the monera to find what 

 we may safely call vegetable forms. And first we discover, 

 for example, the protococcus, "which forms dull crimson 

 patches resembling blood-stains on the northern side of 

 damp rocks or old walls,"- — plants of a single cell, of Avhich 

 Haeckel says, "several hundred thousand occupy a space 

 no larger than a pin's head." They belong to the algse or 

 tangles ; and, while these are perhaps the smallest, within 

 the same division at the other end of the scale we find the 

 largest plants, the macrocysts, 300 or 400 feet in length. 

 With the algae of the sea, in some form, we are most of us 

 familiar, and many of the species which we find upon the 

 shore, where they have been left stranded by the tide, are 

 exceedingly beautiful. It is noteworthy, that some algae 

 have been found living in hot-springs at a temperature as 

 high as 208 degrees Fahr., — a quite exceptional condition 

 of life. 



Nearly related to the algae, are the fungi and lichens, 

 the algae being distinguished from the others by contain- 

 ing chlorophyll, that is, th^ substance which gives the green 

 color which we see in most plants, and which is supposed 

 to be the principal instrument in the elaboration of the nu- 



