Vegetal Causes. 163 



move them about, we can place them in hothouses 

 under better conditions for growing than in the soil 

 itself, and move them about from one continent to 

 another. 



This discovery, that every plant is a living magnet 

 with complete magnetic apparatus for supplying it 

 with food, keeping it in life and causing it to grow, 

 is of the utmost importance to the science of to-day. 

 For, through what we may call the cross-bred proto- 

 phyta, it shows us how evolution has proceeded from 

 the plants to animals, links the life-chain between 

 them, and reveals to our gaze the cause and acting 

 principle of animal life itself. 



Thus the protophyte begins life as an animal, and 

 has the independent existence of an animal by moving 

 about in the water from place to place. But this life 

 is a short and merry one, for ere long its spirits 

 depart, it becomes depressed and lazy, and anon takes 

 a seat from which it never again rises ; for now it has 

 taken root, its animal life is ended and its plant life 

 begun. 



The only explanation of this strange dual exis- 

 tence seems to be that on emission from the parent 

 organism, the spore is provided with an ephemeral or 

 false stomach supplied with a temporary food store 

 (like a chicken leaving its shell). So long as this 

 internal larder lasts, the protophyte has an active 

 existence ; but having no mouth or other means of 

 recharging its stomach, when the contents are ex- 

 hausted, so is the animal ; and were it not provided 



