POWER OF LOCOMOTION. 39 



Where the seed germinates, there the plant finds its 

 nutriment ; and if it be accidentally denied, there 

 must it prematurely perish. Nature has fixed the 

 plant, and has also placed its nutriment in external 

 contact with it ; nature has made the animal loco- 

 motive, and has consequently given it an internal 

 apparatus for the reception of a supply of matter, 

 whence the system may be duly nourished and sus- 

 tained till more can be acquired. 



When, however, we say that animals are loco- 

 motive, we do not forget that there are some, low in 

 the scale of being, which are destitute of this faculty; 

 but, in such instances, we find a plant-like sim- 

 plicity of structure, and a plant-like arrangement of 

 external organs. Even in these, there is an internal 

 digestive apparatus, simple, it is true, while the 

 animal seeks its food ; if it cannot quit its local 

 station, it spreads abroad its arms or feelers in search 

 of what the teeming waters of the river or the sea 

 may bring, to be received internally and digested. 

 There is, then, between the polyp and the plant a 

 dear, yet narrow line of demarcation. 



It is equally worthy of remark, that the plant 

 possesses no true sensation, as animals do, and that 

 the power of locomotion is necessarily connected 

 with the faculty of sensation. That a being, sus- 

 ceptible of pleasure and pain, endowed with various 

 senses, and having affections and passions should, 

 statue-like, be fixed motionless upon a life-enduring 

 pedestal, would be an outrage upon the harmony 



