■j in: 



VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



TTHIKX the Animal Kingdom is studied as a vast whole, and not m 

 *' in the highly-developed classes of Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles, the 

 naturalist perceivee Forms with which he is most familiar gradually chang 

 organs which are indispensable to the highest orders of Animals disappearing, 

 the limbs ceasing to be formed, all the internal structure of the body simpli- 

 fied, and, at last, nothing left but pulpy and seemingly Bhapeless ma 

 Buch as inhabit shells. Let his power of vision be enlarged, and the 

 microscope discovers to his amazement, that the Animal Kingdom has 



d with the soft -bodied creatures at which his inquiry had stopped, but 

 thai a new and vast Held of observation opens before him, teeming with 

 myriads of forms, which are, as it were, the beginning of another kingdom 

 of nature. Nevertheless, he soon finds that the smallness of the size of 

 these creatine- is no hindrance to their possessing the peculiar attribute 

 animal life. Though hones, and muscles, and external limbs, with vein.-, 

 arteries, and nerves, may have disappeared, or become too fine for hu 

 vision, yet there is still left the animal motion, and the power of huntm 

 prey, of feeding by a mouth and by the destruction of ether Bpecies, h 

 is one of the great marks of animal structure. He Bees that i 

 although so small that the acutest vision and the must powerful instruments 

 are alone sufficient to detect them, are the n cipients of a Btomach, of eyes, 

 of a mouth. He perceives in Buch bodies all those elements of activity, by 

 which the Animal Kingdom is in general bo well distinguished from the 

 passive Region of plants. 



Am! hence it is that those who deal in generals only, without d ding 



to particulars, pronounce with a voice Of authority that the Animal and 



table Kingdoms are sundered by decisive characteristics. The 



declares that the power of spontaneous motion, and the p iach, 



are qualities confined to the Animal Kingdom. But numerous plants • 

 with all the appearance of spontaneity ; the spores of ■ Confervas which 

 are sometimes called Zoosporous, swim in water with : the 



filaments of Zygnemata eomhine with the energy of animal life : and 

 stomach, it is impossible to say, that the whole interior of a living indepen- 

 dent cell is not a stomach. Chemists once referred to the pn - 

 as a certain characteristic of animals ; but plants abound in nitrogen. With 

 more reason they now appeal to the existence of starch in plants, an organic 

 compound unknown among the animal creation. And this - perhaps the 



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