86 WONDERS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 



in water or floating in pools or ditches that 

 these curious productions are met with ; in 

 their habits they are so paradoxical, that 

 naturalists are far from agreed as to whether 

 they are not really minute animals, but their 

 mode of growth seems to compel one to answer 

 such a question in the negative. At the same 

 time it must be confessed, that the stories 

 which are told of them by observers deserving 

 of credit, are such as to shake our confidence in 

 spontaneous motion from place to place being a 

 positive test of animal or vegetable nature. 



" Among conferva? in ditches are often found 

 little microscopic fragments of organized 

 bodies, some resembling ribands, and separating 

 into numberless narrow transverse portions, 

 others dividing partially at their ramifications, 

 but adhering at their angles like chains of 

 square transparent cases. These are disjointed 

 alga?. When combined, they are motionless, 

 with all the appearance of confervas, and their 

 joints are filled with the green reproductive 

 matter of such plants ; but when they disarticu- 

 late, their separate portions have a distinct 

 sliding or starting motion." 



Reflecting on these strange plants, it would 

 appear, we think, that though the line of 

 division between the higher animals and vege- 

 tables is precise and definite, yet that certain of 

 the lower animals and certain forms of vegeta- 

 tion closely approximate to each other. 



Here we may advert to that strange class of 

 plants termed Fungi, under which title botanists 



