90 WONDERS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 



the lowest in organic structure, we find our- 

 selves perplexed ; for on the side of the vege- 

 table kingdom we discover among certain 

 microscopic plants, propagation by self-divi- 

 sion and locomotiveness, nay, more than this, 

 we find fungi of various kinds exhaling, like the 

 lungs of a quadruped, carbonic acid and absorb- 

 ing oxygen. Wherein, then, do plants like the 

 confervae and fungi differ from those zoophytes 

 which are placed within the pale of the animal 

 kingdom, seeing that in functional powers they 

 ngree, or nearly so, and that chemistry demon- 

 strates that a fungus is almost like an animal 

 in its intimate constituents and mode of re- 

 spiration ? There are not wanting those who 

 conceive the fungi to be intermediate forms 

 between the true vegetable and the true animal 

 kingdom. This we know, that as soon as the 

 first signs of decay in the mushroom or fungus 

 manifest themselves, or even before, the larva 

 of insects burrow through the substance of the 

 plant, and feed as do the larvse of the flesh-fly 

 on putrescent animal fibre. 



There is no affinity, be it remembered, 

 between the rosebud that withers under the 

 incursions of a small caterpillar, and the over- 

 grown mushroom, living and propagating, and 

 yet containing within its disc hordes of minute 

 larvae, which feed upon its cellular tissue — a 

 tissue, too, that is semi-animalized. 



Who, then, shall divide between plants and 

 animals ? If we take the oak and the horse, 

 the fir-tree and the stork, the reed of the Nile 



