ON THE ORIGIN OF NEW SPECIES 



the plant life and the plant life upon the 

 animal, each subsisting in certain measure 

 upon the waste of the other. It is a compos- 

 ite, so to speak, — half animal, half vegetable. 

 Looking to the future, and taking into 

 account what Mr. Burbank has already accom- 

 phshed in the creation of new life, will it be 

 possible, granting the common protoplasmic 

 basis of plant and animal life, eventually to 

 interblend the two? Such union, should it 

 come, must be scarcely more marvelous than 

 the union here recorded, effecting creations 

 which Nature, in the very amplitude of her 

 powers, never could have achieved alone. 



225 



