20 DISTINCTION BETWEEN PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 



analogous to those which constitute the whole life of plants. 

 Thus the absorption of food, its conversion into a nutritious fluid, 

 the circulation of this through the system, its purification by 

 exposure to the air, and the formation from it of new structures 

 or the reparation of the old, are all actions over which the 

 mind and will have no direct control, which go on quite inde- 

 pendently of it, and which may be regarded as perfectly ana- 

 logous to the same functions in plants. Hence they receive the 

 name of functions of vegetative or organic life ; whilst those of 

 sensibility and power of spontaneous movement are termed func- 

 tions of animal life, as being peculiar to that division of organised 

 Nature. In fact it is by their presence or absence, that the 

 Animal or Vegetable character of a being must really be deter- 

 mined. For though the external peculiarities of the higher 

 kinds of Plants and Animals are quite sufficient to distinguish 

 them from each other, yet there are many forms of the latter so 

 low and simple, and so destitute of all that is regarded as pecu- 

 liar to the Animal, that they cannot be readily distinguished 

 from Plants. 



11. It is in these lowest forms of both kingdoms, that we 

 recognise the nearest approach to inorganic matter. For we 

 gradually lose, in descending the scale, nearly all appearance of 

 distinct organs ; so that the simplest plants that, for example, 

 which constitutes the Red Snow of Alpine and Arctic Regions 

 (. 48) instead of having stems, roots, leaves, and flowers, 

 present us with apparently but a single organ, namely, a 

 globular cell or little bag containing fluid. Even here, how- 

 ever, we shall subsequently find that there is a distinction of 

 parts ; and that, whilst the external surface is destined to imbibe 

 nutriment from the moisture and air around, the internal forms 

 the germs by which this simple little being is multiplied to a 

 prodigious extent. 



