Life and Its Conditions. \ 5 



plant will, in most cases, kill it outright, and will always 

 bring about a suspension of all visible life-phenomena. 



While the large majority of living beings are organized, 

 or composed of different parts, called organs, which sustain 

 certain relations with one another, and which discharge 

 different offices, yet it must not therefore be concluded that 

 organization is a necessary accompaniment of vitality, or 

 that all living creatures are organized. Innumerous low 

 forms of life, so low that they occupy the very lowest place 

 in the scale of animated existences, absolutely exhibit no 

 visible structure, and cannot, therefore, be said to be organ- 

 ized, but they, nevertheless, discharge all their vital functions 

 just as well as though they possessed special organs for the 

 purpose. Concluding our theme, we are forced to admit 

 that animals are organized, or possess structure, because 

 they are alive, and not that they live because they are organ- 

 ized. By carefully comparing the morphological and physi- 

 ological differences between different animals and plants, 

 naturalists have divided the entire animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms into a number of divisions, whose leading char- 

 acteristics may be found in almost every text-book. All 

 that we promised ourselves when this work was first thought 

 of was a brief treatment of a few of the most interesting 

 life-forms of this planet of ours in the light of their ways 

 and doings, and the direction of human thought to those 

 traits of character and manifestations of conscious intelli- 

 gence which fit them to become partakers with man of that 

 new life which awaits him beyond the grave. 



