VIL] ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 149 



VII. 



ON THE BOEDER TERRITORY BETWEEN 

 THE ANIMAL AND THE VEGETABLE 

 KINGDOMS. 



IN the whole history of science there is nothing more 

 remarkable than the rapidity of the growth of bio- 

 logical knowledge within the last half-century, and 

 the extent of the modification which has thereby been 

 effected in some of the fundamental conceptions of 

 the naturalist. 



In the second edition of the " R&gne Animal," 

 published in 1828, Cuvier devotes a special section to 

 the " Division of Organised Beings into Animals and 

 Vegetables," in which the question is treated with that 

 comprehensiveness of knowledge and clear critical 

 judgment which characterise his writings, and justify 

 us in regarding them as representative expressions of 

 the most extensive, if not the profoundest, knowledge 

 of his time. He tells us that living beings have 

 been subdivided from the earliest times into animated 

 beings, which possess sense and motion, and inani- 

 mated beings, which are devoid of these functions, 

 and simply vegetate. 



Although the roots of plants direct themselves to- 



