CLASSIFICA TWN. 



sight could be in danger of mistaking noon for night ; but he who 

 gazes on the morning's dawn, and tries to mark the line that 

 separates the parting darkness from the coming day, will find the 

 task by no means an easy one, so gently do the lights and shades 

 tincture and mingle with each other. 



The axiom of Linnaeus is well-known : "Stones grow, vegetables 

 grow and live, animals grow, live, and feel." The capability of 

 feeling, therefore, was regarded by the great Swedish naturalist 

 as the distinctive character of an animal ; but how can we define 

 where feeling has been first bestowed ? The sensitive plant which 

 coyly shrinks upon the slightest touch, does it not feel ? The 

 flower that shuts its bells as evening comes, and seems to go to 

 sleep, is it insensitive ? We cannot tell. 



To move from place to place, to have the power of locomotion, 

 has been said to be an attribute of animals, whereby they are 

 distinguishable. Yet, although we see the Volvox* (Fig. i) roll- 

 ing through the drop that forms its space with slow majestic 

 movement, wielding upon its surface countless living filaments, 

 we are forced to believe the chemist who informs us that it is a 

 vegetable, f 



If we take a drop of water from any stagnant pool, and place 

 it under a microscope, we shall soon perceive that it contains a 

 great variety of living organisms, very diverse in their shape, and 

 all equally remote in their structure and appearance from any 

 with which we are elsewhere familiar. Let the reader cast his 

 eye for a moment upon the annexed engraving (Fig. 2), which 

 represents a piece of duckweed, gathered from a neighbouring 

 pond, surrounded by the microscopic creatures that live in its 

 vicinity. Some fixed upon the stem (Fig. 2, 9) like trumpets in 

 their shape, spread out their gaping mouths, around which whirl 

 the swarming atoms that they swallow ; others, like wine-glasses 

 in miniature, stretch out the little bells that constitute their bodies 

 to the length of their transparent stems in search of food, or, if 

 alarmed, folding their stalks in spiral revolutions, shrink timidly 

 from danger (Fig. 2, i). 



* Volvo, I roll. 



f* The Volvox globator, of which a figure is given in the text, is acknowledged to 

 be a vegetable production. In shape it seems a microscopic globe, rolling slowly on 

 its axis. More accurately examined, we perceive the body to be formed of a transparent 

 spherical membrane, studded with small green dots, and having all its surface covered 

 over with vibrating filaments of infinite minuteness, which produce currents in the sur- 

 rounding water, and thus cause the revolution of the little sphere, as well as its pro- 

 gression. 



