28 DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 



for the scientific naturalist to mistake a Protophyte (or one 

 of the simplest forms of vegetation) for an Animalcule, and 

 although Zoophytes are continually ranked in the popular mind 

 with the Plants they so much resemble in form, no one is in 

 any danger of confounding the Oak and the Elephant, the Palm 

 and the Whale. For among the higher Animals, not only the 

 principal organs, but the greater part of their elementary 

 parts or tissues, are formed upon a plan entirely different 

 from that which prevails in Plants. All the arrangements 

 of their organism or corporeal edifice are made for the pur- 

 pose of enabling them to perform, in the most advantageous 

 manner possible, those peculiar functions with which they have 

 been endowed, to receive sensations, to feel, think, and 

 will, and to move in accordance with the directions of the 

 instinct or the judgment. For these purposes we find a 

 peculiar apparatus, termed the Nervous system, adapted. This 

 apparatus consists of a vast number of fibres, spread out over 

 the surface of the body, and especially collected in certain 

 parts, called Organs of Sense (such as the eye, nose, ear, 

 tongue, lips, and points of the fingers). These have the 

 peculiar property of receiving impressions which are made 

 upon their extremities, and of conveying them to the central 

 masses of nervous matter (known in the higher animals as 

 the Brain and Spinal Cord*), by the instrumentality of which 

 they are communicated to the mind. 



10. From the Nervous centres, other cords proceed to the 

 various Muscles, by which the body is moved. These muscles, 

 commonly known as " fiesh," are composed of a tissue which 

 has the power of contracting suddenly and forcibly, when 

 peculiar stimuli are applied to it. In this respect, it bears a 

 resemblance to the contractile tissues by which the move- 

 ments of plants are produced (YEGET. PHYS. 390) ; but it 

 differs from them in being thrown into action, not only by 

 stimuli that are applied directly to itself, but by an influence 

 conveyed through the nervous system. Thus, in an animal 

 recently dead, we may excite any muscles to contraction, by 

 sending a current of electricity into the nerves supplying 

 them ; and in a living animal we may do the same by simply 

 touching those nerves. But the stimulus which these nerves 

 ordinarily convey, originates in an act of the mind, which is 

 connected in some mysterious and inscrutable manner with 



