YIL 



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 biological 

 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 " Regne Animal," pub- 

 lished in 1828, Cuvier devotes a special section to the 

 " Division of Organised Beings into Animals and Vege- 

 tables," in which the question is treated with that com- 

 prehensiveness of knowledge and clear critical judgment 

 which characterise his writings, and justify us in regard- 

 ing them as representative expressions of the most exten- 

 sive, 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 inanimated beings, which are 

 devoid of these functions, and simply vegetate. 



Although the roots of plants direct themselves 

 towards moisture, and their leaves towards air and light, 



