124: DARWINIANA. 



lute distinction whatever is now known between them. 

 It is quite possible that the same organism may be 

 both vegetable and animal, or may be first the one and 

 then the other. If some organisms may be said to be 

 at first vegetables and then animals, others, like the 

 spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the 

 lower Algae, may equally claim to have first a charac- 

 teristically animal, and then an unequivocally vegeta- 

 ble existence. Nor is the gradation restricted to these 

 simple organisms. It appears in general functions, as 

 in that of reproduction, which is reducible to the same 

 formula in both kingdoms, while it exhibits close ap- 

 proximations in the lower forms ; also in a common or 

 similar .ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of 

 both, a common faculty of effecting movements tend- 

 ing to a determinate end, traces of which pervade the 

 vegetable kingdom while, on the other hand, this in- 

 definable principle, this vegetable 



"Animula vagula, blandula, 

 Bospes comesque corporis," 



graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower 

 class of animals. Nor need we hesitate to recognize 

 the fine gradations from simple sensitiveness and 

 volition to the higher instinctive and to the other 

 psychical manifestations of the higher brute ani- 

 mals. The gradation is undoubted, however we may 

 explain it. 



Again, propagation is of one mode in the higher 

 animals, of two in all plants ; but vegetative propaga- 

 tion, by budding or offshoots, extends through the 

 lower grades of animals. In both kingdoms there 



