CHAPTER VII 



RELATIONS BETWEEN PLANTS AND ANIMALS 



Plants and Snails Plants and Ants Domatia Myrmecodia 

 Galls Plants and Aphides Cats and Clover. 



Relations between Plants and Animals. Our study of 

 insectivorous plants and of plant-movements have already 

 shown us that the conventional distinctions between plants 

 and animals are by no means natural. Of this fundamental 

 unity Linnaeus had some conception when he united plants 

 and animals under the common title Organtsata, in contrast 

 to the mineral world of matter merely aggregated, not 

 organised, as Conserta, and to have demonstrated the 

 essential unity of organic life is one of the most important 

 characteristics of modern botany. The reader will do well 

 to consult Claude Bernard's work, of which the title is a 

 summary, Sur les Phinomenes de la Vie communs aux 

 Animaux et aux Vigitaux. Nor can it too clearly be 

 realised that the distinctness of three kingdoms of nature, 

 animal, vegetable, and mineral, however stereotyped in 

 school-books, is, like much else we have learned there, a 

 survival of mediaeval non-science. It is in fact a doctrine 

 of the alchemists, of which the whole science of biology, 

 the whole doctrine of evolution is the confutation. How 

 and where to divide the Organisata into Animalia and 



