PROTOZOA. 63 



vegetable organisms, we will not find it easy to determine, without 

 considerable study, which is to become the plant and which the 

 animal. It is indeed difficult to trace the precise line of demarcation 

 which it is so desirable to establish between these two kingdoms 

 of Nature. 



The word zoophyte has been often applied to these lower forms of 

 animal life : it is derived from the Greek word i^ov, animal., and </>uTbr, 

 plant. To adopt the name zoophyte to indicate a great division of 

 the animal kingdom, would, however, lead the reader to imagine that 

 there is an ambiguity about the creatures designated, or that they 

 belong at once to both kingdoms, or that they might be ranged in- 

 differently in the one or the other. But the so-called zoophytes 

 are animals, and nothing but animals ; and the only justification for 

 using a designation which signifies animal-plant is, that many of 

 them have, at first sight, an exterior resemblance to plants. 



This likeness between plants and zoophytes was supposed to be 

 nowhere more apparent than in the coral. Rooted upon rocks, 

 the form of its branches many times subdivided, above all, the 

 coloured polyps which at certain stages of their expansion so closely 

 resemble the corolla of a flower, gave the coral, it was thought, all the 

 form and appearance of a plant. Until the eighteenth century most 

 naturalists classed the coral, as Linnseus once did without the least 

 hesitation, in the vegetable world. Reaumur long contended for 

 the contrary opinion. The sea anemone was also cited as another 

 example of the resemblance borne by certain of the lower animals to 

 vegetables. This resemblance, however, is not seen in the grou]j 

 of the lower animals which we prefer to call Protozoa (from irpoTa 

 the first, and |a5r? life), and we shall not surprise our readers by 

 telling them that the structure of these Protozoa, especially of some 

 of the lower forms is excessively simple. We find among them the 

 first steps in the scale of animal life, and here a very rudimentary 

 organisation was to be expected. In these beings the several parts 

 of the body, in place of being disposed symmetrically on each side of 

 its longitudinal plane, as occurs in animals of a higher organisation, 

 are found to have not as yet become differentiated. The Protozoa we 

 need hardly add have neither an articulate skeleton, either exterior 

 or interior, nor a nervous system. The organs of the senses, other 

 than that perhaps of touch, are altogether absent in the beings which 

 belong to this the lowest class of the lowest division of the animal 

 kingdom. 



Several questions arise here : Has the Protozoon sentiment, 

 feeling, preception ? Has it consciousness, sense, sensibility ? The 



