404 The Botanical Gazette. [November, 
scious animals and, looking at the plant from our point of 
view, assume an a priorz difference. 
Since the time of Linnaeus’ dictum concerning the three 
kingdoms—‘‘Minerals grow; plants grow and feed; animals 
grow, feed, and move”—text book writers, some even of the 
highest rank, have attempted to define the differences between 
plants and animals. These alleged differences have been 
growing fewer and fewer, and it is the purpose of this paper 
to show that another difference is only superficial, and so t 
demonstrate more completely the unity in diversity that ex- 
ists in the physiology of living things. 
Among the supposed differences between green plants and 
animals, none has been more persistently urged than this: 
Green plants live chiefly upon inorganic food, obtained in the 
form of CO,, H.O, and mineral salts; whereas animals re- 
quire organic food. This statement is so trite that It Bre 
necessary. to cite any specific illustrations in evidence. es 
conceded that the nutrition of fungi is essentially animal-lik . 
in the character of the food. These organisms be call : 
substances which have come into solution through phys hich 
or those W 
chemical causes independent of the fungus, 
have been dissolved by chemical substances (gen it may 
zymes) secreted by the fungus filaments. In passing 
be remarked that we have in the latter cases 
tirely like digestion in the animal stomach or in iteration 
ole. In fact the term digestion, meaning the sgervise 
foods and their solution preparatory to aT to it. 
applicable to this process, and ought to be applic first be 2 
In regard to the food of green plants, it must i 
ticed that in a scientific sense the terms organic te chemists, 
are now obsolete, or at least obsolescent pies oe ae 
just as the terms invertebrate and cryptogam ey r words 
obsolete in classification among biologists ante, f 
are still popularly used because they conv 
a very general way, a vast number of beings, hie ani 
have little in common except negative ra od by these 
substances are popularly defined as those pro 3 multitude da 
tion of living things; but there are now spi ae ism! 
carbon compounds which have not been eine which havé 
but are genetically so intimately related tot luded from the 
been there produced, that they can not be sa the hydrazone® 
same group. As a single example I may cite . 
en 
