936. DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 
fixing itself upon a given spot; while, on the other hand, locomo-. 
tion is the characteristic of the animal kingdom. For there is no 
comparison between plants taking root, and the adhesion of some 
animals, corals, and oysters, to the ground by means of their shells. 
In the latter case there is not, as there is in that of the plant, an active 
dynamical intrusion into the maternal bosom of the earth for the sake’ 
of nourishment and life, but a mere mechanical hold of the surface. 
A fifth consequence is the more marked dependence of vegetable life 
on the life of the earth. Whether the vegetative organization awakes 
and develops itself, or sleeps and dies, depends accordingly on the 
position of the planet with respect to the sun and other heavenly 
bodies, as well as on the peculiar development of the soil. Though 
these circumstances affect animal life also, it is not to be denied that 
they do so ina far inferior degree, and that the progress of animal 
organization imparts an independence of which the plant is utterly in- 
capable. As the sixth and last consequence arising from the less perfect 
unity of the plant, we are to consider not only the dualism already men- 
tioned, but the peculiar nature of every bud ; and every internodium 
may be considered as a whole in itself, or in some measure an indi- 
vidual plant ; wherefore a bush or a tree is more properly compared 
to an aggregate of animals (a coral bank) than to a single animal. 
In this way we shall easily comprehend the various modes of propa- 
gating plants, in which a bud (an eye) and the shoots that issue from 
it renew the parent organism, and that which we see in the bud is exhi- 
bited likewise as tubercles in the root or also (as in the genus Allium) 
near the flower, or as the bulb, and always possessing the power of repro- 
ducing the whole plant out of itself; nay the very seed is but an im- 
proved and more perfectly compact picture of the bud. 
If we closely examine the structure and composition of plants, we find 
that, like the organism of the earth itself, they contain solid, fluid, and 
gaseous elementary particles. We see that in the plant, as well as in the 
earth, the fluid contributes to the formation of the solid parts, and that 
the finer and therefore more destructible organization of the plant is 
composed of chemical elements, namely, the carbonic, hydrogen, and 
oxygen gases. The transition of the fluids into solids, and consequently 
the history of the formation of the proper body of the plant itself, is evi- 
dent in its primary structure, that is, in its cellular tissue. If we call 
to our recollection the history of the primitive formation of the rudi- 
ments »f organic bodies in the green matter of Priestley, and see in 
this the conditions of this formation,—whilst, under the influence of light 
and gravitation, some particles of the original fluid attain the nature of in- 
dividual beings, as well as a tendency to internal unity, and consequently 
a globular form,—it becomes clear that this development cannot occur 
without a separation of those particles from the rest, without an indi- 
vidual, limitation in form of a spherical surface; so that the rudiment. of 
