ARCHER ON STEPHANOSPrOSBA PLUVIALIS (COHN). 175 



Professor de Bary makes the statement that not once in the course of his 

 researches has he met with any case which would induce him to the 

 view, that any single one of those parasites owes its origin to the 

 changed contents of any cell, or of any intercellular fluid, of the infested 

 plants. How much the more unlikely, then, is it that a true animal 

 could have such a beginning, if the contents of the cells of the host- 

 plant cannot give origin to a Fungus, — another denizen of the vegetable 

 kingdom ! 



The advocates of a "third kingdom" intermediate between the ani- 

 mal and vegetable, as well as those who hold that, there being no dis- 

 tinction between animals and plants, an organism may be at one time 

 an animal, at another a plant, or that the one may give birth to the 

 other, will each, I suppose, think they can draw support from the facts 

 adverted to in this paper. In my mind they are opposed to the argu- 

 ments of both. Those who even in this day contend that Volvocinaceae 

 are animals will doubtless feel themselves confirmed in that view, on 

 account of their occasional amoeboid state, and on account of the paral- 

 lelism to a certain extent with the Gregarinida. But what of Spirogyra, 

 of Mesotaenium (Conjugatse), of Bhizidium (which probably should be 

 referred to Fungi) — of Dr. Hicks' Moss ? When, or at what point, do they 

 cease to be vegetables, or are these varied organisms always animals ? 

 "No!" say the advocates for a half-and-between kingdom — "Nor 

 plants either — they belong to the ' Protozoa' or ' Phytozoidea' or, 

 'Primalia,' or the ' Begnum primegenum.' " If so, must all the Confer- 

 voideae, all the Algae — must Dr. Hicks' Moss ? Truly this "interme- 

 diate" kingdom would form a most heterogeneous and incongruous as- 

 semblage, here and there transferred — nay, even sometimes violently 

 disrupted, from both sides. Those who may perhaps think this to be 

 exaggeration, I would refer to Owen's " Palaeontology" for "Protozoa" ; 

 to Perty, for " Phytozoidea;"* for " Primalia," to a paper published not 

 later than May, 1863, " On a Third kingdom of Organized Beings," by 

 Thomas B. Wilson, M. D., and John Cassin ;f and for the " Begnum 

 primigenum," to a paper by John Hogg, M. A., F. B. S., &c. — the last 

 supported by a gaudy if not quite convincing diagram.]: 



Either hypothesis, instead of removing or even smoothing any diffi- 

 culties, seems to me to multiply them manifold, and to involve far 

 greater dilemmas, and to plunge us more deeply into doubts and per- 

 plexities, than those with which we find ourselves obliged to contend, 

 when, as I venture to conceive, the phenomena of nature and the simple 

 facts are rightly and properly viewed. 



* Perty, " Zur Kenntniss kleinster Lebens-formen," pag. 22. 



t "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences," Philadelphia, No. 3, 18G3, 

 p. 113. The latter writers, indeed, think to make short work of the difficulty by con- 

 signing the whole of the Algae, Lichens, Fungi, Spongiae, and Conjugates to the " Pri- 

 mnlia." 



X " On the Distinctions of a Plant and an Animal and on a Fourth Kingdom of 

 Nature," by John Hogg, M. A., F. R. S., in " Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal," 

 vol. xii., N. S., p. 216. 



2 B 



