RELATION BETWEEN MINERALS, PLANTS, ETC. 27 



Plants, as well as animals, need a season of repose. 

 Both have their epidemics. On both, narcotic and acrid 

 poisons produce analogous results. Are some animals 

 warm-blooded? In germination and flowering, plants 

 evolve heat — the stamens of the Arum, e. g., showing a 

 rise of 20° F. In a sense, an Oak has just as much heat 

 as an Elephant, only the miserly tree locks up the sunlight 

 in solid carbon. 



At present, any boundary of the Animal Kingdom is 

 arbitrary. " We cannot distinguish the vegetable from the 

 animal kingdom by any complete and precise definition. 

 Although ordinary observation of their usual representa- 

 tives may discern little that is common to the two, yet 

 there are many simple forms of life which hardly rise high 

 enough in the scale of being to rank distinctively either as 

 plant or animal ; there are undoubted plants possessing fac- 

 ulties which are generally deemed characteristic of animals ; 

 and some plants of the highest grade share in these endow- 

 ments." " 



CHAPTER III. 



RELATION BETWEEN MINERALS, PLANTS, AND ANIMALS. 



There are no independent members of creation : all 

 things touch upon one another. The matter of the living 

 world is identical with that of the inorganic. The plant, 

 feeding on the minerals, carbon -dioxide, water, and am- 

 monia, builds them up into complex organic compounds, 

 as starch, sugar, gum, cellulose, albumen, fibrin, casein, and 

 gluten. When the plant is eaten by the animal, these sub- 

 stances are used for building up tissues, supplying energy, 

 repairing waste, laid up in reserve as glycogen and fat, or 

 oxidized in the blood to produce heat. The albuminoids 

 are essential for the formation of tissues, like muscle, nerve, 



