4 AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



of damsons — plummocks in the local dialect. The 

 orchard was bounded by a stream (beck), and in the 

 beck were " straddly becks " — frogs, to wit. Boy 

 nuniber one, up in the tree, gathered as fast as he 

 could : boy number two, down in the grass, ate as 

 fast as he could the share of the spoil that was thrown 

 down to him. Dire misgivings' seize boy number - 

 two, in consequence of a mysterious scratching in his 

 throat as the damsons go down. " Tom ! a' say, Tom, 

 'as plummocks legs?" "Noa!" ''Then a' ha' 

 swallowed a straddly heck ! " Broad principles failed 

 to save this small youth from error ; although he was 

 certainly right in assuming that legs are structures 

 proper to the animal as distinct from the vegetable 

 organism, yet he was probably wrong (at least I hope 

 so) in classifying his already swallowed specimens as 

 members of the animal kingdom. For " plummocks," 

 if they have no legs, are possessed of stalks ; especially 

 when gathered unripe, as the spoil of the schoolboy 

 thief is apt to be. 



Similar mistakes might be made by too sweeping 

 an application of the broad rules we gave above. For 

 example, we might name animals that are fixed ot» 

 stalks, and, therefore, capable of but very restricted 

 movement (the so-called Zoophytes, see p. ] 50) ; 

 and we might run up a long list of plants capable of 

 movement, which, nevertheless, are most undoubtedly 

 not animals. Not only do a host of plants move in 

 accordance with the amount of light that falls on 

 them, such as daisies and clover-leaves that shut up 



