HISTORY OF THE PLANT KINGDOM 297 
(Fig. 214) and the flagellates) have so many characteris- 
tics common to plants and animals that they are described 
both in botanies and zodlogies, are spoken of now as plants, 
now as animals, and really 
‘belong to a borderland be- 
tween the animal and the 
plant kingdom. Flagel- 
lates frequently have the 
animal characteristic of 
taking particles of solid 
food through a funnel- 
like depression, and they 
resemble animals in their 
power of swimming freely 
about. Some of them re- 
semble plants in their 
possession of chlorophyll 
and power of using carbon 
dioxide in photosynthesis. 
We cannot say that the 
plants of higher organiza- 
tion are descended from 
such forms as the slime- 
molds and the flagellates. 
But since these constitute 
a kind of link between ani- 
mals and plants and are 
of simpler structure than 
Fig. 214. Slime-Molds. (x 350-390.) 
A, spores, two of them germinating; B, 
swarm-spores; C, creeping, animal-like 
(amebiform) condition; D, naked mass 
of protoplasm (plasmodium) produced 
by the union of many individuals like C. 
most other living beings, it is not improbable that all 
living organisms are the modified offspring of lowly forms 
not unlike those of Fig. 214. A more immediate ancestor 
1 Bergen and Davis’ Principles of Botany, Sect. 204. 
