XXI 
PLANT-ANIMALS AND ANIMAL-PLANTS 
OR more than two hundred years botanists and 
zoologists have been trying to determine defi- 
nitely with which of the kingdoms, animal or 
vegetable, certain peculiar plant-animals or animal- 
plants should be classed. Many forms of the vege- 
table kingdom have so skillfully simulated the col- 
our, shape, and various habits of certain plant-ani- 
mals as to have themselves classed as animals. No 
one but a skilled botanist, when observing some of 
these darting around in the water, could doubt that 
he was seeing a tiny animal. 
There goes the fantastical, weird Euglena 
viridis, with its exquisite, pale-green body, with 
lace-like draperies forming the delicate neck, and 
with its pink eye looking for all the world like that 
of a gold-fish—now floating nymph-like through 
the water, now diving toward a rock at the bottom, 
and now leisurely opening out its shawl-like arms! 
How like an animal itis! Yet this is not an animal, 
but a real plant. 
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