HISTORY OF THE PLANT KIXGDOJI 



297 



(Fig. 214) and the flagellates,^ have so many characteris- 

 tics common to plants and animals that they are described 

 both in botanies and zoologies, 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 photosjmthesis. 

 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 

 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. 20i. 



Fig. 214, 



D 



Slime-Molds. 



B 



(X .350-390.) 



A, spores, two of them germinating; B, 

 swarm-spores; C, creeping, animal-like 

 {amoebiform) condition ; D, naked mass 

 of protoplasm (Plasmodium) produced 

 by the union of many individuals like C. 



