1877.] Botany. 363 
self has made; finally it abandons the cell to pass to others ‚towards 
the new centres of activity, but the tissues, organs, members, the organ- 
isms thus constructed remain to attest that life has passed that way, 
that they are the works of the activity of an organism, like the shell 
abandoned by the mollusk. 
Much wrong has been done in contrasting the nutrition of animals 
with vegetables. They are the same and ought to be studied in a paral- 
lel manner. The only difference, to the advantage of vegetables, consists 
in this, that plants when they have utilized and applied the supplies 
which they possessed, have the power of taking up inorganic materials 
and elaborating them into new organic food, but after such elaboration, 
nutrition accompanied by respiration, circulation, transformation, and 
assimilation take place as in animals. In effect the plant, wheat, for 
example, accumulates a supply of nourishment in the grain near the 
embryo. If this accumulation feeds an animal or nourishes the plant 
itself, it behaves in the same manner. In the one case it is reduced to 
a pulp, submitted to the influence of the pancreatic, gastric, and other 
juices, and is finally absorbed. If the grain is placed under conditions for 
germination like reduction and transformations are undergone, and the 
plant is nourished instead of an animal. 
The truth of these assertions has been demonstrated by the interest- 
ing experiments of M. Ph. Van Tieghem, upon the germination of the 
Belle de Nuit (Recherches Phys. sur la Germination. Ann. des Sc. Nat. 
1873.) This able observer has nourished the embryos extracted from 
the grains and separated from their endosperm by means of paste of the 
starch of either potato or buckwheat. The grains of starch in contact 
with the embryo were dissolved, which proves that the necessary ferment 
resides in the embryo. 
Many peculiar organic compounds are common to both forms of life. 
Formic acid, for example, found among ants, corresponds to that found 
n many nettles; butyric acid in perspiration to the pulp of tamarinds ; 
palmetic acid in animal fats to the fruit of palm; oxalic acid is quite com- 
mon to both; and there are numerous other like examples. * 
P rotoplasm of both forms of life are alike, or at least, give the same 
reactions and have the same movements. The only thing living in a plant 
is its protoplasm, as it makes the cells and constructs the organism. 
e same may be said of the animal structure. Thus we are able to 
infer identity of effect from identity of cause. The unity of structure is 
the corollary of the unity of nutrition. 
o return to carnivorous plants, we are able to recognize that abstrac- 
tion made on account of their singular structure, enters as a particular case 
in the general theory. The most interesting thing which they present 
is the presence of pepsine ferment at their surface in a secreted liquid. 
It is well to notice that the facts ascertained among the Droseracew, 
80 strange that they have been styled idle stories, have had this happy 
