THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
VoL. XXIX. November, 1895. 347 
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ANIMALS AND 
PLANTS. 
By J. C. ARTHUR. 
The animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom were not 
sharply distinguished in the days when science was young, 
some two or three centuries ago, when even learned men be- 
lieved in the Scythian lamb,’ that grew on the top of a small 
tree-trunk in place of foliage, and in the wonderful tree of the 
British Isles,* whose fruit turned to birds when it fell on the 
ground, and to fishes when it fell into water; and the two 
kingdoms are not sharply distinguished to-day, when learned 
men do not agree upon the systematic position of the Myxo- 
gastres and other low forms, some going so far as to assert that 
many of the simple organisms are on neutral ground, belong- 
ing no more to one than to the other kingdom. Dr. Asa Gray* 
once said that “no absolute distinction whatever is now known 
between them. It is quite possible that the same organism 
1 Read before joint session of Sections F and G of the A. A. A. S., Springfield 
meeting, Sept. 2, 1895. 
? Duret, Histoire admirable des plantes, 1605; Jonston, Dendrographias sive 
histori naturalis de arboribus, 1662; LaCroix, Connubia florum, ed. 2, 1791. 
3 Duret, l. c.; Gerarde, Herball, 1597. 
ae Monthly, 1860; Darwiniana, p. 124. 
