AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 



83 



shall soon find our definition untenable ; for while the Linnaean class of worms 

 affords instances, in perhaps every one of its orders, of animals destitute of 

 locomotion, and evincing no mark of consciousness or sensation, there are 

 various species of plants that ar& strictly locomotive, and that discover a much 

 nearer approach to a sensitive faculty. 



However striking, therefore, the distinctions between animal and vegetable 

 life, in their more perfect and elaborate forms, as we approach the contiguous 

 extremities of the two kingdoms we find these distinctions fading away so 

 gradually, 



Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade, 



and the mutual advances so close and intimate, that it becomes a task of no 

 common difficulty to draw a line of distinction between them, or to determine 

 to which of them an individual may belong. And it is probable, that that ex- 

 traordinary order of beings called zoophytes, or animated plants, as the term 

 imports, and which by Woodward and Beaumont were arranged as minerals,* 

 and by Ray and Lister as vegetables, have at last obtained an introduction 

 into the animal kingdom,! less on account of an}'^ other property they possess, 

 than of their affording, on being burnt, an ammoniacal smell like that which 

 issues from burnt bones, or any other animal organs, and which is seldom or 

 never observed from burnt vegetable substances of a decided and unquestion- 

 able character. Ammonia, however, upon destructive distillation, is met with 

 in small quantities in particular parts of most if not of all vegetables, though 

 never perhaps in the whole plant. Thus it occurs slightly in the wood or 

 vegetable fibre ; in extract, gum-mucilage, camphor, resin, and balsam ; gum- 

 resin, gluten, and caoutchouc : besides those substances that are common to 

 both animals and vegetables, as sugar, fixed oil, albumen, fibrine, and gelatine. 

 There are some plants, however, that even in their open exposure to a 

 burning heat give forth an ammoniacal smell closely approaching to that of 

 animal substance. The clavarias or club-tops, and many other funguses, do 

 this. But a distinction in the degree of odour may even here be observed, 

 if accurately attended to. Yet the clavarias were once regarded as zoophytes, 

 and are arranged by Millar in the same division as the corals and corallines. J 

 M. de Mirbel, in his very excellent treatise " On the Anatomy and Physio- 

 logy of Plants," has endeavoured to lay down a distinction between the ani- 

 mal and the vegetable world in the following terms, and it is a distinction 

 which seems to be approved by Sir Edward Smith; "Plants alone have a 

 power of drawing nourishment from inorganic matter, mere earths, salts, or 

 airs; substances incapable of nourishing animnls, which only feed on what 

 is or has been organized matter, either of a vegetable or animal nature. So 

 that it should seem to be the office of vegetable life alone to transform dead 

 matter into organized living bodies."^ Whence another learned French phy- 

 siologist, M. Richerand, has observed that the aliments by which animals are 

 nourished are selected from vegetable or animal substances alone; the 

 elements of the mineral kingdom being too heterogeneous to the nature of 

 animals to be converted into their own substance without being first elabo- 

 rated by vegetable life ; whence plants, says M. Richerand, may be considered 

 as the laboratory in which nature prepares aliment for animals. H 



* Phil. Trans, xiii. 277. t Parkinson's Organic Remains, i. 23, ii. 157, 158. 



i Several speci' s of this genus of fungi have very sincnlar properties: thus the c. hcBmatodes ha-: so 

 near a resemblance to tanned leather, though somewhat thiimer and softer, as to be named oak-leather 

 elub-t(rp, froin its being chiefly found in the clefts and hollows of oak-trees. In Ireland, it is employed as 

 leather to dress wounds witii ; and, in Virginia, to spread plasters upon. 



There are some cryptogamic plants, and especially among the mosses, that can be hardly made to burn 

 by ;iny means. Kuch is the fontinella antipyretica, so called on this very account ; and which is henco 

 in common use among the Scandin^ivians, as a lining for their chimney sides and the inside of their chim- 

 neys, by way of preservation. 8o that here we ha\ e an approach 'o mineral instead of to animal sub- 

 etances, and espcci^illy to he asbestos and other species of talcose earths. There is one species of byssus, 

 another curious genus of mosses, that t kes the specific name of asbestos from this very property. It is 

 found in the Swedish copper mini s of Westmann-land in large quantities, and when exposed to a red heat 

 Instead of lieing consumed, is vitrified. 



Traite d'AnHtomie et de Physiologie V(';g<;'tale, i. 19. 

 Eltmens de Phvf iologie, &c. cap. de la Digestion 



F2 



