308 
Scientific Intelligence. 
[no. 4, N'EW SERIES, 
Some writers have maintained that the green coloring fluid which 
circulates round the cells of plants under the name of Chlorophyll 
was peculiar to vegetable productions only, but it occurs likewise 
in green Planarice and in fresh water Polypes. With more reason 
the presence of starch has been thought to indicate a vegetable 
origin. But the test is not infallible. Others have supposed the 
power of continuing their race by voluntary division to be a distinc- 
tive function of the lower order of animals endowed with locomo- 
tion. But red snow and the yeast plant {Torula) aiQ propagated 
by spontaneous fission and in many of* the simple Algce the cells 
elongate and divide themselves to form new indivic^nals . 
Hence it appears that a line of demarcation ^between these two 
great divisions of created existence has still to be discovered. Xay 
some have asserted the existence of organised bodies in an animal 
state at one period of their lives and in a vegetable one afterwards. 
This view, first started by Bory de St. Vincent, has more recently 
been revived by Kiitzing who gives an elaborate description in his 
work on the Algge of an organism which he calls the Ulothrix Zo' 
nira, the young of what are propagated in the form of minute ani- 
malculae which he declares he has detected in the cells of the plant 
and which afterwards become vegetable threads or lines and give 
out a new series, of animal offspring I The views of the most re- 
cent writers on the particular example cited below appear how- 
ever to be still divided. In a recent work of that most distinguish- 
ed of living physiologists. Professor Owen,* the Vohoz glohator re- 
tains its place among the Polygastria at the lowest extremity of ani- 
mal life, whilst the following extract shows that, more careful ob- 
servations are considered to have established its place among the 
Algce in the vegetable kingdom. 
In a paper cently read before the Academy of Sciences in Pa ris, 
Professor Cohx states that his own observations on the VohocinecB 
have convinced him that the members of that family must be re- 
garded as *^belonging to the vegetable kingdom, and that the Vol- 
vox globalor in particular, is properly placed among the Algce. In 
this singular plant, as well as in Eudorina, Gonixtm. St^phanosph 
• Lectures on Animals without Yertebrse, 185-5. 
