308 



Scientific Intelligence* 



[NO. 4, NEW 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 

 it) 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) are propagated 

 by spontaneous fission and in many of the simple Algce the cells 

 elongate and divide themselves to form new individuals. 



Hence it appears that a line of demarcation between these two 

 great divisions of created existence has still to be discovered. Nay 

 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 dc St. Vincent, has more recently 

 been revived by Ki'itzing who gives an elaborate description in his 

 work on the Algce of an organism which he calls the Ulothrix Zo- 

 ?iara> the young of what are propagated in the form of minute ani- 

 malculce 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 ! 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/' 1 the Volvox ylobator re- 

 tains its place among the Polyyastria 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 Paris, 

 Professor Cohn states that his own observations on the Volvocinece 

 have convinced him that the members of that family must be re- 

 garded as belonging to the vegetable kingdom, and that the Vol- 

 vox ylobator in particular, is properly placed among the Algce. In 

 this singular plant, as well as in Eudorma, Gonium. Stephanospli 



* Lectures on Animals without Yertcbra;, 18o-5. 



