ON ORGANIZED BODIES, &c. 



77 



So, on the other hand, in corals, sponges, and fuci, which form the 

 lowest natural orders among animals and vegetables, and the first of which 

 seems to constitute the link that connects the animal and vegetable with 

 the mineral world, for it has in different periods been ascribed to each, — 

 simple as is their structure, and obtuse as is the living principle that actu- 

 ates them, we have still sufficient marks of an organized make ; of an 

 origin by generation, the generation of buds or bulbs, of growth by nutri- 

 tion, and of termination by death. 



But the animal world differs fi-om the vegetable as widely as both these 

 differ from the mineral. How are we to distinguish the organization of 

 animals from that of plants ? — In what does their difference consist ? And 

 here I am obliged to confess, that the boundary is by no means so clearly 

 marked out ; and that we are for the most part compelled to characterize 

 the difference rather by description than by definition. Nothing, indeed, 

 is easier than to distinguish animals and vegetables in their more perfect 

 states : we can make no mistake between a horse and a horse-chesnut tree» 

 a butterfly and a blade of grass. We behold the plant confined to a par- 

 ticular spot, deriving the whole of its nutriment from such spot, and afford- 

 ing no mark either of consciousness or sensation ; we behold the animal, 

 on the contrary, capable of moving at pleasure from one place to another, 

 and exhibiting not only marks of consciousness and sensation, but often of 

 a very high degree of intelligence as well. Yet, if we hence lay down 

 consciousness or sensation, and locomotion, as the two characteristic 

 features of animal life, we shall soon find our definition untenable ; for 

 while the Linnean 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 are 

 strictly locomotive, and that discover a much nearer approach to a sensi- 

 tive faculty. 



However striking, therefore, the distinctions between animal and vege- 

 table 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, 30 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 extraordinary order of beings called zoophytes, or animated plants, 

 as the term imports, and which by Woodward and Beaumont were ar- 

 ranged as minerals,* and by Ray and Lister as vegetables, have at last ob- 

 tained an introduction into the animal kingdom,! less on account of any 

 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 unquestionable character. Ammonia, how- 

 ever, upon destructive distillation, is met with in small quantities in par- 

 ticular parts of most if not of all vegetables, though never perhaps in the 

 whole plant. Thus it occurs shghtly in the wood or vegetable fibre : in 



* Phil. Trans, xiii. 277. 



t Parkinson's Organic Remains, i. 23, ii. 157, 168. 



