78 



ON ORGANIZED BODIES, 



extract, gum-mucilage, camphor, resin, and balsam ; gum-resin, gluten, 

 and caoutchouc : besides those substances that are common to both ani- 

 mals and vegetables, as sugar, fixed oil, albumen, fibrine, and gelatine. 

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

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

 of animal substance. The clavarias or club-tops, and many other fun- 

 guses, do this. But a distinction in the degree of odour may even here 

 be observed, if accurately attended to. Yet the clavarias vi^ere once re- 

 garded as zoophytes, and are arranged by Millar in the same division as 

 the corals and coraMines.* 



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

 Physiology of Plants," has endeavoured to lay down a distinction between 

 the animal and the vegetable world in the followmg terms, and it is a dis- 

 tinction 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 animals, 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 hfe alone to 

 transform dead matter into organized hving bodies."! Whence another 

 learned French physiologist, M. Richerand, has observed that the ahments 

 by which animals are nourished are selected from vegetable or animal 

 substances alone ; the elements of the mineral kingdom being too hetero- 

 geneous to the nature of animals to be converted into their own substance 

 without being first elaborated by vegetable life ; whence plants, says M. 

 Richerand, may be considered as the laboratory in which nature prepares 

 aliments for animals.| 



I concur with these elegant writers in admitting the beautiful and har- 

 monious relation so obviously established between minerals, plants, and 

 animals ; but it is at the same time impossible to allow of the distinction 

 betvSveen vegetable and animal life here laid down ; because, first, vegeta- 

 bles are by no means nourished exclusively, as indeed M. Mirbil himself 

 frankly allows, from terrene elements: and secondly, because animals are 

 as little nourished exclusively from vegetable materials. Among insects, 

 worms, and even fishes, there are many tribes that derive by far the greater 

 portion of their increase from the mineral kingdom alone ; while even in 

 man himself, air, water, common salt, and lime, which last is almost 

 always an ingredient of common salt, are substances indispensable to his 

 growth, and are derived immediately from the mineral kingdom. 



In laying down, therefore, a distinctive character for animals and plants, 

 we are compelled to derive it from the more perfect of each kind : and to 



* Several species of this genus of fungi have very singular properties : thus, the c. heBtna- 

 todes has so near a resemblance to tanned leather, though sonaewhat thinner and softer, as 

 to be named oak- leather club-top, from its being chiefly found in the clefts and hollows of 

 oak-trees. In Ireland, it is employed as leather to dress wounds with ; 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 anj means. Such is the fontinella antipyreticay so called on this very ac- 

 count ; and which is hence in common use among the Scandinavians, as a lining for their 

 chimney-sides, and the inside of their chimneys, by way of preservation. So that here we 

 have an approach to mineral instead of to animal substances, and especially to the asbestos 

 and other species of talcose earths. There is one species of byssus, another curious genus of 

 mosses, that takes the specific name of asbestos, from this very property. It is found in the 

 Swedish copper mines of Westmann-land in large quantities ; aiw when exposed to a ret? 

 heat, instead of being consumed, is vitrified. 



t Traite d'Anatomie et de Physiologie vegetale. i. 19. 



1 Eleiwens de Phyaiologie, &a cap tfe la Digestiqm , 



