218 
ANIMALS AND VEGETABLES. 
great naturalist, whereby to distinguish an 
animal from any oilier organized substance. 
Hut, alas ! we shall soon find, as we contem- 
plate the humblest forms that are now admit- 
ted into the animal creation, an entire absence 
of this character ; as far, at least, as we have 
the means of judging. How are we to prove, 
for instance, that sponge?, while in their living 
state, possess sensation ? You may tear them, 
cut them, bore them with a red-hot iron, 
attack them with chemical stimuli of any 
kind ; yet, lacerate and torture them as you 
will, they will never shrink under the inquisi- 
tion, or confess, by the slightest tremor, that 
they are possessed of feeling, or capable of 
sensation. On the other side, look at the 
vegetable kingdom. See we not that many 
plants appear to feel the solar influence, 
turning their flowers to the beam of the sun, 
or directing the fibrils of their roots in search 
of nourishment ? Does not the sensitive 
plant shrink at the slightest contact ? If we 
are to judge of the possession of the power of 
feeling from the movements caused by exter- 
nal impressions, there are members of the 
vegetable world that have far more claim to 
the title of animals than many of the humbler 
creatures now unhesitatingly classed by the 
Zoologist as belonging to his department of 
the creation." In this way does our author 
reason ; while half the theories of his pre- 
decessors are tumbled about like so many 
skittles, though they are not quite so easily set 
tip again. For instance, the foregoing dis- 
tinctions between stones, vegetables, and 
animals, -has been broached with as much 
confidence by some modern philosophers as if 
all that Linnaeus ever wrote was truth. Yet 
Mr. Jones overturns it in a few sentences. 
Again, he says : — 
" To possess the faculty of moving from 
place to place has been said by some authors 
to be the peculiar attribute of an animal. The 
plant, say they, is rooted and fixed ; the 
animal is endowed with locomotion, and able 
to rove about in search of food. But even this 
distinction, we shall hereafter see, fails in very 
numerous instances. In the animal series 
there are living beings that are immovably 
attached to some external object during the 
whole period of their existence, and seem to be 
as devoid of locomotive power as any vege- 
tables. Again, on the contrary, there are 
plants that evince this faculty, and are, to a 
certain extent, capable of changing their 
situation ; consequently, this second charac- 
teristic is as insufficient as the former. 
" Perhaps the best definition of an animal 
that has yet been offered is, that animals are 
possessed of an internal receptacle for food, 
wherein they collect the nutriment destined for 
their support', in other words, that animals 
are. provided with a stomach, while plants are 
oidy permeated by tubes, through which the 
nutritive juices flow equally to every part. 
But, unfortunately, in the very first class of 
animals that awaits our notice, the Sponges, 
there is no internal reservoir of aliment what- 
ever, nor anything that can be compared to a 
stomachal cavity ; so that our attempts at 
discrimination are once more baffled. 
" Chemistry has been appealed to, in order 
to solve this important question. We are told 
that animal substances contain an abundance 
of Azote, or Nitrogen, in their composition, 
while vegetables do not furnish that element : 
— that the existence of the azote in question 
causes animal matter to emit a smell like 
burned horn when fire is applied, a circum- 
stance that is said to be sufficient to identify 
it. This, to say the best of it, is but a clumsy 
distinction, and, moreover, is open to fatal 
objections ; for there are vegetables that 
contain azote, and that, perhaps, as abundantly 
as many animals. In the midst of these diffi- 
culties, modern science has had recourse to an 
entire new line of investigation, which, doubt- 
less, will ultimately yield important results 
connected with so intricate an inquiry. This 
is based upon the different appearances pre- 
sented by the tissues or component structures 
of animals and vegetables respectively when 
they are accurately examined under high 
magnifying powers ; and, as an instance of 
the success that may be anticipated to result 
from this line of research, as well as of the 
near approximation between the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms, even in outward appear- 
ance, one example will be sufficient for our 
present purpose. The Corallines are, for the 
most part, decidedly animals, and many of 
them, as we shall hereafter see, animals of very 
complex organization ; but several of these, e.g. 
CoraUina opuntia and C. officinalis, which, 
from their almost exact resemblance to Zoo- 
phytes, were supposed to have the same struc- 
ture, and were unhesitatingly admitted by 
Cuvier into the animal series, have been 
found, by examining them with a microscope, 
after the hard calcareous matter is dissolved out 
of them, to belong to the vegetable world ; 
inasmuch as they are composed of vegetable 
cellular tissue, which, having a peculiar 
arrangement, is readily distinguishable. Thus, 
therefore, when we are better acquainted with 
the microscopic appearances of the different 
tissues that enter into the composition of 
organized substances, important facts, calcu- 
lated to throw light upon the subject we are 
now discussing, may reasonably be expected. 
" But we must advance a step further yet, 
before Ave have fully laid before the reader the 
difficulties that attend this piece of investiga- 
tion. It has recently been stated, and appa- 
