absorb water and mineral substances, the leaves take in and decompose carbonic acid. The excretion of plants is chiefly by the roots, but also by the leaves, glands, bark. To perform the nutritive functions of their life, plants absorb, breathe, assimilate, perspire, excrete; they sleep by night, awake by day; and are of different sexes as longing for their kindred and yearning for their own. "In imagination, peer into the ultimate particles of the living, active, moving matter, and consider what we should probably discover. Were it possible to see things so very small, I think we should discover spherules of extreme minuteness, each being composed of still smaller spherules, and these spherules infinitely minute. Such spherules would have upon their surface a small quantity of matter differing in properties from that in the interior, but so soft and different that the particles might come into very close proximity. In each little spherule the matter would be in active movement, and new minute spherules would be springing into being in its central part. Those spherules already formed would be making their way outwards, so as to give place to new ones which continually rise in the centre of every one of those animated particles. . . . The change which occurs in the living centre is probably sudden and abrupt. The life flashes, as it were, into the inanimate particles, and they live." This is a scientific conception of the manner in which the work was done when God said"Let the earth bring forth grass." The half has not been told of the beautiful and true. It is a very nice question whether we can trace any difference between the ultimate plant and the ultimate animal. Corals, long taken for vegetables, are, after all, animals. Certain minute fresh-water animals may be cut to pieces and multiplied exactly as plants are multiplied by cuttings. Cuvier, in the first volume of his great work, Règne Animal," says, an animal has power of locomotion, an internal reservoir in which to carry its food, a digestive cavity, and an alimentary canal. He further states that an animal must possess muscles, nerves, and all that apparatus by which locomotion is brought about; must have a more complicated structure than a plant-for while a plant is composed of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, an animal possesses ' Dr. Beale's "Protoplasm," 3rd ed. p. 277. Vegetable and Animal Life. 179 also nitrogen. He claimed, as an essential feature in animals, that they take in oxygen, and give out carbonic acid; while plants take in carbonic acid, and give out oxygen. As a matter of fact, few of these diagnostics stood the test of further inquiry. Innumerable lower organisms feed as animals, but have no permanent digestive cavity. They are soft masses which take in food at any point of their circumference, and get rid of it in the same way. As to an animal being of a more complicated structure, we find, by means of the high-powered microscope, that animal and plant start from one common point; all the diverse tissues issuing from a transparent, structureless, colourless, semi-fluid liquid; the cell of a plant being developed in the same way as a scale of the epidermis in man. The starting-point, both in plant and man, is in living matter, which increases in size, divides and subdivides. As to chemical composition, recent investigations show that all living matter contains nitrogen. As to the statement that animals take in oxygen, and give out carbonic acid; while plants take in carbonic acid, and give out oxygen; when the sun ceases to shine, the plant exhales carbonic acid just the same as an animal; and colourless plants and fungi exist like animals-taking in oxygen, and giving off carbonic acid. The mobility of some plants is also well established. Multitudes of plants are all their life in active motion, and no clear line can be drawn between the contractility of plants and animals. Considering the insectivorous plants, it is almost impossible to distinguish, by any visible character, a difference in the reflex action in plants and that in animals; no one can say whether plants have or have not a nervous system, except by not distinguishing nerve in the plant. It is true, however, a plant is able to make its bodily substance out of inorganic chemical substances; which an animal cannot do. A bean will grow in a nitrate of ammonia and saline solution, and the resulting substance of the bean contains matters of which there is no trace in the solution. An animal can only break down and appropriate the protein compounds furnished by other animals or plants. "He is the aristocrat, and the plant is the ideal prolétaire of the living world." Bacteria, generated in vegetable and animal infusions by means of germs which float in the air, are vegetable; but that other busy little body generated in the same infusion, which Professor Huxley calls "Heteromita lens," may be animal; there is a border territory between the two kingdoms, a sort of neutral land, the inhabitants of which cannot be separated with any certainty, nor brought to their proper allegiance in either kingdom. We cannot as yet say— "Here the line between the animal and the plant must be drawn." Before an object is fully known it hides in mystery. To improve and extend is our privilege, but we know neither the beginning nor end. Tournefort's system of vegetation contains twenty-two classes; that of Linnæus, twenty-four; the natural method by Jussieu, the basis of a complete scientific tabulation, comprises fifteen classes, one hundred natural orders, and about one thousand seven hundred and forty genera. The sequence of orders now generally adopted is that proposed by De Candole.1 The result of all the various schemes establishes two primary divisions of all plants :a. Phænogams, or Flowering Plants. b. Cryptogams, or Flowerless Plants. 1. Dicotyledons-plants with two seed lobes; b. The Cryptogams subdivide into 3. Acrogens-vascular plants for the most part; "Beyond this, except in the case of Cryptogams, it is difficult to establish any subdivisions higher than that of Orders; and of the Phænogamous Orders themselves, it is astonishing how few are absolutely limited." 2 99.66 To assert that Moses has given, in his brief account of the formation of plants, a prophecy of scientific classification Iwould be unwarrantable: but it is remarkable that his Grass," "Herb," Plant," ‚” “Tree” (Gen. i. 11, 12), should be that number of which scientific men say66 It is difficult to establish any subdivisions higher than that of Orders." "In the popular mind, plants are still classed under the heads of trees, shrubs, and herbs; and this serial classing, according to the simple attribute of magnitude, swayed the earliest 1 "Descriptive and Analytical Botany,” p. 165: arranged by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 2 Ibid. p. 991. The Sacred Account Comprehensive. 181 observers." 1 The indefiniteness of ancient sacred description, wanting even the rudiments of scientific form, may fairly and safely be taken as a commendation : for as to Phænogams, the first and chiefest of the Botanical kingdom, a large proportion either are connected with one or more others by a series of interminable genera, or contain genera which present so many of the characters of other orders, that it is altogether uncertain in which of them they shall be placed." The spirit of the Divine narrative, the popular compendium -grass, herb, plant, tree-men generally look upon as including all vegetation. Had Moses endeavoured to give some results of evolution, he could not better have described them than "by seizing the successive salient points in a continuous history of myriads of years-projecting them on the mind like a succession of dissolving views, which gather into distinctness or fade away into nothingness, like the dawning and the parting of the day." Some of the greatest successes the world has seen were once startling improbabilities. 3 No hard and fast lines can be drawn. Of the two hundred and seventy-eight of the Phænogamous, or flowering orders, described by Dr. Hooker, "Descriptive and Analytical Botany," excluding those containing only one or two genera, it is astonishing how few are absolutely limited. With flowerless plants, or Cryptogams, the case is different; but even these can only be strictly limited, if it be limitation, by making them very comprehensive. The same fact extends. through all natural history. There are whole classes of organisms to which it is impossible, even with the widest reservations, to apply the old idea of species, with its immutability of essential characteristics. Botanical and other systems are but superficial, they rest upon forms which are in an extreme grade of mutability, and it is not a little wonderful that Scripture should give a general formula which substantially contains the present scientific classification— "Let the earth bring forth." 1 66 2 66 Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 295: Herbert Spencer. Descriptive and Analytical Botany:" arranged by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 3 Rev. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., "University Sermon:" Cambridge, April 29, 1877. "The Doctrine of Descent:" Prof. Oscar Schmidt, It may be said of the creative narrative-Only those vegetable productions are meant which are useful to man; and that trees and plants of this character were of later appearance on the earth, and only just preceded man. The reply is denial. The families of vegetables and animals were probably introduced according to the order in which naturalists have of late classed the flora and fauna. The general and comprehensive summary of ScriptureGrass, herb, tree, fruit tree, even now, popularly and scientifically sum all vegetable life. Vegetation grew from simple to complex forms. The earliest plants known in the fossil condition are fucoids; and they were probably true seaweeds, or algæ. In fossil shells of the Silurian age, traces of the presence of microscopic fungi, such as Achlya penetrans (Duncan), have been found. Some of the higher Cryptogams, closely allied in their construction to those now existing, have been got out in fossil condition from the Devonian and Carboniferous strata, associated with Calamites and Lepidodendron. The earliest plants were marine. Then came land forms of simple and more complex construction, but still belonging to the lower orders. Conifers, or Gymnospermous Exogens, were with these and other plants in the Carboniferous age; there was structural variety in those remote days. Flowerless plants, with fronds, were succeeded by those possessing stems and leaves. The early plants could contribute little, if at all, to the support of high animal life; nevertheless, grass and herb are of ancient origin, their early existence may certainly be inferred from the presence of various insects in the Lias and Tertiaries. Dicotyledons, of Angiospermous kinds, abounded in the Cretaceous strata of America and Europe. Probably, preceding all these, a microscopic vegetation existed. It is a beauty, and not a defect, that the simple formula of words given in the Bible contains and describes the lowest and highest products, the earliest and latest vegetable life. Who will say that the modern scientific classification— Phænogams, or Flowering Plants, Cryptogams, or Flowerless Plants, (1. Plants with one seed lobe. is simpler, more comprehensive, intelligible, and beautiful for ordinary people, than the ancient words, roughly translated, |