Читать книгу Intelligence in Plants and Animals онлайн

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Descending the scale to the very bottom, we reach a class of animals, the Protozoa, which cannot be separated in many cases from the Protophyta by these distinctions, since many of the former have no digestive cavity, nor the slightest trace of a nervous system, while many of the latter possess the power of active locomotion. As to external configuration, no certain rules can be laid down for separating animals and plants, many of the lower plants, either in their earlier stages, or in their maturity, being exactly similar in form to some of the lower animals. This is the case with some of the Algæ, which resemble very closely in form certain Infusorian animalcules. Again, many undoubted animals, which are rooted to solid objects in their adult state, are so plant-like in appearance as to be popularly regarded as vegetables. The Sea-firs, and the more highly organized Flustras or Sea-mats, which are usually considered as sea-weeds by sea-side visitors, are a few of many examples that might be taken from the so-called Hydroid Zoöphytes. No decided distinction between animals and plants can be drawn as to their minute internal structure, both alike consisting of molecules, of cells, or of fibres. Some decided, though not universal, differences exist in chemical composition. Plants exhibit a decided predominance of ternary compounds, or compounds which, like sugar, starch and cellulose, are made up of the three elements, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but are, comparatively speaking, poorly supplied with quaternary compounds, or those which contain an additional element of nitrogen. Animals, on the contrary, are rich in quaternary nitrogenized compounds, such as albumen or fibrin. Still, in both kingdoms we find nitrogenized and non-nitrogenized compounds, and it is only in the proportion which these sustain to each other in the organism that animals differ in any way from plants.