First lines of physiology, being an introduction to the science of life; written in popular language . The result of the contest forms a curious excep-tion to the truth of the old adage, that „. *^the weakest goes to the wall; for it so ^^ happens that the smaller hydra, whilein the stomach of the larger one, lei-surely devours and digests the wholeof the prey, but being himself ratherindigestible, he is ultimately ejected,the happier for having lost the 7. represents a contest of this kind. ^ ^^ 78. You have now obtained a tolerably clear idea ofthe difference between organized be
First lines of physiology, being an introduction to the science of life; written in popular language . The result of the contest forms a curious excep-tion to the truth of the old adage, that „. *^the weakest goes to the wall; for it so ^^ happens that the smaller hydra, whilein the stomach of the larger one, lei-surely devours and digests the wholeof the prey, but being himself ratherindigestible, he is ultimately ejected,the happier for having lost the 7. represents a contest of this kind. ^ ^^ 78. You have now obtained a tolerably clear idea ofthe difference between organized beings and inorganicmatter; and you have also a clear conception of thesimplest organization which is consistent with animallife. In the order usually observed by writers on phy-siology, I should now proceed to point out the distinc-tions between animals and vegetables. But if we beginwith the beginning of these two scales of living things,as we should do when teaching the first principles ofthe science, the establishment of a clear distinction isby no means an easy undertaking. The simplest forms. ORGANIZATION OF SIMPLE ANIMALS. 55 of vegetable and animal life resemble each other so verynearly, that no perfectly satisfactory definition of thedifference has ever been given; and even between aforest tree and the bird that builds in its branches orthe squirrel that subsists upon its nuts, there are morepoints of resemblance, so far as the vital functions areconcerned, than you would be able to comprehend, wereI to attempt to explain them at present. For my ownpart, being unable to discover any positively certaindistinction between the two great kingdoms of animatednature in the peculiarities of their organization, I havearrived at the conclusion that consciousness and will —faculties that appear to be exclusively possessed by ani-mals— form the only marks which can, in every case,distinguish them from vegetables, and these being func-tions of the mind, are beyond the reach of
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