While the large majority of living beings are organized, or composed of
different parts, called organs, which sustain certain relations with
one another, and which discharge different offices, yet it must not
therefore be concluded that organization is a necessary accompaniment
of vitality, or that all living creatures are organized. Innumerous low
forms of life, so low that they occupy the very lowest place in the
scale of animated existences, absolutely exhibit no visible structure,
and cannot, therefore, be said to be organized, but they, nevertheless,
discharge all their vital functions just as well as though they
possessed special organs for the purpose. Concluding our theme, we
are forced to admit that animals are organized, or possess structure,
because they are alive, and not that they live because they are
organized. By carefully comparing the morphological and physiological
differences between different animals and plants, naturalists have
divided the entire animal and vegetable kingdoms into a number of
divisions, whose leading characteristics may be found in almost every
text-book. All that we promised ourselves when this work was first
thought of was a brief treatment of a few of the most interesting
life-forms of this planet of ours in the light of their ways and
doings, and the direction of human thought to those traits of character
and manifestations of conscious intelligence which fit them to become
partakers with man of that new life which awaits him beyond the grave.
PLANTS THAT FEED ON INSECTS.
Perhaps it would be difficult to find in the whole range of vegetable
creation anything more curious than the carnivorous or flesh-eating
plants. That animals eat plants creates in us no emotion of curiosity,
for this is the common law of nature. But that plants should devour
animals is a marvel to which few minds uninitiated in science would
give credence. Though these strange forms of vegetable life have been
known for about a century, yet it has been but a few years since the
attention of naturalists was first specially called to their habits
and character. No one has probably done more to explain the life and
operations of the flesh-eating plants than Mr. Darwin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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