With respect to the position which the vegetable kingdom occupies in creation, there can be no doubt that it is subordinate to the animal kingdom, and takes a place between it and the mineral world, inasmuch as it prepares food from the one kingdom and transfers it to the higher. It has been supposed that the vegetable and animal kingdoms aid and support each other equally and mutually; this is true with respect to respiration, but not as regards nutrition, for although in the decomposition of animal matters, food is given off for the vegetable, yet they are quite independent of this source of nourishment. A forest of trees would be quite as well nourished if there were no animals, but on the other hand the animal kingdom would shortly cease to exist if there were no vegetables. It was formerly supposed that the lowest grades of the animal kingdom were higher than the highest of the vegetable kingdom; this is not strictly true, the best way of viewing the connection between the two kingdoms is to approximate the lowest of each, when it will be found that our most acute physiologists are only just beginning to determine their distinctive characters. Dr. Carpenter says:--"In the present state of science it would be very difficult, and is perhaps impossible, to lay down any definite line of demarcation between the two kingdoms, since there is no single character by which the animal or vegetable nature of any organism can be tested. "Probably the one which is most generally applicable, among those lowest organisms which most closely approximate to one another, is not, as formerly supposed, the presence or absence of spontaneous motion, but the dependence of the being for nourishment upon organic compounds already formed, which it takes (in some way or other) into the interior of its body, or its possession of the power of obtaining its own alimentary matter by absorption from the inorganic elements on its exterior. The former is the characteristic of the animal kingdom as a whole, the latter is the attribute of the vegetable."