"The different mode of nutrition of animals results in a totally
different structural plan. Animal cells absorb material that is already
organised, and that they may do so their cells are either quite naked,
so affording an easy passage for solid particles, or they are clothed
only by a thin membrane, through which solutions of slightly diffusible
organic colloids may pass. Therefore, unlike plants, multicellular
animals display a compact structure with internal organs adapted to the
different conditions which result from the method of nutrition peculiar
to animals. A unicellular animal takes organic particles bodily into its
protoplasm, and forming around them temporary cavities known as food
vacuoles, treats them chemically. The multicellular animal has become
shaped so as to enclose a space within its body, into which solid
organic food-particles are carried and digested thereafter in a state of
solution, to be shared by the single cells lining the cavity. In this
way the animal body does not require so close a relation with the medium
surrounding it; its food, the first requirement of an organism, is
distributed to it from inside outwards. In its further complication the
animal organisation proceeds along the same lines. The system of
internal hollows becomes more complicated by the specialisation of
secreting surfaces, and by the formation of an alimentary canal, and of
a body-cavity separate from the alimentary canal. In plants it is the
external surface that is increased as much as possible. In animals, in
obedience to their different requirements, increase takes place in the
internal surface. The specialisation of plants displays itself in organs
externally visible--in leaves, twigs, flowers, and tendrils. The
specialisation of animals is concealed within the body, for the internal
surface is the starting-point for the formation of the organs and
tissues."
TABLE SHOWING THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PROTOZOA
=Grade I.= { RHIZOPODA, OR
{ GYMNOMYXA.
UNICELLULAR ANIMALS. =PROTOZOA= {
{ INFUSORIA, OR
{ CORTICATA.
CHAPTER V
THE COELENTERATA
Next after the animals that consist of one cell only we have to consider
the group of animals among which the lower kinds, at any rate, consist
of a number of cells arranged in two layers. The representative of this
group that the reader is most likely to meet with is the Sea-Anemone,
the Coral animal probably he will be content to know from pictures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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