Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/115

Rh that Monera in past time divided into animal and vegetal Monera, and endeavored to show how the animal kingdom may have descended from animal Monera. Although the precise time and exact manner in which the vegetal kingdom appeared may never, perhaps, from the nature of the case, be demonstrated, still, Prof. Haeckel's view of vegetal Monera having been the remote ancestors of the vegetal kingdom has so much in its favor that it may be accepted as a near approximation to the truth. Following, then, Prof. Haeckel, the vegetal Monera must be regarded as the ancestors of the Protophyta, or primitive plants, those most simple, unicellular Algae, like the Chlorococcus, etc., while the Green, Brown, and Red Algae represent the three diverging branches of a stem whose roots originate in the Protophyta.

Mushrooms, puff-balls, smuts, mildews, truffles, moulds, although offering in minor points variety of structure, still agree in so many important respects, and differ so essentially from all other plants, that they are always associated by naturalists, and are regarded as forming the very natural group of Fungi. One of the most general laws of Biology is that while animals derive their nutriment solely from the organic world, plants, on the contrary, are nourished by inorganic matter; in other words, while plants by their life-processes change inorganic into organic matter, animals by their life-processes reconvert organic into inorganic matter. Fungi, in feeding solely on organic matter, agree with animals, and differ from all other plants. Amylum, or starch-flour, is one of the most constant products of the vegetal kingdom, yet no trace of this important principle is found among the Fungi. The green color so characteristic of plants, due to the presence of