No bacilli have appeared in their sputum for the past three months,
and their phthisical symptoms have gradually and completely
disappeared.
* * * * *
CAN WE SEPARATE ANIMALS FROM PLANTS?
By ANDREW WILSON.
One of the plainest points connected with the study of living things
is the power we apparently possess of separating animals from plants.
So self-evident appears this power that the popular notion scoffs at
the idea of science modestly disclaiming its ability to separate the
one group of living beings from the other. Is there any danger of
confusing a bird with the tree amid the foliage of which it builds its
nest, or of mistaking a cow for the grass it eats? These queries are,
of course, answerable in one way only. Unfortunately (for the
querists), however, they do not include or comprehend the whole
difficulty. They merely assert, what is perfectly true, that we are
able, without trouble, to mark off the higher animals from the higher
plants. What science inquires is, whether we are able to separate
_all_ animals from _all_ plants, and to fix a definite boundary line,
so as to say that all the organisms on the one side of the line are
assuredly animals, while all the others on the opposite side of the
line may be declared to be truly plants.
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