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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In "On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms," Thomas Henry Huxley navigates the complex interplay between the two realms of life, demonstrating his profound grasp of biological classification. This work employs a methodical and empirical approach characteristic of Victorian-era science, with Huxley elucidating the continuum of existence that challenges rigorous boundaries. Rich with observations from comparative anatomy, his writing invites both the scientific community and the curious layman into a world where the distinctions between flora and fauna blur, suggesting an intricate interdependence that prefigures modern evolutionary theory. As a prominent biologist and an advocate for Darwinian ideas, Huxley was deeply influenced by the conflicts between science and religion in his time, alongside his own dedication to natural history and education. His extensive studies in morphology and zoology, coupled with a passion for clear communication, provided the intellectual backdrop for this exploration. Huxley's role as a public intellectual added to his motivation to produce accessible works that would engage a wider audience in natural sciences. Readers seeking a richer understanding of the natural world and its inherent connections will find Huxley'Äôs work a valuable resource. This book not only enriches the reader's appreciation of biological diversity but also challenges us to reconsider the rigid categorizations that govern our understanding of life itself.
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On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms
Table of Contents
Versions ofOn the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms
Huxley, Thomas Henry
(1876), "On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms" in
Macmillan's Magazine
33
: 373-84.
"
On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms
" by
Thomas Henry Huxley
in
Popular Science Monthly
,
8
(April 1876)
"
On the Border Territory between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms
" by
Huxley, Thomas Henry
in
Littell's Living Age
,
128
(1657)
(1876)
Thomas Henry Huxley
(1888), "On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms in
Science and Culture, and Other Essays
.
Huxley, Thomas Henry
(1894), "On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms in
Discourses Biological and Geological
.
On the Border Territory Between the Animal and the Vegetable Kingdoms
Layout 4
THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
APRIL, 1876.
ON THE BORDER TERRITORY BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE VEGETABLE KINGDOMS.
IN the whole history of science there is nothing more remarkable than the rapidity of the growth of biological knowledge within the last half century, and the extent of the modification which has thereby been effected in some of the fundamental conceptions of the naturalist.
In the second edition of the "Règne Animal," published in 1828, Cuvier devotes a special section to the "Division of Organized Beings into Animals and Vegetables," in which the question is treated with that comprehensiveness of knowledge and clear critical judgment which characterize his writings, and justify us in regarding them as representative expressions of the most extensive, if not the profoundest, knowledge of his time. He tells us that living beings have been subdivided from the earliest time into animated beings, which possess sense and motion, and inanimated beings, which are devoid of these functions, and simply vegetate.
Although the roots of plants direct themselves toward moisture, and their leaves toward air and light; although the parts of some plants exhibit oscillating movements without any perceptible cause, and the leaves of others retract when touched, yet none of these movements justify the ascription to plants of perception or of will.
From the mobility of animals, Cuvier, with his characteristic partiality for teleological reasoning, deduces the necessity of the existence in them of an alimentary cavity or reservoir of food, whence their nutrition may be drawn by the vessels, which are a sort of internal roots; and in the presence of this alimentary cavity he naturally sees the primary and the most important distinction between animals and plants.
Following out his teleological argument, Cuvier remarks that the organization of this cavity and its appurtenances must needs vary-according to the nature of the aliment, and the operations which it has to undergo, before it can be converted into substances fitted for absorption; while the atmosphere and the earth supply plants with juices ready prepared, and which can be absorbed immediately.
As the animal body required to be independent of heat and of the atmosphere, there were no means by which the motion of its fluids could be produced by internal causes. Hence arose the second great distinctive character of animals, or the circulatory system, which is less important than the digestive, since it was unnecessary, and therefore is absent, in the more simple animals.
Animals further needed muscles for locomotion and nerves for sensibility. Hence, says Cuvier, it was necessary that the chemical composition of the animal body should be more complicated than that of the plant; and it is so, inasmuch as an additional substance, nitrogen, enters into it as an essential element, while in plants nitrogen is only accidentally joined with the three other fundamental constituents of organic beings—carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Indeed, he afterward affirms that nitrogen is peculiar to animals; and herein he places the third distinction between the animal and the plant.
The soil and the atmosphere supply plants with water, composed of hydrogen and oxygen; air, consisting of nitrogen and oxygen; and carbonic acid, containing carbon and oxygen. They retain the hydrogen and the carbon, exhale the superfluous oxygen, and absorb little or no nitrogen. The essential character of vegetable life is the exhalation of oxygen, which is effected through the agency of light.
Animals, on the contrary, derive their nourishment either directly or indirectly from plants. They get rid of the superfluous hydrogen and carbon, and accumulate nitrogen.
