Another difference between vegetables and animals, less important, indeed, but still in teresting, lies in the number of the organs pos sessed by each destined for the continuation of the species. In many vegetables the organs are single, one flower being taken as a repre sentative of the sexes ; in a much larger pro portion of plants, however, the organs are mul titudinous. Among animals, on the contrary, with a few exceptions in the very lowest tribes, the asterias, &c. where they are multidinous, the essential male and female organs, the testes and ovaria, exist singly or in pairs only.
A third diversity, and one that is striking and almost universal, between those species of plants and animals in which the sexes are represented by two individuals, lies in the difference of conformation, size, and general character of the individuals in the one class, and their perfect similarity in the other. There are very few dicecious plants the males of which are distinguishable from the females ; there are very few tribes of animals, on the contrary, in which the distinction of sex is not extremely apparent, the males being generally larger, stronger, and more courageous ; the females smaller, more delicately formed, and more timid in their disposition A fourth distinction which deserves to be noted betwixt animals and vegetables is in the diversity of the act by which the new being is separated from the parent, and commences its independent existence. The period at which
this happens, indeed, is determinate, and fixed in both alike, but it is accompanied with con sciousness among animals, whilst it is alto together unwittingly accomplished among ve getables.
From this review of the mode in which animals and vegetables are called into being, or of the acts which lead to their creation, the main and most striking differences observable in the two classes are these : whilst in vegeta bles the whole of the acts that constitute re production,—the union of the sexes, the fe cundation of the ovum, and the birth of the new being are accomplished without the will and without the consciousness of the indi vidual, but irresistibly and necessarily, they are left in some particulars, at least, to the will, and take place with the consciousness of the individuals among animals.