the most gigantic and complicated trees down through a similar series
of gradations, until they arrive at specks of animated jelly, which
they are puzzled to distinguish from those specks which they reached by
the animal road.

Thus, biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental
uniformity of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and
that plants and animals differ from one another simply as diverse
modifications of the same great general plan.

Again, they tell us the same story in regard to the study of function.
They admit the large and important interval which, at the present time,
separates the manifestations of the mental faculties observable in the
higher forms of mankind, and even in the lower forms, such as we know
them, from those exhibited by other animals; but, at the same time,
they tell us that the foundations, or rudiments, of almost all the
faculties of man are to be met with in the lower animals; that there is
a unity of mental faculty as well as of bodily structure, and that,
here also, the difference is a difference of degree and not of kind. I
said "almost all," for a reason. Among the many distinctions which have
been drawn between the lower creatures and ourselves, there is one
which is hardly ever insisted on, [4] but which may be very fitly
spoken of in a place so largely devoted to Art as that in which we are
assembled. It is this, that while, among various kinds of animals, it
is possible to discover traces of all the other faculties of man,
especially the faculty of mimicry, yet that particular form of mimicry
which shows itself in the imitation of form, either by modelling or by
drawing, is not to be met with. As far as I know, there is no sculpture
or modelling, and decidedly no painting or drawing, of animal origin. I
mention the fact, in order that such comfort may be derived therefrom