The cat before the fire and the geranium on the window sill, though apparently different, are really alike in all of the necessary processes of life. It is, therefore, possible and easy to study plants and animals together. Biology is not merely botany plus zoology, but a study of the life processes of all living things.
The points, in which all living or organic things are alike, are also the points in which they differ from inorganic things. A stone and a piece of iron are familiar examples of inorganic matter. We cannot imagine a stone taking food or growing, or a piece of iron moving or reproducing its kind. Our study of biology is thus sharply separated from inorganic things.
To be sure, plants can take inorganic matter and by certain wonderful processes make it into the living plant as we have mentioned. But it then ceases to be inorganic and becomes a part of the plant. Plant and animal are alike in all essential ways and they also differ in these ways from all inorganic substances.
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