CHARTER 
HOW PLANTS LIVE AND GROW 
WE have seen something of plant arrangements when the 
machinery is, so to speak, standing still, and we ought to 
be able to understand better the actual processes by which 
they live. Now with plants, as with animals, and perhaps 
even with human beings, the question that first arises is, 
“How can I get something to eat?” The nourishment 
that they want is not found in the proper shape either in 
the earth or the air, and there are two ways out of the 
difficulty. They must either make the proper food or 
live on something that has made it already. Now 
animals and men feed either on plants or on animals 
that have fed on plants before, and their example is fol- 
lowed by a large group of plants, namely, the funguses, 
of which we shall have more to say later, and a few 
“parasitic ” flowering plants. 
Most plants, however, make their own food, and we 
shall see the method best in a large plant, though the 
principle is the same throughout. If we take an oak 
tree, we find that it has two sources of nourishment, the 
leaves and the roots. 
By means of the first it takes in carbonic acid gas, 
which, as you probably know, is always present in fair 
quantity in the air. It also takes in by the leaves oxygen 
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