NUTRITION 13 
ready-made food and then digest it, but plants do not 
eat in the sense of chewing and swallowing their food, 
on the contrary, each green plant makes its own food 
in its own body and subsequently digests the products 
of its own work. I purposely said that each green 
plant makes its own food, because there are a few 
flowering plants in our own country, and many more 
elsewhere, that are not green, and they feed in a 
different way ; but the student will learn about them 
and the insectivorous plants as his Nature-study 
progresses, and we must not allow them to lead us 
away from the main point now. 
To return to the ordinary green plant, its food 
is formed inside its body by the co-operation of its 
root and leaves, the atmosphere and the sunlight. 
The root absorbs some of the ingredients dissolved 
in the soil water, and the leaves admit others from 
the atmosphere through the same pores that act as 
breathing holes. 
The water taken up by the roots is conveyed to 
the leaves through pipes which run throughout the 
length of the plant, and it is inside the leaves that the 
two sets of ingredients meet and are forged into food 
with the help of sunlight. 
We can see some of the actors in this process with 
the help of a lens and a little perseverance. If we dig 
up a plant and look at its roots we probably shall not 
see the organs that absorb the water, for they are 
so fine and delicate that they are almost certain to be 
broken off and left behind, and even if they are not 
they will probably be hidden by small particles of 
soil. . 
We can observe them best by taking a seed of 
mustard or cress, for example, and letting it germinate 
