General 



bewildering variety of horrible little creatures found in 

 decaying wood, or under the bark of fallen branches. 

 They break up the useless and dead wood and return it 

 to the soil in the form of rich and valuable manure. 

 The fungi and bacteria living in the soil and about the 

 roots are also most useful, for it is by their help that the 

 tree-roots obtain a rich and quick supply of nitrates and 

 other salts. 



So a wood is really an extremely puzzling and com- 

 plicated co-operative society, in which there are numbers 

 of quite distinct and different organisms, both animal 

 and vegetable, engaged in a common task, and so far 

 as we know entirely unthinking of anything except their 

 own individual advantages. 



Even in one single plant, say, for instance, a Wood 

 Anemone, which is a regular woodland flower, one finds 

 the same difficult questions so soon as one begins to 

 realise its manner of life. Its fleshy stem is wholly 

 below ground, and the plant is out of sight during most 

 of the year. This fleshy, scarred, underground stem is 

 full of starchy material, which means that many of its 

 cells are starch store-rooms. The roots attached to it 

 which explore the leaf mould are assisted by a curious 

 fungus (mycorhiza) which is of use to them. Such 

 fungi grow more rapidly than roots, and are probably 

 specialists and experts in the task of obtaining nitrate 

 and other salts. The cells of the root therefore are 

 devoted to supplying the fungus with sugar and the 

 stem with water and salts in solution. 



The three leaflets raised above the spring vegetation 

 by long stalks not only possess green cells which manu- 

 facture sugar from carbonic acid and water, but they 

 also contain special cells to toughen and strengthen 

 the leaf and others which convey the formed material 

 down to the stem. 



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