IOI 
or dissolve as we say, this sugarin water. Then there 
would be no difficulty in its slipping down the little 
throat; for you know when anything is thoroughly 
melted or dissolved, it breaks up into such tiny pieces 
that the eye cannot see them. When you melt a lump 
of sugar in a glass of water, the sugar is all there as 
much as it ever was, although its little grains no longer 
cling together in one big lump. 
And so when the plant needs some food that the little 
root hairs are not able to swallow, it does just what the 
-mother does. It melts or dissolves the solid food so 
that this is able to slip quite easily down the root 
throats. 
But how does it manage this? 
No wonder you ask. A root cannot fill a glass with 
water, as your mother did. Even if it could, much of 
this solid food which is needed by the plant would not 
melt in water, or in anything but certain acids; for you 
know that not everything will dissolve, like sugar, in 
water. 
If I place a copper cent in a glass of water, it will 
Remain <a copper cent, will 1 not? But if I goainto a 
drug shop and buy a certain acid, and place in this the 
copper cent, it will dissolve almost immediately; that 
is, it will break up into so many tiny pieces that you 
will no longer see anything that looks at all like a cent. 
And as much of this earth food, like the copper cent, 
can only be dissolved in certain acids, how is the plant 
to obtain them? Certainly it is not able to go to the 
drug shop for the purpose, any more than it was able 
to fill a glass with water. 
