143 
same sort; but it is not easy to see how it can make 
things that are quite different from itself. 
Now, if this difficulty as to the building-up of plants 
and animals has come into your minds, you are only 
puzzled by what has puzzled hundreds of people before 
you; and all these hundreds of people have found the 
puzzle quite as impossible to solve as the king’s horses 
and the king’s men found it impossible to put Humpty 
Dumpty together again. 
A good many questions that we cannot answer come 
into our minds; but if we look honestly for the answers 
‘and do not find them, then we can be pretty sure that 
for the present it is safe to leave them unanswered. 
As cell is added to cell in the building-up of plant life, 
some wonderful power forces each new cell to do the 
special work which is most needed by the growing plant. 
Sometimes this new cell is needed to help do the 
work of a root, and so it begins to do this work, and be- 
comes part of the root; or else it is needed to do stem 
work, and goes to make up the stem, or leaf work, and 
is turned over into the leaf. 
A healthy cell is born with the power to do whatever 
is most needed. 
a 
HOW A PLANT’S FOOD IS COOKED ? 
"A 
OME time ago we learned that the little root hairs, 
by means of their acid, are able to make a sort 
of broth from the earthy materials which they could 
not swallow in a solid state. 
