CHAPTER II 



THE LIKENESS OF ALL LIVING THINGS 



Vocabulary 



Similarity, likeness. 



Assimilation, " to be made the same," that is, the process by 

 which food stuff is made into tissue. 



Nutrition, all the processes by which food is prepared and assimi- 

 lated in the body. 



Excretion, the passing off of waste matter from plant or animal. 



Biology, then, is the study of organic, or living things, and 

 living things include both plants and animals. At first one would 

 say that plants and animals have very little similarity and that it 

 would be difficult to study them together, but let us see if this 

 is true. 



Nutrition. First, both plants and animals are alive and grow 

 in size and that means that they both need food. A cat, for instance, 

 has to eat, and a geranium has to have earth, in order to live. The 

 cat uses organic food and the plant inorganic. The cat obtains 

 its food by means of its claws and teeth, while the food-getting 

 of the plant is done largely by the roots. They are both dependent 

 on food. 



After they get their food, both plants and animals have to put 

 it into liquid form in their bodies. We call that process digestion. 

 Then the digested food undergoes a change by which the milk or 

 meat actually becomes part of the cat, while the plant foods be- 

 come part of the geranium. This is a very wonderful process and 

 is called assimilation. (Look up this word in the dictionary and 

 see if you can tell why it is used in this way.) 



Food-getting, digestion, and assimilation together make up the 

 process of nutrition (getting nourishment). The animal and the 

 plant have this process in common. 



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