96 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



ize and disappear, and then the hapless plant be- 

 gins to starve to death. 



For the office of chlorophyll in the vegetable 

 economy is digestion. By its action lifeless gases 

 and lifeless mineral-matter are changed into living 

 vegetable tissue. 



Green is essentially the color of life. Wherever 

 we see it in the living world we know that in- 

 organic substances are being changed into organic 

 substances, and thus life is preparing the material 

 which it will mould into many forms. 



The tissues built up by green plants feed herbiv- 

 orous animals, which in their turn feed carnivor- 

 ous animals, and so vegetable life mediates be- 

 tween the mineral and the animal worlds. 



Organisms which have no chlorophyll are entirely 

 dependent for their food upon organisms which 

 have chlorophyll. The living chain binding the 

 live creature to Mother Earth may have as many 

 links as there are in the chain of phases connect- 

 ing the "priest all shaven and shorn" with "the 

 house that Jack built." But always at the end of 

 the chain we find a green plant. 



In the teeming life of the ocean the same rule 



holds, for marine flesh-eaters feed upon marine 



t vegetarians, and these in their turn are fed by 



