102 oELEMEIJTAEY AGEICULTUKE 



^nd do a little thmkixig will discover many inter- 

 estiilg iand v/onderful secrets about their different 

 habits. 



How Man Helps. Man has chosen certain plants 

 that furnish food for him and his flocks, and these 

 he tries to help to good homes where they will grow 

 and bring forth their harvest of grain or fruit. He 

 spreads and sows these plants in several different 

 ways. He sows the seed of the common grains or 

 cereals, and covers them with earth. Sweet potatoes 

 are grown from slips or plants; Irish potatoes, from 

 the *^ eyes'' of the potato; grapevines from cuttings 

 or twigs clipped from the vine. Sugar cane is grown 

 by planting a short piece of the stalk. Many plants 

 do not come true from seed, and man has learned 

 to grow them by grafting or budding. A bud or 

 graft twig is taken from one plant and so carefully 

 put upon another that it will grow as part of the 

 plant. And the strange thing about it is that it will 

 produce its own kind of fruit and not the kind of 

 the plant on which it is grafted. There is no end to 

 the wonderful things man is learning to do with 

 plants. 



QUESTIONS 



(1) What are some of the parts of a plant? (2) How 

 do root hairs differ from true roots? (3) How do root 

 hairs take in the plant food? (4) Can you now tell why 

 a transplanted plant often wilts or dies? (5) How does 

 the food pass from the roots to the leaves? (6) Why 

 does it need to go to the leaves at all? (7) Why do 

 plants have seeds? 



