MYSTERY OF PLANT LIFE EXPERIMENTS 



Maybe each plant cell is an electron and the sun- 

 beam playing with every leaf sends this silent force 

 down thru every cell of the tree and lifts the water 

 that the leaves daily give to the atmosphere.* 



Continue these experiments until a knowledge 

 of the cell and its structure has been acquired; also 

 of the rootlets until the microscopic mouths which 

 drink sustenance from the soil have been seen. 

 These collapse when they come in contact with the 

 air, then no power of the microscope can show them. 



They must be examined in water during the sea- 

 son of vigorous growth to be visible. They disap- 

 pear from the rootlets, as the leaves do from the 

 tree, when the annual season for growth has passed. 



*In early springtime, the sun throws the influence of its 

 heat rays around and into every cell and fibre of the tree. All 

 expand and this silent force reaches far out from the crown, 

 and deep into the earth until every pore on each, and every 

 rootlet has opened to admit the moisture held in the soil. The 

 expanded cells draw in a flood of water until the heat with- 

 in them is neutralized; then contraction is the result, and the 

 sap rises rapidly into the trunk and branches of the tree. Again 

 another quiver of the sun's arrows penetrates the cells, and 

 another flood rises to give life and verdure; when another simi- 

 lar contraction repeats the throb; like the diastole and systole 

 of the heart, which sends the life blood coursing thru our 

 arteries and veins; and this crimson tide is too propelled by 

 radiant energy. So, Nature's simple work in. the tree goes on. 

 The line between the cells of bark and alburnum opens by 

 osmotic force, and the new cambium forms, and repeats the 

 work of the previous year. The millions of little mouths upon 

 the rootlets grow to take in more readily a greater supply of 

 liquid; while buds upon the twigs expand and soon burst into 

 leaf and bloom. If the sun's rays transmitted thru vast masses 

 of ice give motion to a glacier, which grinds the hardest rock 

 into slime, soil, dust, is it not reasonable to suppose that this 

 same force ignoring the law of gravitation builds the giant 

 columns in our forests? 



[23] 



