THE LEAF 127 



of Cincinnati. I met him in the forest this time, and 

 he was busy actually counting leaves to prove his 

 formula. He was one of the few teachers who could 

 so enthuse his classes they would climb to the top- 

 most branch to count leaves if he thought it neces- 

 sary, or do anything else to obtain knowledge. His 

 untimely end was a great loss to the world. 



A tree of four or five hundred thousand leaves 

 would take up from the ground in a day of eight 

 hours of sunshine some 500 pails of water. That 

 means almost a pail a minute elevated to perhaps an 

 average of i oo feet, some effort if we had to perform 

 the labor. That amount of moisture is taken from the 

 ground by capillary attraction, forced, pumped, or 

 by osmotic pressure, however the action is expressed, 

 and it is not well understood, but that quantity is 

 lifted every day. It supplies needed moisture to the 

 ever-growing and dividing cells, up from the root 

 hairs that start it on its journey, through the roots, 

 the trunk, the branch and to the leaf, that wonderful 

 factory more wonderful than any of our most mod- 

 ern ones, because it furnishes at once its own power 

 and product. 



The moisture's first duty is to keep the factory 

 cool and moist, passing through the leaf and out of 

 the tiny stoma or mouths of the leaf, which may be 

 as numerous as 50,000 to the square inch of leaf sur- 



