CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



organic food must be further worked up into many, many 

 substances. All our seedlings must make more protoplasm, 

 more cell walls, more chlorophyll, and other colors, perhaps, 

 to paint the flowers with ; the castor-oil plant will make 

 one kind of oil, the peanut another, the corn and wheat 

 will make quantities of starch, each plant will manufacture 

 what gives it its peculiar taste or odor, and so on. Did 

 you ever think how many of the things that you eat and 

 wear and use in other ways every day, were originally made 

 by plants ? Surely you will admit that these little cell- 

 laboratories are very wonderful shops indeed. This making 

 over of the first organic food into other substances goes on 

 by night as well as by day ; often other cells finish what 

 was begun in the leaf cells. The finished products, too, 

 must be distributed to just the places that need them. 

 This is done by quite a different set of cells from those that 

 carried up raw material. So we see that in this little plant- 

 community of millions of cells, each one has its own part to 

 do, and not one is useless or idle. 



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