HOW PLANTS GROW. 593 



thing, taking food, digesting it, and making growth. It is des- 

 titute of the power of moving about like animals, and in many 

 ways a fully developed plant is very unlike a fully developed 

 animal. But this vegetable life is the means by which animals 

 are enabled to get food from the soil, for the plants can use 

 matters in the soil and air to live and grow upon, which animals 

 cannot get until the plants have made them into a shape they 

 can eat. We see, then, that, without this plant life, there could 

 be no animal life upon the earth. 



It is very important, then, to understand just how plants get 

 their food, what they eat, how they digest their food, and how 

 they build up their structure, and mature the crops we use for 

 food. 



Where Plants get Food. We all know our common Indian 

 corn, and what a great lot of food for man and beast it furnishes. 

 Take a large plant of corn, fully mature ; chop it up into a 

 compact shape and weigh it. Then put it into an oven and get 

 it thoroughly dry, as a chemist would in his drying-oven. When 

 completely dry, weigh it again, and we find how much water it 

 contained, and you will be surprised to find how much water 

 this ripe corn had in it, though it will be hard for you to drive it 

 all out, as a chemist would. Now take the dried corn plant and 

 burn it slowly, so that no part of the ashes can be blown away. 

 Then gather the ashes and put them into a crucible, and heat it 

 until all the black particles are consumed, and nothing remains 

 but white ashes. We will then find that these white ashes 

 weigh very little, when compared with the weight of the good 

 stalk and its heavy ear that we began with. 



What has gone with all the rest, now that we have but a hand- 

 ful of ashes ? The fire has destroyed it, you say. No, we can- 

 not destroy anything. The burning only changed the form of 

 the plant. The things which made up the greater part of the 

 corn still exist, but they have gone back where the plant got 

 them from, into the air. The little pile of ashes we hold in our 

 hand, and which did not burn, is all that the plant got from the 

 soil ; the rest, and much the larger part, came from the air, in 

 the shape of a gas, and has now gone back to the air. We see, 

 then, that about nine-tenths of all our plants come from the air. 

 All the food which plants get from the soil is left in the ashes, 



