22 THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE 



were coming out of the ground. And then the next 

 morning when you ran around to the garden to see 

 how those nasturtiums or peas or beans were getting 

 on, you saw that the curved green stem had straight- 

 ened itself and was standing upright with two tiny 

 leaves upon the top, didn't you? 



Sometimes the plants grow so fast that it seems as 

 if you could almost see them grow. The sun calls to 

 them so that they shoot up higher and higher, while 

 their roots go down deeper and deeper to hold the 

 plant firmly and to furnish it with food and water. 

 Up from the roots, through the stems to the leaves 

 the moisture goes, but how it can get up the long 

 tubes in the stems without falling back not even 

 learned men can tell us. 



Yet, even without the roots to send up the water, 

 the stem of a plant can draw it up. The flower in a 

 vase of water will often last many days because the 

 tiny tubes in the stems, if kept well open at the ends, 

 are able to drink up the water that the flowers need 

 to keep them fresh. 



No plant, except a water plant, will grow in water 

 as well as it will in the earth, for the roots take up 

 more than water. They suck up something that is 

 in the earth and which the water dissolves and carries 

 along with it. This mineral salt, as it is called, is 

 very important, for it is the plant's food and even a 

 plant must eat as well as drink. Up into the leaves 

 the food-laden water is forced, there to be made over 

 into a kind of starch which nourishes the plant and 

 makes it grow. 



Think how much like us those little plants are. 



