10 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



particles of carbonic acid in the air around, to 

 suck such particles in by means of countless 

 lips, and to extract from them the carbon which 

 is the principal food and raw material of plant 

 life. Plants also drink, but, unlike ourselves, 

 they have quite different mouths to eat with and 

 to drink with. They take in their more solid 

 constituent, carbon, with their leaves from the 

 air ; but they take in their liquid constituent, 

 water, with their roots and rootlets from the soil 

 beneath them. " More solid," I say, because 

 the greater part of the wood and harder tissues 

 of plants is made up of carbon, in combination 

 with other less important materials ; though, 

 when the plants eat this carbon, it is not in the 

 solid form, but in the shape of a gas, carbonic 

 acid, as I shall more fully explain when we come 

 to consider this subject in detail, For the 

 present, it will be enough to remember that 

 Plants are living things, which eat and drink 

 exactly as we ourselves do. 



Plants also marry and rear families. They 

 have two distinct sexes, male and female 

 sometimes separated on different plants, but 

 more often united on the same stem, or even 

 combined in the same flower. For flowers are 

 the reproductive parts of plants ; they are there 

 for the purpose of producing the seeds, from 

 which new plants spring, and by means of which 

 each kind is perpetuated. The male portions of 

 plants of the higher types are known as stamens , 

 they shed a yellow powder which we call pollen, 

 and this powder has a fertilising influence on 

 the young seeds or ovules. The female portion 



