GARDEN PROMISES 



work underground are not in green but are in white, 

 but should they go above the surface they would change 

 colour owing to contact with the light, and this is due 

 to the presence of a matter called chlorophyll in the 

 cells which gives plants their green colour. 



The underground workers are hard at it always, 

 getting water from the ground, and in this water are 

 gases and minerals dissolved. The workmen send 

 this up to those in the leaves. Those who work in the 

 leaves are taking in supplies of carbonic acid gas from 

 the air, and the leaves themselves are so formed as to 

 get as much light as possible on one surface. When 

 the light meets with the carbonic acid gas in the leaves 

 starch is formed. This is distributed through the plant 

 to the actual builders. 



You stand over the row of Carnations all silent, 

 all still, and yet here is this tremendous activity going 

 on, building, distributing, selecting, rejecting. A 

 thousand workmen making a flower. 



The two sets of workers, in the roots and leaves, the 

 one sending up water and nitrogenous matter, the other 

 making starch, are manufacturing albumenoids for 

 more building material. And it is more easy to think 

 of such creatures at work since a plant, unlike an 

 animal, has no stomach, or heart, or bloodvessels, and 

 its food is liquid and gaseous. 



Now of these marvels the greatest is that of the 

 existence of life in the plant on exactly the same initial 

 principles as the existence of life in man. That is the 

 substance known as the protoplasm. It is too amazing 

 for me, and too great a thing to be dealt with here, 

 but, as I look at my silent dockyard, there are these 

 protoplasms, in the cells of these plants, dividing into 

 halves and, so to speak, nestling with fresh cells in walls 

 of cellulose. 



210 



