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WHY PLANTS GKOW. 



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and so in supplied hij plants. A healthy animal, no longer growing, receives into 

 his system a daily supply of food without any corresponding increase in weight, or 

 often without any increase at all. This is because he decomposes as much as he 

 receives. If a vegetable-feeder, far the greater part of his food (all the starch of 

 grain and bread, the sugar, oil, i^'c), after being .added to the blood, is dec omposed^ 

 and breatlied out from the lungs in the forui of carbonic acid and water. That is 

 just what it would become if set on lire and burnfMl, as when we *^u)n oil or tallow 

 in our lamps or candles, or wood in our lire-places ; and in the process, in animals, 

 no less than in our lamps and lire-places, the heat which was al)sorbed from 

 the sun, when the vegetable matter was jiroduced from carbonic acid ar.d water, 

 is given out when this matter is decomposed into carbonic aciil and water again. 

 And this is what keeps up the nfitu'-il heat of iinimals. We are warmed by 

 plants in the food we consume, as well ijs by the fuel we burn. 



288. In learnitig, as we hav«» done, How Pjjmts (Jiow, and Why they firow, 

 have we not learned more of the lesson of the text pl.aced at the beginning of 

 this book, and of the verses that follow \ '* W/ierefoyc, if God so clothe the rfvas-i 

 q/ the field, shall lie not much more clothe iinn ? . . . Tlurefore tahe 110 thou(/ht, 

 eaj/iiHj, What shall ire eat? or. What shall ire drink? or, Whert-iritlial .^hall we 

 he clothed ? For i/our Jlearenli/ Father Inioweth that >je have need of all these 

 thint/s." And we now perceive that causing plants to grow is the very w.ay in 

 wliich He bountifully supplies these needs, and feeds, clothes, warms, and 

 shelters the myri.ads of beings He lias made, and especially Man, whom He 

 Trade to have dominion over them all. 



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