398 PHYSIOLOGY 



digestive organs comparable to these; but places of food making and food 

 storage must be places where digestion is also particularly active. 



Misleading comparisons of the leaves to the stomach not rarely occur in primary 

 books, which thus seek to " explain " the work of a leaf. When, as in one notable 

 instance, a leaf is compared to a kitchen, where. the dilute " soups," coming up from 

 the roots, are " boiled down "; later to a stomach, where the food is made ready; 

 and finally to the lungs, by -which the dear little plant breathes, the child would have 

 a truly appalling notion of a leaf were he not usually immune to such bad pedagogy, 

 by reason of his ignorance of at least the stomach and lungs. 



Extra-cellular digestion. — In plant as in animal, many foods must be 

 digested before they can enter the cells at all, while others are digested 

 as they lie in the cells. So one may distinguish, as to location, extra- 

 cellular and intra-cellular digestion; but agents, processes, and results 

 are essentially alike in both. In a fungus which merely pushes its way 

 among the intercellular spaces of another plant, it is impossible to say 

 whether any food is being digested or whether only what is already 

 soluble and diffusible is being used. But when a fungus sends a branch, 

 as a haustorium, through the cell wall (fig. 651), or when, as in certain 

 wood-destroying fungi, the mycelium penetrates the walls freely in all 

 directions, it is obvious that by some means the wall is actively dissolved 

 at the point of contact. 



Chemical changes. — The changes characteristic of digestion result 

 in the cleaving of compounds into two or more simpler substances, with 

 or without the taking up of water. In case water is incorporated the 

 cleavage is called hydrolysis. 



Thus when cane sugar is digested: 



C12H22O11 -I- H2O 5^ CsHiaOe -f- CsHiaOe 

 saccharose water glucose fructose 



Starch when digested takes up water, and four fifths of it breaks up into maltose 

 units (C12H22O11), the other fifth resisting full digestion for a longtime. The mal- 

 tose is further digested into two units of glucose, with assumption of another mole- 

 cule of water. Other foods split up into simpler compounds without adding 

 anything to their members. Thus sinigrin, a glucoside characteristic of the plants 

 in the mustard family, cleaves thus: 



The chemical changes of digestion represent only a few of the mul- 

 titudinous reactions going on in the plant. The rate of these reactions, 

 like all others, depends on temperature, concentration, etc., and espe- 



