REASONS FOR THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY 



twenty-five per cent of the deaths that occur yearly in this country 

 could be averted if all people lived in a hygienic manner. In its 

 application to the life of each of us, as a member of a family, 



as a student in school, and 

 as a future citizen, a knowl- 

 edge of hygiene is of the 

 greatest importance. 



The Uses of Plants to 

 Man. — But there are other 

 reasons why an educated 

 person should know some- 

 thing about biology. We 

 do not always realize that 

 if it were not for the green 

 plants, there would be no 

 animals on the earth. 

 There is a wonderful bal- 

 ance of life on the earth, 

 maintained by the energy 

 of the sun. We shall see 

 later that green plants, like 

 factories, turn raw mate- 

 rials into food products and 

 thus furnish food to ani- 

 mals. Even the meat-eat- 

 ing animals feed upon those 

 that feed upon plants. 

 Plants furnish man with 

 the greater part of his food 

 in the form of grains and 

 cereals, fruits and nuts, 

 edible roots and leaves; 

 they provide his domesti- 

 cated animals with food ; 

 they give him timber for his houses and wood and coal for his fires ; 

 they pro\dde him with pulp wood, from which he makes his paper, 

 and oak galls, from which he can make ink. Some of man's 

 clothing and the thread with which it is sewed together come from 



Blossoms and bolls of the cotton plant. 

 More cloth is made of cotton than of any 

 other fiber. 



