THE FUNDUS, OR COLORLESS PLANT. 27 



ready-made food that comes in their way, eating with 

 an appetite and digestion worthy of the fat boy in 

 " Pickwick." The Venus fly-trap not only traps the 

 poor flies, but eats them ; so it seems that some plants 

 have the power of not only making, but of destroying 



PROTEIN". 



You have now found out that the torula, or yeast- 

 cell, is a plant and not an animal ; the next question is, 

 "What kind of a plant is it i Mostly all plants need the 

 sun, but the yeast-plant grows as well in the dark as in 

 the light. Plants that need the light are always green ; 

 they take in that poisonous gas, carbonic acid, and 

 give off oxygen; but the torula has no green color, 

 and it takes in oxygen and gives off so much carbonic 

 acid, that it is dangerous for people to walk over dis- 

 tillery-vats while the torula are working. Green 

 plants cannot live without this carbonic acid, but it 

 poisons human beings. Those plants which give off car- 

 bonic acid, grow in the dark, and are not green, are called 

 fungi. The mushrooms and toadstools are fungi. 



Now you will probably wish to know where the first 

 torula came from — the great, great old grandmother 

 torula of all. Nobody knows ; we can only say God 

 made it ; how he made it, no one can tell. Chemists 

 know that it contains so much carbon, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and nitrogen, and a few other things ; but 



