56 
THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
By PEOFESSOR CHURCH, M.A., P.C.S., 
Royal Agkiculttjral College. 
M eat and drink are not one whit less important to the plant 
than to the animal. The tree that seems to use the ground 
merely that it may therein fix its anchoring roots ; the rain, to 
brighten its fair garment of foliage ; and the air, that it may 
therein spread the balanced beauty of its boughs, draws from all 
these — the earth, the water, and the air — the very substance and 
breath of life. Indeed, all four of the ancient so-called elements 
are concerned in the nourishing of the plant. For without the 
threefold energy of the solar fire, earth, water, and air would 
contribute their stores in vain. It is in the power which plants 
possess of securing, in latent yet available shape, the forces of 
the sun that they afford so striking a contrast to the spendthrift 
character of animal functions. Plants gather together from in- 
organic materials, and from the waste products of organisms, fresh 
supplies of complex materials, prepared and fitted for the nourish- 
ment of animals. The food of plants is oxidized food, food which 
animals cannot assimilate ; and plants have the power of utiliz- 
ing the sun’s heat in pulling apart the constituents of these 
oxidized compounds. Once apart, these constituent elements 
are arranged in new compounds, compounds containing less 
oxygen, but ready, by combining with oxygen when used as food 
or fuel, to transform their pent up and concealed energy into 
heat and its correlative forces. 
But although in their food and in their mode of feeding plants 
differ from animals, yet there are analogies, not only apparent 
but real, between them. Animals breathe — so do plants ; ani- 
mals require certain elements arranged in certain combinations — 
so do plants ; animals need their food in a particular form or 
mechanical condition — so do plants ; animals may be stimulated 
by special kinds of food — so may plants. Yet with all these 
similarities between plants and animals, when we come to inves- 
tigate more closely the laws of vegetable nutrition, we find at 
once such differences as those we have now mentioned, diffe- 
rences not only in special details but also in general functions. 
There is very great difficulty in thoroughly ascertaining the 
mode in wFich plants acquire their food, and the exact processes 
by which the several chief vegetable substances, cellulose, starch. 
