92 
WHY PLANTS GROW. 
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, &c.), after being added to the blood, is decomposed, 
and breathed out from the lungs in the form of carbonic acid and water. That is 
just what it would become if set on fire and burned, as when we burn oil or tallow 
in our lamps or candles, or wood in our fire-places ; and in the process, in animals 
no less than in our lamps and fire-places, the heat which was absorbed from the sun, 
when the vegetable matter was produced from carbonic acid and water, is given 
out when this matter is decomposed into carbonic acid and water again. And this 
is what keeps up the natural heat of animals. We are warmed by plants in the 
food we consume, as well as by the fuel we burn. 
288. In learning, as we have done, How Plants Grow, and Why they Grow, 
have we not learned more of the lesson of the text placed at the beginning of this 
book, and of the verses that follow ? “ Wherefore , if God so clothe the grass of the 
field , shall he not much more clothe you ? . . . . Therefore take no thought , saying , 
What shall we eat ? or , What shall we drink ? or , Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? 
For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things .” And 
we now perceive that causing plants to grow is the very way in which He bounti- 
fully supplies these needs, and feeds, clothes, warms, and shelters the myriads of 
beings He has made, and especially Man , whom He made to have dominion over 
them all. 
