64 
MANUAL OF NATURE STUDY. 
Take any growing plant, submit it to pressure 
and tlie juice will ooze out. How is cider made? 
Cider, when fresh from the apple, is water holding 
sugar and other substances in solution. 
The juice from the sugar cane, from which we 
make molasses, sugar and candy, is simply water 
holding in its hands sugar and candy. What is 
the juice of the water melon? Cantelope? Peach? 
Grape? Anything? What is the liquid part of 
our blood? Where does the liquid come from that 
we find in a fresh blister from a burn, or from fric¬ 
tion caused by hard labor, or a rough place in the 
shoe rubbing upon the foot? Then can water be 
pressed out of muscle, skin, fat, or even bone, if 
the pressure be great enough? 
Man is about two-thirds water, “enough,” one 
author says, “if rightly arranged, to drown him.” 
Food for the plant must be dissolved in water 
before it can serve as food for the plant. 
In our lesson on root hairs we said that these 
hairs were little mouths* minutely small that reach 
out to the fine dirt and suck the water out. They 
serve as a filter, keeping chunks of sand, or lime, 
or clay, or any solid matter from entering in a 
solid state into the structure of the plant. But 
all substances soluble in water can be drawn up 
*This is based upon the principle of osmosis, and though mouths do not exist 
in root-hairs it is thought to be a simple way of presenting the principle to the 
children. 
