104 
WORLD OF INVISIBLE LIFE 
What are 
the eyes? 
When we cut open one of the little eyes in 
the skin of the potato and look at it through the 
microscope, we find that it contains tiny leaves. 
It is really a bud. When the potato is put in 
the ground, these little leaves sprout out and 
grow into a new plant. If, after the buds have 
sprouted in the ground, we take the potato out 
again and examine it, we find that the starch 
has disappeared from the cells. It has been 
used for food by the young plant while it was 
developing green leaves of its own with which 
to manufacture its food. 
The roots of trees and flowers do not have 
this storage place for new plants, for they grow 
from seeds instead of from the roots. Their 
roots are only fine tubes of woody fibers, covered 
with fine hairs. The hairs attract the water 
in the earth in some manner we do not quite 
understand. Then the water is sucked into the 
tubes of the roots, where it rises into the stem 
and the leaves. Such simple roots as these also 
hold the plant down to the earth, so that it 
does not blow away in the first breeze. 
