LIX 
PLANTS THAT LIVE ON OTHER PLANTS 
I SN'T IT ODD that nearly all the plants of the world 
make sugar and live upon it, while the mushroom 
breed makes none at all and still gets along quite well! 
These sugar-makers get their food largely out of the 
carbon dioxide of the air. It is known that the green of 
their leaves is necessary to sugar-making. Most plants 
must spread the green of their leaves to the sun, or they 
will starve to death. 
Now come the members of the mushroom or fungus 
family, that have no green in their makeup. They form 
a pale and sallow group that lives as well in the shade as 
in the sunshine. 
Yet these fungus plants require the same sort of food 
to build themselves up as do the green, flowering families. 
They need starchy foods and salts from the earth. They 
do not make this food for themselves but steal it from 
other plants while they are living or devour their remains 
after they are dead. 
They are in this respect like the animals which live 
upon vegetation or upon other animals that eat it. So 
do they in turn depend on the plant food that the green 
leaves make when they sit out in the sun. These green 
leaves, in fact, are the basic food factories for the living 
world. 
The fungus group of plants, not having to make their 
own food, have not needed to develop complicated struc- 
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