154 
THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
But these new particles cannot come in at the 
roots, for the seed has none ; nor through the leaves, 
for they have not yet grown up ; and so the plantlet 
begins by helping itself to the store of food laid up in 
the thick seed-leaves in which it is buried. Here it 
finds starch, oils, sugar, and substances called albu- 
minoids, the sticky matter which you notice in 
wheat-grains when you chew them is one of the 
albuminoids. This food is all ready for the plantlet 
to use, and it sucks it in, and works itself into a 
young plant with tiny roots at one end, and a growing 
shoot, with leaves, at the other. 
But how does it grow ? What makes it become 
larger ? To answer this, you must look at the second 
thing I asked you to bring a piece of orange. If 
you take the skin off a 
piece of orange, you will 
see inside a number of long- 
shaped transparent bags, 
full of juice. These we call 
cells, and the flesh of all 
Fig. 38- 
J oicy cells in a piece of orange. 
plants and animals is made up of cells like these, 
only of various shapes. In the pith of elder they are 
round, large, and easily seen (a, Fig. 39) ; in the 
stalks of plants they are long, and lap over each 
other (b, Fig. 39), so as to give the stalk strength to 
stand upright. Sometimes many cells growing one 
on the top of the other, break into one tube and make 
vessels. But whether large or small, they are all bags 
growing one against the other. 
In the orange-pulp these cells contain only sweet 
juice, but in other parts of the orange-tree or any 
