The Hot Springs star. (Hot Spings [Hot Springs], Dakota [Dakota Territory, i.e. S.D.]) 1886-189?, 1891-11-13
EATERS OF CARBON
Tree. and Plant. Grow ou. Of tho Air.
MOI from the Ground.

Not from the Ground.
Take an ordinary settler water siphon
and empty it till only u few drops re-
main in the bottom. Then the bottle is
full Of gas, and that gas, which will
rush out with o squirt when you press
the knob, is the stuff that plants eat
raw material of life, both animal and
vegetable. The tree grows and lives by
taking in the carbonic acid from the air
and solidifying its carbon; the animal
grows and lives by taking the solidified
carbon from the plant and converting it
once moro into carl,onic acid.
That, in its ideally simple form, is the
Had in a nutshell, the core and kernel
Of biology. The whole cycle Of life is
eternal seesaw. First the plant COL
lects it's carbon compounds from the air
In the oAidized state; it deoxidizes and
iebuilds them, and then the animal pro-
ceeds to burn them by slow combustion
within its body and to turn them
loose upon the air once more oxidized.
After which the plant starts again on
tho came road as before, and the animal
also recommends do capo. And so on
ad minimum.
But the point which I want particu-
larry to emphasize hero is just this: That
trees and plants don't grow out of the
ground at all, as most people do vainly
talk, but directly out Of the air, and
that when they die or set consumed
they return once more to the atmosphere
from which they weTa taken. Trees Ill
deniatly eat carbon.
OF COURSE. therefore. I'LL the ordinary
unscientific conceptions Of how plants
feed are absolutely erroneous. Vegetable
physiology indeed got beyond those
conceptions !. good hundred years ago.
Bat it usually takes q hundred years for
the world at large to make UP its lee
way. Trees doa'5 suck up their nutri-
meat by tho roots, they don't derive
their fool from the soil. they don't need
10 lie fed like babies through Il tube with
Terrestrial solids. The solitary instance
Of al orchid hung up by a string in -
conservatory Oh Il piece of bark ought to
be sufficient at once to dispel forever
this strange delusion-if people ever
thought; but, Of course, They don't think
Il mean other people.
The true mouths and ~ato,naclls OF
plants are not to he found in the roota,
but i'll the green leaves; their true food
is not sucked up from the soil, but is IN
hailed through tiny channels from the
air; the mass Of their material is carbon,
as We can all see visibly to the naked eyo
when n log OF wood is reduced to char
coal, and that carbon the leaves them
selves drink in by q thousand small
green mouths from the atmosphere
around them.
But how about the juice, tho sap, the
qualities of the soil, the manure required.
is the i%ncredElous cry Of other people.
What is the use Of tho roots, and espe-
cially Of the rootlets, if they are not tho
mouths and supply tubes Of tho plants?
Well, I plainly perceive 1 can get sno
forradcr," like the farmer with his claret,
till I've answered that question, pro-
v%isionally at least; so l will say here at
once, without further ado, that the plant
requires drink Us we'll as food, ard the
roots are the mouths that supply it with
wGtet.
They also sucl, up q few other things
as we'll, which are necessary indeed, but
far from forming the bulk Of the nutri-
ment. Many plants, however, don't
need any roots at all, while none can
set on without leaves as mouths and
stonlechs-that is to say, no true plant
like plants. for some parasite plants are
practically to MI intents and purposes
animals. To put it briefly, every plant
has III set OF aerial mouths to suck a
carbon, and many plants have another
! set Of subterranean mouths rs we'll, to
suck up water and mineral constituents.
-Cornhill Magazine.