The Louisiana Democrat., 1891-09-23
CARBON EATERS.
The Material Upon Which Plant Life Sub
sjstS,


sists.
Take an ordinary soda-water siphon,
with or without wineglassful OF
brandy, and empty it till only a few
drops remain in the bottom. Then the
bottle is full of gas, and that gas, which
will rush out with spurt when you
press the knob, is the stuff that plants
eat-the 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
more into carbonic acid. That, in its
ideally simple form, is the Iliad in a
nutshell, the core and kernel of biology.
The whole cycle of life is one eternal
see-saw. First the plant collects its
carbon compounds from the air in the
oxidized state, it deoxidizes and re-
builds them, and then the animal pro-
ceeds to burn them up by slow combus-
tion within his own body, and to turn
them loose upon the air, once more
oxidized. After which the plant starts
again on the same round as before, and
the animal also recommences da capo.
And so on ad infnitum.
But the point which / want particu-
larly to emphasize here 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 get consumed
they return once more to the atmos-
phere from which they were taken.
Trees undeniably eat carbon.
OF course, therefore, all the ordinary
unscientifc conceptions OF how plants
feed are absolutely erroneous. Vege-
table physiology, indeed, got beyond
those conceptions q good hundred years
ago. But it usually takes a hundred
years for the world at large to make up
its leeway. Trees don't suck up their
nutriment by the roots, they don't
derive their food from the soil, they
don't need to be fed, like the babies
through tube, with terrestrial solids.
The solitary instance of an orchid hung
up by string in a conservatory on a
piece of bark ought to be sufficient at
once to dispel forever this strange illu
sion-if people ever thought; but OF
course they don't think-I mean Other
People. The true mouths and stomachs
of plants are not to be found in the
1tc h,,f ha hot
true food is not sucked up from the
soil, but is inhaled through tiny chan
nels from the air; the mass of their ma
terial is carbon, as we can all see Wis
ably to the naked eye when a log OF
wood is reduced to charcoal, and that
carbon the leaves themselves drink in,
by thousand small green mouths,
from the atmosphere around them.
But how about the juice, the sap, the
qualities of the soil, the manure re-
quired? is the incredulous cry of other
people. What is the use of the roots,
and especially of the rootlets, if they
are not the mouths and supply tubes of
the plants? Well, l plainly perceive l
get mo foIrader," like the farmer with
his claret, till I've answered that ques-
ton, Professionally at least; so will say
here at once, without further ado-the
plant requires drink as well as food, and
the roots are the mouths that supply it
with water. They also suck up few
other things as well, which are necessary
indeed, but far from forming the bulk
of the nutriment. Many plants, how,
ever, don't need any roots at all, while
none can get on without leaves as
mouths and stomachs That is to say,
no true plant-like plants, for some par.
asitic plants are practically, to all in
tents and purposes, animals. To put II
briefly, every plant has one set of aerial
mouths to suck in carbon, and many
plants have another set of subterranear
mouths as well, to suck up water and
mineral constituents.-Corn Maga
zine