The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1892-01-08
EATERS CT CARBON.
rr. ard plants Grow Out of the Air.
MI from the Ground

rr.a ard Plants Grow Out of the Air.
MOI, from the Ground.
Ike an ordinary settler water slphon
auC empty it till only a few drops re-
man in the bottom. Then the bottle is
full of gas, and that gas, which Will
rnh out with a 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 solidiied
carbon from the plant and converting it
once more into carbonic acid.
That, in its ideally simple form, is the
niad in a nutshell, the core and kernel
of biology. The whole cycle of life is
one eternal seesaw. First the plant col
lects its carbon compounds from the air
in the oxidized state: it deoxidizes and
rebuilds them, and then the animal pro-
ceeds to burn them by slow combustion
within its own body and to turn them
loose upon the air once more o1idlzed.
After which the plant starts again on
the same road as before, and the animal
also recom1nences da capo. And so on
ad infnitum.
But the point which | want particu-
Iarly to emphasize here is just this: That
| trees and plants don't grow out OF the
ground at all, as most people do valnly
| talk, but directly out Of the air, and
that when they die or get consumed
| they return once more to the atmosphere
from which thav were taken. Trees I'M
deniab1y ear carbon.
Of course, therefore, al; r,.., ordinary
unscientifc conceptions of how plants
feed are absolutely erroneous. Vegetable
physiology indeed got beyond those
| conceptions a good hundred years ago.
But it usually takes a hundred years for
the world at large to make up its lee
way. Trees don't suck up their nutri-
ment by the roots, they don't derive
their food from the soil, they don't need
to be fed like babies through a tube with
terrestrial solids. The solitary instance
of an orchid hung up by a string in a
| conservatory on a 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 stOmachs of
plants are not to be found in the roots,
but in 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 al see visibly to the naked eye
when a log Of wood is reduced to char
| coal. and that carbon the leaves them
selves drink-&l by a Thousand small
green mouths from the atmosphere
around them.
But how about the juice. the sap, the
qualities of the soil. the required,
IS the ~incredulOus cry q other people.
What is the use Of the roots, and espe-
cially of the rootlets, if they are not the
mouths and supply tubes of the plants?
Well, | plainly perceive | can get mo
forrader," like the farmer with his claret,
till I've answered that question. pro
~visionallv at least; so | will Say here at
requires drink as we'll as food, and the
roots are the mouths that supply it with
| water.
They also suck up a 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
get on without leaves as mouths and
stomachs-that is to say, no true plant
like plants, for some parasite plants are
practically to all intents and purposes
animals To put it briefly, every plant
has one set of aerial mouths to suck a
carbon, and many plants have another
set Of subterranean mouths as well, to
suck up water and mineral constituents.
-Cornhill Magazine.
This Dag Knew n Cood Tb;pc