You will get a peep at the wonders of plant-life from this little story. I said to a class of girls, who had studied botany for a year: “What is a plant? I will give you half an hour to find an answer that will suit you.” One girl said in a hurry: “A plant is not a living thing!” “O you silly girl!” cried all the rest. “A plant grows. Only living things can grow. Why do you say ‘a living tree,’ and ‘a dead tree,’ if plants are not living things? Did you never see a plant dying or dead?” “A plant,” said another, “is a living thing that does not breathe.” “Oh, but it does breathe. It breathes air.” “A plant is a living thing that eats only minerals.” “Ah! but some plants eat little bugs, and meat.” “A plant is a living thing that does not move.” “It does move! Does not the vine climb up the tree, or by the side of the house? Do not some flowers turn each day to follow the path of the sun? Does not the wild ivy run over the ground? Then there is a plant in the desert that moves to find water. It gets loose from the sand. It bends up into a circle or wheel. Then the wind rolls it along, until it reaches a moist place where it can live. There it roots again.” “A plant is a living thing without blood.” “Its sap, or juice, is its blood. It serves the plant as blood serves man. The sap is as much the blood of the plant as the white fluid in the jelly-fish, the insect, or the barnacle, is blood for them.[1] All animals do not have thick, red blood.” “A plant is a thing that does not sleep,” said one girl. “Yes, but plants _do_ sleep. We learned that once.” “A plant is a living thing, without feelings.” “Some of them seem to have feeling. They move or shrink when you touch them. A star-fish, as he breaks himself up, does not seem to have more feeling than a plant.” “Let us say,” said one, “that a plant is a live thing, that grows in the soil.” “But there are plants that grow only in air, or in water, or in other plants. There are plenty of plants that grow in bread, cheese, milk, and preserves.”[2] Finally they said: “A plant is a living thing, generally rooted in the earth, and growing from a seed, or something like a seed. A plant has no brain, and no nerves.” Their teacher told them that the great point about a plant is, that the plant eats minerals and turns them into other substances. Animals get most of the mineral food that they eat from the plants, after the plants have made it over. Now, from what this class said, you have learned some of the curious things about plants. Plants live, breathe, grow, move, eat, drink, and sleep. More than this, I shall show you how plants serve for clocks. Plants also can tell you about the weather, whether it will be wet or dry. And the plants have gone into business, and have partners. The birds and insects are the plant’s partners. The plants live, and grow, and go into business, just to make other plants. But the end of the business is, that the world is fed.