Parts such as these, which have more power of movement than the rest
of the plant, are called sensitive parts, but though in them we see it
more clearly than in most plants, they only illustrate what is common
to all, and that is ~some power of movement~.
The movements which you have seen so far in plants are different from
those of most animals in one way, and that is in the fact that the
whole plant remains rooted in one place, and only parts of it can move
as the circumstances require, while, though an animal moves its parts
separately, the result of some of those movements is to carry its whole
body about. This may appear to you a great difference between plants
and animals, but it is not quite so great as it seems; nor must we
forget that there are some simple slimy-looking plants which slowly
crawl along the ground, as well as many minute, green plants, which you
could only see with a microscope, which move their whole bodies and
swim about just in the way that tiny animals swim.
SUMMARY OF PART I.
We have now done a number of experiments with plants, and found out
many facts about their way of life, and I think you will agree that
we have collected enough evidence to prove the statement made at the
beginning of Chapter II.--that on the whole plants show the same “signs
of life” as do animals.
We have seen that like animals they ~breathe in~ a part of the air, and
that they ~breathe out~ with the air the added carbonic acid gas, which
is the characteristic “waste product” of the out-breathing of animals.
They practically “~eat~” when they take in substances as food into
their bodies, even though they have no gaping mouths which can open and
close. We noticed, too, the interesting parallel between young plants
and young animals, where both (the plants in the food in the seed, the
animals in their mothers’ milk) are supplied with ready-made food at
first, and as they get older have to find what food they require for
themselves. As regards their feeding, the plants do more work than the
animals, for they manufacture the starchy food for themselves out of
simpler elements, while the animals require their starch to be ready
made.
Then the fact that plants ~grow~, increasing in size and forming new
structures, has been known to you ever since you were a baby yourself.
Although we noticed here an important difference between the kind of
growth in plants and animals, yet the growth itself is alike in the two
cases, for both plants and animals build up their living bodies out
of simpler substances which they take in as food and change till the
not-living food becomes part of themselves and is living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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