The How and Why Library/Life/Plants-Section I
Part I—Plants edit
I. We Meet the Fairy Godmother edit
What if you had never seen an apple, or an apple tree! Little Esquimo boys and girls never saw them. So, just imagine that you never saw them, either.
Then, if a traveler from a strange country should bring you a little brown seed, a green leaf, a pink blossom, a bit of the wood of the apple tree and of the bark, and a juicy red apple to eat, and should tell you that they were all parts of one plant and had grown out of each other, and were made from one common food, what would you think? Very likely you would say: "What a lovely fairy story. Please tell another one."
If he were a very wise man he might say: " Very well, here's another one just like it." He would ask you to look at baby brother. Even Esquimo children have baby brothers. See his dewy, pink satin skin. Feel the soft flesh under it, and the hard round bones under that. Feel his loving little heart beat. Look into his merry blue eyes; brush the sunny curls on his head, and let him bite your finger with his pearly teeth. Watch mama cut the shell-pink finger nails that can scratch like pussy's. Those things—skin, flesh, bones, heart, eyes, hair, teeth and nails—all so different, are all a part of the baby. They are all fed and made to grow on just one food— milk. Then, maybe you'd be able to believe that the apple tree might be a really, truly story.
And that would help you understand that all living things—plants and animals—the baby and the apple tree, all of them came from seeds, and are sort of far-away cousins to each other. Isn't it pleasant to think that we are related to butterflies and birds and apple blossoms? Only children, and a few very wise grown people, can understand how this can be. Children can imagine things. They can imagine what fairies would look like if there were fairies. So they can understand the wonderful true stories that science tells, about things as strange as fairies. And then children are curious, and it is easier for them to change their minds. That makes their mindsgrow. The mind is like everything else in the world. It can grow only by changing.
Don't you like for papa to open the back of his watch so you can see the wheels go 'round? When he does that you want to know what makes them go 'round, don't you? You want to know how and why each part of the watch works for and with the others. A plant or an animal is more wonderful than a watch. A watch runs down, and has to be wound again. But plants and animals have little live wheels that wind themselves, and keep going as long as they live. And before they die they start other plants and animals just like themselves—or even a little better—to going.
To understand it all you will have to go a long way back. There couldn't have been a watch until there was a wheel, then another wheel to turn on that, and a spring to make them turn. So there could never have been a plant or an animal until there was a little living wheel, or cell. Did you know that men of science, who have studied life in plants and animals, have found out what that cell looks like, and what it is made of? It is just a tiny, egg-shaped bag so small that you cannot see it, except under a microscope, and as colorless as a drop of water.
Still, that little living cell has a skin or thin wall around it, and it is filled with a drop of magical jelly. The jelly is alive. What is it to be alive? A bit of sponge can soak up water, but it cannot use it, or make anything out of it. A silk worm eats mulberry leaves, grows larger on this food, makes a silk cradle to go to sleep in, and hatches out into a butterfly that lays more silk worm eggs. To be alive, is to eat and grow, and turn the food into something else and, don't forget this, make more living things like itself. That is why we know that the little drop of jelly is alive. It is the smallest, simplest live thing in the world. Of course, it is so important it has to have a name. It is called Pro'to-plasm.
The wonderful cell full of protoplasm is the fairy godmother of every living thing in the world. It is the "once upon a time" with which the story of life begins. It has done more wonderful things than to turn pumpkins into gilded coaches and mice into horses. It didn't do them all at once, just by waving a wand. It began in a very humble way, and took one small step at a time. At first it was contented to make another little round cell just like itself, then another and another and another, all as alike as so many peas. But each one of those cells full of protoplasm couldeat and grow, and keep itself wound up, and make other little cells. Then, by and by, after ages and ages, because they were alive and their home wasn't always the same, some of the cells changed a little, and they kept on changing every time they had to.
Now, every step that was taken forward from the little cell full of protoplasm, lives in some form today. So we can follow the story of life, step by step. You can find the beginning of it in a loaf of bread. When your mama makes bread—no, mama doesn't make bread, she helps bread make itself, by—but that's another story. (See Cell, Cell-Doctrine, Protoplasm, Biology.)