ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “EASY LESSONS IN VEGETABLE BIOLOGY.”
By A. M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.
1. Q. How is the word Biology made up, and what does it mean? A. It is made up of two Greek words—bios, life, and logos, a discourse. It means the study of living things.
2. Q. What does Biology include in its survey? A. Both animals and vegetables, and considers their forms and peculiarities, the parts of which they are composed, their relations to each other, and the uses which they serve.
3. Q. What are the subjects of Physics and Chemistry? A. The general forces of nature and the changes in non-living matter.
4. Q. What is the teaching of the Bible and of all the religions of mankind, the belief of the most eminent philosophers, the doctrine held by the early Christian fathers, and maintained by the majority of scientific and unscientific men as to the difference between a living body and the same body after death? A. That it arises from the union of matter and spirit.
5. Q. What is it that entitles any thing to be called a living being? A. The presence of little particles of living matter scattered through it.
6. Q. What does this living matter look like when seen through the microscope? A. Like a little bit of jelly or albumen. It is generally transparent; is neither quite solid or fluid.
7. Q. What is it called? A. It is often called protoplasm, or first formation. It is also called by the better term bioplasm, or living formation.
8. Q. What is said as to the resemblance of the particles of bioplasm to one another, no matter where they belong? A. They always look alike. There is no difference under the microscope between the bioplasm of a blade of grass or a whale, or an oak, a rose, a dog, or a man.
9. Q. What does chemical examination show as to all living matter? A. That it is composed of the same elementary materials. Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen enter into the construction of every piece of bioplasm.
10. Q. In what three different states do we recognize matter in every bioplast, or living particle? A. Matter not yet alive, but about to become so, called pabulum, or nutriment. Living matter in the strictest sense, or bioplasm. Formed material, or matter which was alive, but is so no longer.
11. Q. What peculiarity has living matter as to motion? A. All bioplasm has spontaneous motion. Non-living matter has inertia.
12. Q. What are the three kinds of motion of bioplasm? A. Inherent motions of individual particles among themselves. Constant change of shape. Wandering movements.
13. Q. What is the peculiarity of living matter as to the power of nutrition and growth? A. The non-living increases in size by external additions; but bioplasm selects appropriate material from its food, or pabulum, changes the chemical relations of this material, and appropriates it to its own structure in such a way that it grows from within.
14. Q. What is the peculiarity of bioplasm as to reproduction A. Bioplasm can generate or reproduce its own kind of living matter.
15. Q. What power has a living thing to preserve its own identity? A. A living being preserves its identity amid all the material changes which take place.
16. Q. In the grouping together of living things according to their real relationships, what do types represent? A. General plans of structure.
17. Q. How are classes formed? A. By the special modification of a type.
18. Q. What are orders? A. They are groups of the same class related by a common structure.
19. Q. What is a family or genus? A. A still smaller group having generally the same essential structure.
20. Q. What is a species? A. It is the smallest group whose structure is constant.
21. Q. What are individuals? A. They are the units of organic life, forming a complete animated existence.
22. Q. What are peculiarities of races or breeds called? A. Varieties.
23. Q. How are vegetables and animals distinguished from each other? A. By the term kingdom, and the types in each kingdom are called sub-kingdoms.
24. Q. Under what five types or plans of structure can all the multitude of plants which clothe the earth or dwell in the sea be arranged? A. Protophytes, Thallogens, Acrogens, Endogens and Exogens.
25. Q. What are the elementary masses of bioplasm usually called? A. They are usually called cells, even if they are merely pieces of animated jelly, uninclosed by an outside shell or membrane.
26. Q. What is the principal difference between animals and plants? A. The latter can be nourished by simple mineral or chemical (that is unorganized) matter, while animal nutrition requires material which has been organized, or made part of a living being.
27. Q. What do most vegetable cells produce on the outside? A. A membrane or cell wall, within which the living matter is, as it were, imprisoned.
28. Q. What concentrations of living matter are there within a cell? A. A concentration called a nucleus, and sometimes a still further concentration within the nucleus, called nucleolus, or little nucleus.
29. Q. Of what substance is the cell wall composed? A. A substance somewhat like starch, called cellulose.
30. Q. When it becomes solid how is it known? A. As woody tissue.
31. Q. How is common wood made up? A. Of a number of these cells arranged side by side.
32. Q. Of what shape may vegetable cells be? A. They may be globular, oval, conical, prismatic, cylindrical, branched, or of any other form.
33. Q. What are some of the varieties of formed material into which the bioplasm within the cell wall may be transformed? A. They may be solid, as coloring matter, starch, crystals, and resin; or fluid, as oil and gum, or solutions of sugar or tannin.
34. Q. What is the most important of these substances called? A. Chlorophyll, the source of the green color of plants.
35. Q. What other product of vegetable cells is even more widely distributed than chlorophyll? A. Starch.
36. Q. How do cells generate? A. By self-multiplication.
37. Q. What are the simplest forms of plant life? A. Those that consist of a single cell.
38. Q. In the higher classes of plants what is the character of the union of cells which forms tissues and organs? A. It is permanent.
39. Q. What are made by the union of cells into groups? A. The woody fibers of plants, and the cellular tissue which makes the softer, fleshy and pithy parts.
40. Q. What has observation shown as to the production of new cells in the highest plants? A. That they are not produced everywhere uniformly, but in particular spots.
41. Q. What terms have been applied to places of this kind? A. Growing-point, and growing or formative layer.
42. Q. Where may growing-points and formative layers be seen? A. Growing-points may be seen in the tips of buds, and formative layers between the wood and bark of trees.
43. Q. What names have been given to the tissue which is here formed by the division and union of cells? A. Formative or generating tissue.
44. Q. What are in direct contrast to the generation tissues? A. The healing tissues, or cork tissues.
45. Q. How are vessels made? A. By the union of several cells, the partition-walls disappearing, while the union continues at the margin.
46. Q. What are bast-tubes or bast-fibers? A. They are long, pointed, thick-walled tubes, commonly united into bundles.
47. Q. To what part of the flower is the term nectaries, or honey-glands, given? A. To any part of a flower which secretes honey or sugary fluids.
48. Q. What is the first independent tissue formed in flowering plants by the union of cells? A. The epidermis or skin.
49. Q. What is each of the pores found among the epidermic cells called? A. A stoma, or mouth.
50. Q. What are hairs? A. They are epidermal structures, composed of one or more cells.
51. Q. What do we find next to the epidermis? A. The cortex, or bark, often composed of cells containing starch or chlorophyll.
52. Q. What is beneath the bark? A. The formative layer or cambium, in which thin-walled cells become transformed into vascular or bast-cells, and thence are changed into permanent cells.
53. Q. What do groups of cells thus formed, united into bundles and penetrating the rest of the tissue, form? A. The fibro-vascular bundles.
54. Q. What are the simpler types of plants that have no fibro-vascular bundles, called? A. Cellular plants.
55. Q. What are the rest termed? A. Vascular plants.
56. Q. Of what does the fundamental tissue generally consist? A. Of thin-walled cells containing starch, although other forms of cells may be present.
57. Q. What is the simplest form of individual plant life? A. A particle of living matter inclosed in a membrane or cell-wall.
58. Q. What are plants of this type of structure called? A. Protophytes.
59. Q. Where are many of these one-celled plants found? A. In the green slime which grows on stones and on boards in damp places.
60. Q. What is one of the simplest forms, often found in rain-water casks, called? A. The protococcus.
61. Q. What are the unicellular plants most interesting to those who study with the microscope? A. Diatoms.
62. Q. In the living state where are diatoms found abundantly? A. In every pond, rivulet, ocean and rock-pool.
63. Q. What do they form in a fossil state? A. Large strata of rock material.
64. Q. What are thallogens? A. Plants composed of a tissue of cells, or bioplasts, but with no clear distinction of stem, root and leaves.
65. Q. What three classes are included under this type? A. Algæ, or sea-weeds; Lichens, or the dry, leafy, or mossy patches on trees, stones, etc.; and Fungi, or mushrooms, molds, and their allies.
66. Q. Into what three orders have Algæ, or sea-weeds, been divided? A. The red, the olive and the green sea-weeds.
67. Q. How are Fungi regarded by some scientists? A. As neither animal nor vegetable, but forming a sort of third kingdom.
68. Q. What seems to be the principal business of the Fungi? A. The removal of the waste material of both animal and vegetable life.
69. Q. What are Acrogens? A. Plants which grow at the summit only, and not in diameter.
70. Q. What plants do we find in fresh-water ponds and rivers, growing in tangled masses of dull green color that illustrate the manner of growth in the type of Acrogens? A. Stone-worts, consisting of two genera, Chara and Nitella.
71. Q. What are the nodes, and what the internodes in the stone-worts? A. The points on the axis, or stem, from which the branchlets spring, are called nodes, and the intervening parts are internodes.
72. Q. How is each internode formed? A. By the growth and elongation of single cells.
73. Q. How are the branchlets produced? A. By the sub-division of single cells.
74. Q. What other families of plants are examples of Acrogens? A. Ferns and Mosses.
75. Q. What are Endogens? A. Plants whose vessels and woody fibers first grow within the stem. The seed has but a single lobe, or cotyledon.
76. Q. What families of plants are found in the type of Endogens? A. Grasses, Rushes, Lilies, and Palms, with similar families.
77. Q. In the growing plant what part grows from the axis upward, and what part from the axis downward? A. The stem grows from the axis upward, and the root downward.
78. Q. What is the root formed by the downward elongation of the axis called? A. It is called the primary root.
79. Q. What is the stem of a plant? A. That part which bears the leaves, flowers, and fruit.
80. Q. What is the length of life of the stem and roots? A. It may be only a single year, or annual; two years, or biennial; or a number of years, or perennial.
81. Q. What are thorns? A. Undeveloped branches, and many plants which are thorny when wild are not so under cultivation.
82. Q. Of what are leaves constituted? A. Cells, with cavities, fibro-vascular bundles and epidermis.
83. Q. How do the veins in the leaves of Endogens differ from those in the leaves of Exogens? A. They are generally parallel or straight in Endogens, and do not form a network as in Exogens.
84. Q. What are five of the names given to leaves according to their shapes? A. Lanceolate, or narrow and tapering; oblong, or narrow and not tapering; cordate, or heart-shaped; sagittate, or arrow-shaped; and ovate, or egg-shaped.
85. Q. What is the function or use of leaves? A. To expose the juices of the plant to light and air, and thus aid in forming the woody matter of the stem and the various secretions.
86. Q. What constitute a plant’s organs of nutrition? A. The root, stem and leaves.
87. Q. What is the flower of a plant? A. It is the organ, or assemblage of organs, for the production of the seed.
88. Q. What are the four whorls in which the parts of a flower are usually arranged called? A. The outer whorl is the calyx, the next the corolla, the third the stamens, and the innermost the pistil.
89. Q. To what is the term fruit applied in botanical language? A. To the mature, perfect pistil, whether dry or succulent.
90. Q. What nutritious grains are classed among the family of Endogens called grasses? A. Wheat, barley, oats, rice and Indian corn.
91. Q. What other families are noted members of the type of Endogens? A. Palms and bananas.
92. Q. What are some of the other families of the type of Endogens? A. The orchid, the lily and the bulrushes.
93. Q. What are Exogens? A. Plants whose woody fibres grow in outer layers. The seed has two lobes, or cotyledons.
94. Q. How many different species are included in this type? A. About seventy thousand.
95. Q. What are Incomplete Exogens? A. Those whose flowers have no corolla. They are of two kinds.
96. Q. What are the first kind? A. Those whose seeds are naked, as in the cone-bearing family, consisting of the fir and spruce tribe, the cypress tribe, and similar plants.
97. Q. What are the second kind? A. Those whose seeds are contained in the ovary, as the amaranth, buckwheat, laurel, nettle, fig, and the catkin-bearing family.
98. Q. What are some of the plants in the next sub-division of the type of Endogens, those whose flowers have both calyx and corolla? A. The honeysuckle, teasel, lobelia, convolvulus, primrose, and labiate and composite families.
99. Q. What are some of the families of plants found in another class of Exogens that also have calyx and corolla, but the corolla has distinct petals, and the stamens are attached to the calyx? A. The umbelliferous, the leguminous, and the cactus families.
100. Q. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the highest class, or the most perfect Exogens? A. The calyx and the corolla are present, the petals are distinct and inserted into the receptacle, and the stamens grow from beneath the ovary.
