Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

In the middle portion of the seed the cells are six-sided, and laid against one another in an orderly and beautiful fashion, while the outer ones are mostly round.

All animals, we ourselves, all plants, began life as a single cell.

Sometimes a cell will spend its life alone. When the time comes for it to add to the life of the world, it divides into two or more “daughter cells,” as they are called. These break away from one another, and in like manner divide again.

But usually the single cell which marks the beginning of a new life adds to itself other cells; that is, the different cells do not break away from one another, but all cling together, and so build up the perfect plant or animal.

By just such additions the greatest tree in the forest grew from a single tiny cell.

Fig. 136

By just such additions you children have grown to be what you are, and in the same way you will continue to grow.

Every living thing must eat and breathe, and so all living cells must have food and air. These they take in through their delicate cell walls. The power to do this comes from the bit of living substance which lies within these walls.

This strange, wonderful material within the little cell is what is alive in every man and woman, in every boy and girl, in every living thing, whether plant or animal.