Ethel Mortons Enterprise | Page 2

and it looked just as if it were a house with a lot of rooms. Each room was a cell, Helen said."
"A very suitable name," commented Ethel Brown.
"What are you people talking about?" asked Helen, who came in at that instant.
"I was telling the girls about that time when I looked through the high school microscope," answered Ethel Blue.
[Illustration: Single Cell]
[Illustration: Double Cell]
"You saw among other things, some cells in the very lowest form of life. A single cell is all there is to the lowest animal or vegetable."
[Illustration: Multiple Cells]
"What do you mean by a single cell?"
"Just a tiny mass of jelly-like stuff that is called protoplasm. The cells grow larger and divide until there are a lot of them. That's the way plants and animals grow."
"If each is as small as those I saw under the microscope there must be billions in me!" and Ethel Blue stretched her arms to their widest extent and threw her head upwards as far as her neck would allow.
"I guess there are, young woman," and Helen went off to hang her snowy coat where it would dry before she put it in the closet.
"There'th a thnow flake that lookth like a plant!" cried Dicky who had slipped open the window wide enough to capture an especially large feather.
"It really does!" exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was nearest to her little cousin and caught a glimpse of the picture through the glass before the snow melted.
"Did it have 'root, stem and leaves'?" asked Dorothy. "That's what I always was taught made a plant--root, stem and leaves. Would Helen call a cell that you couldn't see a plant?"
"Yes," came a faint answer from the hall. "If it's living and isn't an animal it's a vegetable--though way down in the lower forms it's next to impossible to tell one from the other. There isn't any rule that doesn't have an exception."
"I should think the biggest difference would be that animals eat plants and plants eat--what do plants eat?" ended Dorothy lamely.
"That is the biggest difference," assented Helen. "Plants are fed by water and mineral substances that come from the soil directly, while animals get the mineral stuff by way of the plants."
"Father told us once about some plants that caught insects. They eat animals."
"And there are animals that eat both vegetables and animals, you and I, for instance. So you can't draw any sharp lines."
"When a plant gets out of the cell stage and has a 'root, stem and leaves' then you know it's a plant if you don't before," insisted Dorothy, determined to make her knowledge useful.
"Did any of you notice the bean I've been sprouting in my room?" asked Helen.
"I'll get it, I'll get it!" shouted Dicky.
"Trust Dicky not to let anything escape his notice!" laughed his big sister.
Dicky returned in a minute or two carrying very carefully a shallow earthenware dish from which some thick yellow-green tips were sprouting.
"I soaked some peas and beans last week," explained Helen, "and when they were tender I planted them. You see they're poking up their heads now."
[Illustration: Bean Plant]
"They don't look like real leaves," commented Ethel Blue.
"This first pair is really the two halves of the bean. They hold the food for the little plant. They're so fat and pudgy that they never do look like real leaves. In other plants where there isn't so much food they become quite like their later brothers."
"Isn't it queer that whatever makes the plant grow knows enough to send the leaves up and the roots down," said Dorothy thoughtfully.
"That's the way the life principle works," agreed Helen. "This other little plant is a pea and I want you to see if you notice any difference between it and the bean."
She pulled up the wee growth very delicately and they all bent over it as it lay in her hand.
"It hathn't got fat leaveth," cried Dicky.
[Illustration: The Pea Plant]
"Good for Dicky," exclaimed Helen. "He has beaten you girls. You see the food in the pea is packed so tight that the pea gets discouraged about trying to send up those first leaves and gives it up as a bad job. They stay underground and do their feeding from there."
"A sort of cold storage arrangement," smiled Ethel Brown.
"After these peas are a little taller you'd find if you pulled them up that the supply of food had all been used up. There will be nothing down there but a husk."
"What happens when this bean plant uses up all its food?"
"There's nothing left but a sort of skin that drops off. You can see how it works with the bean because that is done above the ground."
"Won't it hurt those plants to pull them up this way?"
"It will set them back, but I planted a good many so as to be able