PURIFIER OF NATURE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20728, 11 February 1939, Page 27 (Supplement)

PURIFIER OF NATURE

WHAT THE LEAF DOES The green leaf is the great purifier of nature. This is one of the most important offices it was created to fulfil. Without green leaves, carbonic acid gases would accumulate to such an extent that animal life would be impossible. If only 10 per cent of carbonic acid gas accumulated in the atmosphere, it would destroy every animal that breathed it. Nothing is more wonderful in nature than the balance which is kept up between the animals that contaminate the air and the plants that purify it—the* refuse of one kingdom being the food of the other. The green leaf, by retaining the constituents of sunlight, is the source of all life of thfe world. By its agency alone inert organic matter is changed into vegetation which is the starting point of all life. Nowhere else in the world does this important process take place. The green leaf alone conserves and creates —everything else consumes or destroys. The quiet sunbeam, working by the most delicate and wonderful of chemical reactions in the leaf itself, has created for us our food and fuel. The green leaf is the type upon which the forms of all life are moulded. All the parts of a plant are but modifications of the leaf. The stem is a leaf rolled up tight, the blossom is a leaf transfigured for a higher purpose, the fruit is a leaf changed into a receptacle for the seed, and the seed itself is a leaf packed together in a case to protect it, from Unfavourable weather and furnished with a .sufficient amount of food for its unfolding and growth into a new plant, in more favourable circumstances. Great results cannot be achieved •at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.—Coleridge.