Elementary plant biology
One
class embraces the functions relating to the life of the individual organism.
These functions have to do with the processes of eating, digesting,
assimilating, taking in of oxygen, producing of energy, and excreting of waste
matters. These may be called the nutritive functions, if the term is used in its
broadest sense. To the second group of activities belong the functions that have
to do with the perpetuation of the animal or plant species, and these are known
as the reproductive functions. Living organisms, whether plant, animal, or
human, may, in the third place, be considered in their relations to one another
and especially to the general welfare of mankind. Thus we may discuss the
beneficial or injurious effects, so far as man is concerned, of different kinds
of insects or of various types of bacteria; we may learn of the activities of
individual men or of groups of individuals which promote or retard the advance
of human society; or we might, if we were to carry the study still farther, even
seek to learn the ways by which the higher thoughts of mankind, as expressed in
poetry, music, and religion, affect the development of the human race.
Author(s): James Edward Peabody and Arthur Ellsworth Hunt
246 Pages