ing, plant or animal, and they are never green. They do not have stems or roots or leaves or flowers or fruit or seeds. Any tiniest cell of a fungus, if put into the right soil will grow and multiply cells, just as the yeast plant does in the batter. It is the very lowest order of plants.
But it became a higher kind of plant when it had to. Fungi like the dark. The first plants were born in the dark of deep sea water. You know earthquakes lifted the floor of the ocean. The plants were lifted, too. As the plants came near the surface of the water they got more light. Do you know what sunlight does to plants? Did you ever find a board lying on the grass? The next time you find one, lift it. You will find that the grass under the board has turned yellow or white. Now, you know that a part of the grass wasn't born green and part of it white. The outside leaves of a head of cabbage or lettuce are green, while the inside leaves, shut away in the dark, are white. Sunshine turns plants green. Nature took as long a step upward as the giant who wore seven league boots, when the first sea plants got enough sunlight to turn green. Green plants were lifted clear out of the fungi class. They began to earn their own living for one thing, and they learned to do a lot of things.
Now, nature might have made one kind of cell and magic jelly for the fungi, and another kind for green plants, but she didn't. She seems to like to see how many different things she can make of a few simple things. All the plants and animals begin to grow in a little cell of protoplasm. So, when we understand the fungi, the simplest of all plants, we have learned the A. B. C.'s of life. Knowing the letters, we can spell the words and read the story of the living world. (See Fungi, Yeast, Mould, Mildew, Rust, Smut, Mushrooms, Toadstools, etc.)
