Biology, then, is the study of organic, or living things, and living things include both plants and animals. At first one would say that plants and animals have very little similarity and that it would be difficult to study them together, but let us see if this is true.
Nutrition. First, both plants and animals are alive and grow in size and that means that they both need food. A cat, for instance, has to eat, and a geranium has to have earth, in order to live. The cat uses organic food and the plant inorganic. The cat obtains its food by means of its claws and teeth, while the food-getting of the plant is done largely by the roots. They are both dependent on food.
After they get their food, both plants and animals have to put it into liquid form in their bodies. We call that process digestion. Then the digested food undergoes a change by which the milk or meat actually becomes part of the cat, while the plant foods become part of the geranium. This is a very wonderful process and is called assimilation. (Look up this word in the dictionary and see if you can tell why it is used in this way.)
Food-getting, digestion, and assimilation together make up the process of nutrition (getting nourishment). The animal and the plant have this process in common.
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