Tracy Thompson, age 11, of Whonnock, B.C., Canada, for her question:

Are there more plants or animals?

The trees in the forest outnumber the animals that live there. The tufted shrubs of the praire outnumber the prairie animals. The tiny specks of floating seaweeds outnumber the teeming fishes. However, this is counting the separate plants arid animals one by one. It takes many tufts of grass to feed one rabbit and raany trees to supply enough food for an elephant. But there is, of course, another way to count up the plants and animals. We can count them by species, which means the different kinds of plants and animals. By this system, the animals .'outnumber the plants. Scientists have named and classified well over a million different species of the animal kingdom. So far, only about 350,000 different plant species have been named and classified.