There is more to starch than you ever dreamed of. Really and truly, if it were not for starch you would not be alive to-day, and I would not,—in short nobody would. All our lives depend upon starch. So when we come right down to the truth, our lives depend upon chlorophyll, because that makes all the starch there is in the world. You do not think our lives depend upon starch? Wait and see. Chlorophyll makes starch. Never forget that as long as you live. Forget your own name if you want to, but do not forget that chlorophyll makes starch. You see starch is the raw material of which plants are made. After the chlorophyll has made starch, the starch is dissolved, or _melted_ you would likely say, and so is carried all over the plant in the sap. Some parts of the plant change the starch into sugar; for sugar is made of the same things as starch, only in it the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are put together a little differently, just as you can make several kinds of cake from flour, butter, sugar, milk, and eggs by stirring them together differently and mixing them in different proportions. You cannot make cake without flour, sugar, eggs, and milk, and usually butter. But if you have these ingredients you can make a great many kinds of cake. Starch is the material of which the plant makes a large part of its substance. Some parts of the plant that need sugar make it from the starch, and we find more or less sugar in all plants. There is, as you know, a great deal in the nectar of flowers, but other parts of the plant need it too, so sugar is a matter of importance to plants as well as to people. But sugar, remember, is made generally from starch, no matter in what part of the plant we find it. [Illustration: [Leaves]] The sweet sap in the sugar maple is made from starch; so is the sweet juice of the sugar beet and of the sugar cane. All the sugar we use, excepting that in homeopathic pills, is made from starch. The sweet juice of fruits, berries, apples, peaches, oranges, contains sugar, which the plant has made from starch. In green fruit the starch has not yet been changed into sugar, so it is not pleasant to the taste. Some parts of the plant need thick walls, like wood or bark, and these are made by the protoplasm from starch; they are not sugar, however, but a very tough, firm substance so unlike sugar that you wonder how it can be made of the same materials. But it is, for starch is the substance from which both are made. There are other things in the plant besides starch, and there are things which are not made from starch; for instance, there are acids and minerals of different kinds and there is protoplasm, but the greater part of every green plant is formed from starch. Some plants make more starch than they need at once, so they store it away for future use, just as people raise extra supplies of wheat and corn, and store them away until they want them.