Yet, after all, each kind reaches the right place. All the raw sap is cooked, all the food sap builds the plant. Here it builds root, there leaf, there stem, there flower, or seed. Did you ever notice how fast a plant will grow? Choose out some flower or weed. Watch it. See how the tiny stem becomes tall and stout. See how the little leaves grow large and thick. A sunflower is a fine plant to watch in this way. FOOTNOTES: [6] Nature Reader, No. 1, pp. 29, 65. LESSON VI. THE FOOD OF PLANTS. You saw how in the bean a deal of food had been stored up for the young plant. So in the tuber of the potato, and the seed of corn, food is stored up. This food is stored up so that the young plant can grow in the dark, before it gets to air and light. Also it can grow before its root-mouths are able to drink for it. The food so stored up is mostly starch. It is much such starch as your mother uses for the clothes. Starch so laid up in the plant can turn sweet and change to sugar. The beet root has much sugar in it. A pea has sugar in it. So has corn. In the sugar-cane there is so much sugar that the cane tastes very sweet when you chew it. The sap of one kind of maple tree has much sugar in it. Did you ever boil down maple sap to sugar? In some thick plants, like the cactus, much food stuff stays in the stems. Usually it goes to all parts of the plant. The leaves, as the thinnest parts, keep the least. In the beet, carrot, potato, and others, much food is stored in what we call the root. This becomes a cellar or pantry, full of laid-up food. As the food goes about the plant to build it, the little pipes or cells growing larger divide off into other cells. They set up new walls. The plant becomes larger as its cells increase. We will not try to explain this further to you. You might think it dull. Perhaps you would like to know what it is that the plant drinks out of the soil? The dirt--as you call the “top-crust” of the earth--is made partly of mineral matter. Men and animals cannot eat mineral matter. But the sap carries this to the leaves. It is not in a solid but in a liquid form. Every leaf is a little kitchen where, with the sun for a fire, the earthy stuff is cooked and changed into vegetables.[7] Now they are good food for animals. The minerals carried in grass and clover are eaten by the ox and the cow, and so are turned into good beef and milk. The wheat is partly made of mineral substances changed to plant stuff. Wheat is made into bread. The bread feeds boys and girls. So the beef and butter that were grass and, before that earthy matter, and the wheat that was once partly mineral, turns at last into rosy flesh and blood for you who read this lesson. Well! Well! There are many wonders in this world!