"On the contrary, I don't know a thing," Van confessed laughing. "Dad has never talked to me much about his business. He is too busy to talk to anybody," he added a little dubiously. "It is usually the doctor's children who never get any medicine," chuckled Mr. Powers. "Now, I could do better than that for you. I could tell you considerable about beets if you urged me to." "I wish you would," answered the boys promptly. "There, you see, you urge me at once--you insist upon hearing! What can I do? There is no escape for me but to comply with your request. Of course I was not expecting to be called upon to speak to-day and therefore I must crave the indulgence of the audience if I am but poorly prepared," began Mr. Powers with mock gravity. "In the first place you must remember that while sugar-cane can only be cultivated in a hot, moist climate, beets grow best in the temperate zone. In the United States there is a belt of beet-sugar land two hundred miles wide that runs irregularly across the country from southern New England to the Pacific coast. Sugar-beets can, of course, be grown elsewhere, but it is in this particular region that they thrive best. If even a small proportion of this area were to be planted with beets we could get enough sugar from them to enable us to ship it to foreign markets instead of yearly importing a large amount of it. The trouble is that we Americans are so rich in land that we waste it and fail to get from it a tenth part of what we might. If you doubt that travel in Europe and see what is done with land on the other side; or, better yet, watch what some Italian in this country will get from a bit of land no bigger than your pocket handkerchief." Mr. Powers stopped a minute and looked out of the window. "The great objection our people make to growing beets is that they injure the soil so that nothing else planted afterward will flourish. Now to an extent this is true. Beets do run out the soil if they are raised year after year on the same land. If our farmers were not so slow to get a new idea they would raise beets in rotation as is done in Europe." "What do you mean by rotation?" demanded Bob.