CHAPTER XXX.

MORE ABOUT WHAT IS MADE FROM SAP.

[Sidenote: Maple-sugar.]

You have eaten maple-sugar. This comes from a tree called the sugar-maple. The sugar is in the sap, just as it is in the case of the sugar-cane. The sap is obtained early in the spring by tapping the trees, and then it is boiled down, as it is called. In this boiling the water goes off in steam and the sugar remains. The sugar-maple, then, is a sugar-factory as well as the sugar-cane.

There are many roots in which there is sugar. Sugar has often been obtained from a kind of beet called the sugar-beet. There is sugar in many fruits, making them sweet to the taste.

[Sidenote: The sugar-cane.]

Now where does the sugar in the sugar-cane, the maple, the beet, etc., come from? The sap in which the sugar is comes up from the roots. You will say, then, that the little mouths in the roots suck up sugar from the ground. But there is no sugar in the ground. No one ever found any there. Take up a handful of earth, smell of it, and taste of it. There is no sweetness in it.

[Sidenote: Some plants sugar-factories.]

Though there is no sugar in the ground, what the sugar is made from is there. This the little mouths in the root drink up, and it is made into sugar in the plant. You see, then, how true it is that the plant is a sugar-factory.

Now do you think that any man could in any way make sugar from the earth under his feet? He can no more do it than he can make a flower or a leaf.

There are a great many other things made by plants from what they suck up from the earth. I will mention some of them.

[Sidenote: Plants make starch, medicines, gums, and perfumes.]

Some plants are starch-factories. They make the starch from the sap that comes up from the root, just as the sugar is made. There is starch in every kind of grain, in potatoes, and in many other roots.

Some plants are medicine-factories. Camphor is obtained from the bark and wood of a tree. Opium is found in the different kinds of poppies. There are various bitter medicines that are found in different plants. Castor-oil is obtained from the seeds of a large plant. These, and various other medicines, are made from sap.

Some plants are gum-factories. You have sometimes seen gum on the bark of peach-trees and cherry-trees, when the bark has been wounded in some way. Now there are some kinds of trees in which there is a great deal of gum. The India rubber is a gum that is obtained from some kinds of trees in warm climates. When the bark of these trees is wounded this gum oozes out. It is collected as it flows. It is dried in smoke, and this gives it its dark appearance.

Many plants are perfume-factories, as I told you in Chapter V. The perfumes are made most often in the flowers, but they are sometimes made in the leaves and other parts. You know how fragrant the leaves of the geranium are. Even wood is sometimes fragrant. The sandal-wood is very much so.

Some plants are color-makers. They not only make colors for their own use--that is, to color their flowers--but they make them for us to use. Many of our dyes with which we color cloths come from plants. They are made in the plants from the sap that comes up from the ground. It seems strange that the blue indigo should be made out of what a plant drinks up from the brown, dull earth. But so it is.

[Sidenote: The great variety of things made from sap.]

Now just think over the various things that are made from the sap in plants. There are wood, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, thorns, perfumes, colorings, sugar, starch, gum, various medicines, etc. And then there are many other things that I have not mentioned. How strange it is that so many and such different things can be made from what the plants suck up out of the earth! As you look at the ground under your feet, you can hardly believe that so much can be got out of it. It is the busy little mouths in the roots that get from it what is needed to make all these different things.

_Questions._--What is said of the sugar-maple? What is said of sugar in some roots and fruits? As there is no sugar in the ground, how does it get into plants? Can any body make sugar from earth? What plants are starch-factories? Mention some medicines made in plants. What is said about plants that are gum-makers? What is said about perfumes being made in plants? What about colors? What is said about indigo? Mention now all the things that you can think of that are made from the sap in plants.