132 LUTHER BURBANK 



OTHER PLANT JUICES 



The extraordinary plant laboratories that 

 manufacture sugars out of water and air are 

 capable of transforming these sugars into many 

 unusual substances, differing in character with 

 the constitution of the particular plant. 



There are certain classes of juicy exudates, 

 however, which appear to have characteristics 

 that make them useful to plants of many types. 

 Prominent among these are the milky juices 

 that when dried constitute rubber, and the 

 resinous ones that constitute tars and resins 

 and turpentine. 



Nothing could be physically much more dis- 

 similar than a piece of rubber and a teaspoonful 

 of oil of turpentine. 



But the chemist tells us that each of these sub- 

 stances is composed exclusively of the two ele- 

 ments carbon and hydrogen; the only difference 

 being that the turpentine molecule has ten atoms 

 of carbon and sixteen of hydrogen, whereas the 

 molecule of rubber has eight carbon atoms and 

 seven atoms of hydrogen. 



Just how the elements are compounded, and 

 just why they should make up substances of such 

 unique characteristics when brought together in 

 these particular proportions, even the chemist 



