AT OUR HOMES 229 



This stimulates a desirable activity of the muscles of the 

 digestive tract. 



In the starch of potato, rice, corn (maize), and the various 

 small grains used by man as foods, there is appropriated 

 by him what the parent plant had stored for the use of the 

 young plants of a succeeding generation. In the develop- 

 ment of a young plant in the process of germination, this 

 stored starch becomes changed into soluble grape sugar. 

 The chemist and the botanist are baffled in their understand- 

 ing of just how these changes are accomplished. 



The common potato is largely starch and water. Unlike 

 the grains, which are seeds containing the embryos of new 

 plants, the potato is considered an underground stem very 

 much shortened and thickened. In it there is a storage of 

 starch to start out the new growths of potato. The "eyes" 

 of the potato are buds from which are developed roots and 

 stems. These as new plants depend for their first growth 

 upon the stored food of the tuber (thickened stem). 



The beet is type of a class of plants which store a food 

 supply for the next season's growth in their roots. These are 

 much thickened as a result of this storage. These beet 

 roots when set out a second season grow, blossom, and 

 produce seeds for the perpetuation of their species. This 

 growth of stalk and flower and seeds makes use of the stored 

 food of the past season's growth. In the case of the sugar 

 beet the stored sugar is chemically like that in the stems of 

 sugar cane and sorghum. There is enough of it to make its 

 extraction from the sliced beet roots profitable. Enormous 

 quantities of beet sugar are produced in Germany, France, 

 and the United States. 



In the seeds of corn and cotton and flax, as well as in cer- 

 tain fruits such as olives and various kinds of nuts, a supply 

 of food in the form of oil is stored for the young plant 

 when germination shall occur. In other cases as in peas, 



