VEGETABLES. 81 



for it actually performs this office. In the dry seed 

 there is no sugar. There is starch, a substance fami- 

 liar to all; there is gluten, the substance which remains 

 in one's teeth after long chewing a kernel of wheat; 

 and there is albumen, a limpid substance, which is 

 recognized in the white of an egg ; but there is no 



134. If you taste a corn of wheat in its dry state, 

 you perceive no sweetness ; but if you taste it after 

 germination has commenced, you find it sensibly sweet. 

 The same change takes place in cooking flour. The 

 flour, unless it has been damaged, possesses little or 

 no sweetness. But when you wet it, and then bake 

 it, a part of its starch is turned into sugar, and your 

 bread is sweet. 



•135. As infants delight in sweets, and as the great 

 Designer of all things has caused a peculiar kind of 

 sugar to be dissolved in the food destined for their 

 first nourishment ; so the infant plant requires its pap 

 to be sweetened, and the wise Designer has made pro- 

 vision for the exigency. True, he has not deposited 

 sugar in the seed ; for sugar, being soluble, would be 

 dissolved, and washed out by the winter rains ; but 

 instead of sugar, which is soluble, and consequently 

 not permanent, he has deposited starch, which is in- 

 soluble and somewhat permanent ; and has at the same 

 time made provision for its transformation into sugar, 

 through the agency of diastase, at the very time when 

 wanted by the young plant. 

 4* 



