MANUAL OF NATURE STUDY. 
83 
not be taken into the system any other way. So 
it is with the stomata of the leaves. They breathe in 
order to get carbon from the air. The plant needs 
carbon to make sugar and starch. In fact carbon 
enters into the structure of woody fiber, bark and 
everything about the plant. It is carbon that 
makes wood such a useful article for heating pur¬ 
poses in our stoves and furnaces. It is carbon 
that makes beans, corn, wheat, potatoes, etc., use¬ 
ful foods. Thus it is clear that carbon must get 
into the plant some way, but how ? Carbon is a 
solid and can no more than sand be dissolved in 
water. But old Mother Nature provides a remedy. 
She knows that oxygen has easy access to the leaf 
factory, coming and going continually. She also 
knows that oxygen is in love with carbon and if per¬ 
mitted to do so, the two will join hands. 
In this union carbon is no longer a solid, but a 
gas, and in this condition effects an easy entrance 
through the portals of stomata to the plant-sub¬ 
stance factory. Old Mother Nature here turns 
sunshine loose. Sunshine, like a jealous lover, 
separates the newly wedded pair, and, leading oxy¬ 
gen out through the upper portals in the free open 
air, leaves carbon a prisoner in the plant-substance 
factory to work, and form new associates in the fiber, 
tissues, and seeds of the plant. Oxygen and carbon, 
