ym 
LEAVES ARE SUGAR FACTORIES 
I SN’T IT ODD that every green leaf in the world, sit¬ 
ting out in the sunshine, is found, when its work is 
understood, to be a sugar factory! 
Food, of course, is as important to the growth of plants 
as it is to that of animals. Plants starve if they do not 
get it. It takes a considerable amount of food to build a 
great forest or a field full of corn. 
When search is made to find out where that food comes 
from, it is found that some of the raw materials of it are 
sucked up by the roots from the ground and others are 
taken from the air. But they are put together in the 
proper preparation of plant food by green leaves in the 
sunshine. 
This food is chiefly sugar. The leaves make it out of 
two materials that are ready at hand. The first of these 
materials is water. So, to begin with, plants must have 
water if they are to grow. The roots draw water from the 
ground and take it up to the leaves. Water, as every¬ 
body knows, is made of two elements, hydrogen and 
oxygen. 
Sugar, the chemist will tell you, is made of three ele¬ 
ments: hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. The leaf, in order 
to manufacture sugar, has only to find carbon, since it 
already has hydrogen and oxygen in the form of water. 
When animals breathe, they give off carbon dioxide. 
When coal burns, the carbon of which it is made unites 
16 
