If any man should tell you that he could make a brick and a piece of cloth, with beautifully colored figures on it, from the same thing, you would say he was crazy. But there is not as much difference between the brick and the cloth as there is between rude bark and a flower made from the same sap. The Creator does, in the most common plants and trees, what man can not equal in any way.
There are some things made from sap that I have said nothing about as yet. There are many bitter, and sweet, and sour things made from sap. Sometimes sweet and bitter things are made at the same time from the same sap. You see this in the orange. From the same sap that comes to the orange through the stem are made the sweet juice and the sharp and bitter peel.
The sugar-cane.
Almost all our sugar comes from the sugar-cane. This is shaped like the stalks of corn. The sugar is made from the sap that comes up in the pipes of the cane from the ground. The cane, then, is really a sugar-factory. Man does not make the sugar, but it is made for him in the cane. It is in the juice of the cane. This juice is mostly sugar and water. In making sugar, as it is called, the sugar is not made. It is only separated from the water and other things with which it is mixed in the cane.
How the sugar is obtained from it.
The sugar is made from the cane in this way. The cane is cut into pieces, and these are put into a mill where they are pressed between iron rollers. The juice squeezed out in the mill runs off into a large reservoir or tub in the boiling-house. It is now put into boilers and boiled down. In this boiling the water goes off in steam, but the sugar remains. When it is boiled down to a sirup it is put into very large wooden trays called coolers. Here the sirup becomes sugar, because the rest of the water goes off in the air.
The way in which sugar is made perfectly white, it is said, was discovered in a curious way. A hen that had gone through a clay mud-puddle went with her muddy feet into a sugar-house. She left her tracks on a pile of sugar. It was observed by some one that wherever her tracks were the sugar was whitened. This led to some experiments. The result was, that wet clay came to be used in refining sugar. It is used in this way. The sugar is put into earthen jars shaped as you see the sugar-loaves are. The large ends are upward. The small ends have a hole in them. Here is a picture of one of these jars. The clay is put on the top of the sugar in the large end of the jar, and it is kept wet. The moisture goes down through the sugar, and drops from the hole in the small end of the jar. This makes the sugar perfectly white.
How a discovery was made about whitening sugar.
This discovery shows how much a little looking and thinking will together do. What the hen did was a small thing. One would hardly suppose that any thing could be learned from a hen’s tracks. Most people would have scraped off the mud from the pile of sugar, and thought nothing more of it. But the man who saw the tracks was in the habit of thinking about what he saw. And so he discovered in that hen’s tracks a very useful fact. If you always think about what you see you may some time be a discoverer too. At any rate, that is the way to learn. And it is to help you in learning to think about what you see that I have written this book.
Questions.—What things are made from sap? Mention some things very different from each other that are made from the same sap. Give the comparison about brick and cloth. What is said about the orange? What about the sugar-cane? How is sugar made from the sugar-cane? Of what use is the boiling? Tell how one way of purifying sugar was discovered. What does this discovery show?
CHAPTER XXX.
MORE ABOUT WHAT IS MADE FROM SAP.
Maple-sugar.
You have eaten maple-sugar. This comes from a tree called the sugar-maple. The sugar is in the sap, just as it is in the case of the sugar-cane. The sap is obtained early in the spring by tapping the trees, and then it is boiled down, as it is called. In this boiling the water goes off in steam and the sugar remains. The sugar-maple, then, is a sugar-factory as well as the sugar-cane.
There are many roots in which there is sugar. Sugar has often been obtained from a kind of beet called the sugar-beet. There is sugar in many fruits, making them sweet to the taste.
The sugar-cane.
Now where does the sugar in the sugar-cane, the maple, the beet, etc., come from? The sap in which the sugar is comes up from the roots. You will say, then, that the little mouths in the roots suck up sugar from the ground. But there is no sugar in the ground. No one ever found any there. Take up a handful of earth, smell of it, and taste of it. There is no sweetness in it.
Some plants sugar-factories.
Though there is no sugar in the ground, what the sugar is made from is there. This the little mouths in the root drink up, and it is made into sugar in the plant. You see, then, how true it is that the plant is a sugar-factory.
Now do you think that any man could in any way make sugar from the earth under his feet? He can no more do it than he can make a flower or a leaf.
There are a great many other things made by plants from what they suck up from the earth. I will mention some of them.
Plants make starch, medicines, gums, and perfumes.
Some plants are starch-factories. They make the starch from the sap that comes up from the root, just as the sugar is made. There is starch in every kind of grain, in potatoes, and in many other roots.
Some plants are medicine-factories. Camphor is obtained from the bark and wood of a tree. Opium is found in the different kinds of poppies. There are various bitter medicines that are found in different plants. Castor-oil is obtained from the seeds of a large plant. These, and various other medicines, are made from sap.
Some plants are gum-factories. You have sometimes seen gum on the bark of peach-trees and cherry-trees, when the bark has been wounded in some way. Now there are some kinds of trees in which there is a great deal of gum. The India rubber is a gum that is obtained from some kinds of trees in warm climates. When the bark of these trees is wounded this gum oozes out. It is collected as it flows. It is dried in smoke, and this gives it its dark appearance.
Many plants are perfume-factories, as I told you in Chapter V. The perfumes are made most often in the flowers, but they are sometimes made in the leaves and other parts. You know how fragrant the leaves of the geranium are. Even wood is sometimes fragrant. The sandal-wood is very much so.
Some plants are color-makers. They not only make colors for their own use—that is, to color their flowers—but they make them for us to use. Many of our dyes with which we color cloths come from plants. They are made in the plants from the sap that comes up from the ground. It seems strange that the blue indigo should be made out of what a plant drinks up from the brown, dull earth. But so it is.
The great variety of things made from sap.
Now just think over the various things that are made from the sap in plants. There are wood, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, thorns, perfumes, colorings, sugar, starch, gum, various medicines, etc. And then there are many other things that I have not mentioned. How strange it is that so many and such different things can be made from what the plants suck up out of the earth! As you look at the ground under your feet, you can hardly believe that so much can be got out of it. It is the busy little mouths in the roots that get from it what is needed to make all these different things.
Questions.—What is said of the sugar-maple? What is said of sugar in some roots and fruits? As there is no sugar in the ground, how does it get into plants? Can any body make sugar from earth? What plants are starch-factories? Mention some medicines made in plants. What is said about plants that are gum-makers? What is said about perfumes being made in plants? What about colors? What is said about indigo?