"It is a good thing for us that some of the oxygen does escape into the
air for we need it. So you see we, in our respiration, and the plant, in
its breathing, are doing each other a good turn.

"Of course, there is the dilute food from the soil, which is largely
mineral matter and water. The chlorophyll bodies work away on these
minerals, and make them into foods. A great body of water, as I have
said before, passes out of the plant through the stomata.

"I have told you a thing that the plant can do which we are not capable
of doing. A plant takes a mineral and makes it over into food. You and
I, unless we happen to be circus glass-eaters, are not built to do this
work. But the vegetables which we eat do the work for us.

"A great deal of plant food is in the form of sugars and starches. I
remember Katharine and Peter told me last winter that in their
physiology they learned how sugars and starches were made in our own
bodies. And lo and behold, the geranium can do a similar thing.

"Some plants store up lots of starch, as the potato. Others store
quantities of sugar, as the Southern sugar cane and the beet. Wonderful?
Well, I guess it is. If we could hear and see all the work these
energetic little chlorophyll bodies are doing, we should be amazed.

"You will remember that I told you some plants could take the very
necessary chemical nitrogen from the air; most of them, however, must
get it from the soil. And so again this from the soil solution is worked
over into available food.

"After all we must not fail to see that water is most important. It