1.All boys and girls have “a sweet tooth”-that is to say,they like anything that is sweet.They do not care for their tea unless there is plenty of sugar in it.
2.Sugar comes from a plant which is called the sugar-cane.As you can see by looking at thepicture,it is like very tall,strong grass,with a large bunch of leaves and flowers at the top.
3.The sugar-cane grows in hot countries far away,where bright butterflies and gay birdsflyamong the flowers.It is so hot that you could not stay long out of doors during the hottest time of the day.
4.But the black people do not mind the heat.You see them in the picture busy cutting down the canes and tying them up in bundles.These bundles will be put into carts drawn by oxen,and taken to the sugar-mill .
5.The sugar-canes are full of a sweet juice,and it is from this juice that sugar is made.The little black boys and girls have all got a very sweet tooth,and they are fond of sucking pieces of sugar-cane.
6.In the sugar-mill the canes are squeezed between heavy rollers,until all the juice runs down into tubs below.It is then boiled and left to cool.When it cools,it becomes hard:here is sugar at last.
7.But it is still very unlike the white sugar weuse in our tea;it is brown and coarse-looking .
8.This raw sugar,as it is called,is sent in ships to our country,and it has to be refined or boiled again before we can use it.
9.It takes about twenty sugar-canes to make one pound of white sugar.Yet after all thework of the nativeswho grow the canes,and of the sailors who bring it to this land,and of the people who refine it here,we can buy this pound of sugar for two or three pence.
10.Much of the sugar we now use is made from a kind of beet-root,and not from the sugar-cane.This beet-root is white,not red like that which grows in our gardens.It grows inFranceand in other countries of Europe .
GRAMMAR EXERCISE
1.Point out the last six verbs in the lesson.
2.Give the singular of leaves,countries,oxen,natives.