flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he makes the apples redden,
too, and the wheat-ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the
ground, and the peas and beans and melons and strawberries and
raspberries above it. All these things that feed you and keep you
healthy are grown by the heat of the sun. So if it were not for the
sunlight we should all starve to death.

While sunlight is pouring down from the sun to the earth, it is
warming and cleaning the air, burning up any poisonous gases, or
germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising.
If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an
open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward
from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather
fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go
sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air
around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor
"drafts" are made that we call _winds_.

These winds keep the air moving about in all directions constantly,
like water in a boiling pot, and in this way keep it fresh and pure
and clean. If it were not for this, the air would become foul and damp
and stagnant, like the water in a ditch or marshy pool. So the Sun
God, as our ancestors in the Far East used to call him thousands of
years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but keeps the air fit
for us to breathe.

In still another way the sun is one of our best friends; for his rays
have the wonderful power, not only of causing plants that supply us
with food--the Green Plants, as we call them--to grow and flourish,
but at the same time of withering and killing certain plants that do