If A is a small category and E a Grothendieck topos, the Kan extension LanF of a flat functor F : A → E along any functor A → D preserves whatever finite limits may exist in D; this is a well known fundamental result in topos theory. We shall present a metamathematical argument to derive out of this some other left exactness results, for Kan extensions with values in a (possibly large) site E. ...