Natural Wonders

Part 1

THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARY

NATURAL WONDERS

THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARY

NATURAL WONDERS

EDWIN TENNEY BREWSTER

Garden City — New York

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

1928

COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

PREFACE

No small part of our fundamental knowledge concerning the world of nature has been put into shape for comprehension by children, time out of mind. “The Swiss Family Robinson” is half natural history, even if not always of an especially convincing kind; and science of all sorts, good and bad together, makes up no small portion of Jules Verne’s uncounted tales. “Cousin Cramchild’s Conversations,” if there had been such a book, would have embodied the Victorian idea of what every child should know about his universe; while of actual books, we elders recall at once Abbott’s “Science for the Young,” and the half dozen contributions to juvenile knowledge of John Trowbridge and “Arabella Buckley.” Even the great Ostwald, within the decade, has made a child’s book on chemistry after the old conversational form.

In school, moreover, between his geography and his nature study, the modern child becomes acquainted with not a little modern science, while in most of our states a detailed acquaintance, by no means always scientific, with his own physiology is required by law of every public school pupil. One thing with another, today’s child of eight or ten is supposed to know a little of physics and of biology, together with a good deal in a general way of earth science and the elements of human physiology.

Naturally, there are excellent texts and reading books in all these fields. So far as I am aware, however, the present work is the first attempt to set before young readers some knowledge of certain loosely related but very modern topics, commonly grouped together under the name, General Physiology. It is, in short, an attempt to lead children of eight or ten, first to ask and then to answer, the question: What have I in common with other living things, and how do I differ from them? Incidentally, in addition, I have attempted to provide a foundation on which a perplexed but serious-minded parent can himself base an answer to several puzzling questions which all children ask—most especially to that most difficult of them all: By what process of becoming did I myself finally appear in this world?

How far I have succeeded with either task, I leave to the mothers who shall read this book aloud.

E. T. B.

Andover, Massachusetts

NATURAL WONDERS

CONTENTS

Chap. I — How The Chicken Gets Inside The Egg Chap. II — Some Other Sorts of Eggs Chap. III — Little Fishes in The Brook Chap. IV — Of Plants’ Eggs Chap. V — What Little Boys And Girls Are Made Of Chap. VI — More About Living Bricks Chap. VII — How Much Of Us Is Alive Chap. VIII — How We Grow Chap. IX — How We Grow Up Chap. X — How We Grow Old Chap. XI — Why We Grow At All Chap. XII — Things That Do Not Have To Be Learned Chap. XIII — Why We Like Certain Things Chap. XIV — Animals’ Games Chap. XV — Some Instincts Of Chicks And Kittens Chap. XVI — Certain Stupidities Of Animals Chap. XVII — How We Differ From The Animals Chap. XVIII — Something More About Speech And Thinking Chap. XIX — Why Most Of Us Are Right-Handed Chap. XX — Where We Do Our Thinking Chap. XXI — Where Some Of The Animals Do Their Thinking Chap. XXII — What Plants Know Chap. XXIII — What Plants Can Do Chap. XXIV — Some Plant-Like Doings Of Animals Chap. XXV — The Five Senses And The Other Five Chap. XXVI — Eyes Chap. XXVII — Seeing And Believing Chap. XXVIII — Some Other Senses Chap. XXIX — The Sight And Hearing Of Ants Chap. XXX — Ants’ Noses Chap. XXXI — Some Other Eyes And Ears Chap. XXXII — Having Senses And Using Them Chap. XXXIII — Seeing In The Mind’s Eye Chap. XXXIV — Ear Minds And Others Chap. XXXV — Living Automobiles Chap. XXXVI — Air And Fuel Chap. XXXVII — Men In Glass Boxes Chap. XXXVIII — Of Sugar And Other Poisons Chap. XXXIX — Snake Venoms And Others Chap. XL — Of Measles And Rusty Nails Chap. XLI — The Great War Chap. XLII — More About The Great War Chap. XLIII — Living Apothecary Shops Chap. XLIV — What Becomes Of The Tadpoles Chap. XLV — Nature’s Repair Shop Chap. XLVI — Little Monsters Chap. XLVII — How The Animals Keep Their Tools Sharp Chap. XLVIII — Why The Blood Is Salt Chap. XLIX — Horses’ Fingers Chap. L — How The Elephant Got His Trunk Chap. LI — Something Nobody Understands

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

The Robin Moth

Full Page Illustrations

How the Chicken Gets Inside the Egg

Seeds That Have Plumes and Wings

Part 2

The Star-fish Has Eyes on His Arms; The Slug Also Has Eyes on His Horns; The Snail Has Eyes on His Two Longer Horns

Lymph Cells or White Blood Corpuscles

Extinct Reptiles Which Look Like a Mixture of Alligator, Rhinoceros and Kangaroo but Their Bones Were More Like the Bones of Birds

In the Text

A Sea-Urchin

Eggs of Perch After Egg Laying

Salmon with Yolk Sac

The Bean Egg Changes to a Bean Plant

Living Bricks Which Make the Skin of a Leaf

Cells of the Inner Tree Pulp

Cells of the Outer Skin of a Leaf

Cells of a Pond Scum Much Enlarged

Three Sorts of Infusoria Much Enlarged

Some Jelly-fish Grown on Stalks and Some Swim About in the Sea

The Cob Is the Mother of the Corn

Pollen Grains Much Enlarged

A Right-handed Person Has All His Thinking Spots on the Left Side of His Brain

A Sea-anemone

More Common Infusorians, Much Enlarged

The Leaf Has a Spiral Joint on Which to Turn

Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions

Ear of a Mole Cricket on the Front Leg

Back of the Frog’s Eyes Are the Ear Drums

A Newt

Part 3

The Leaves Take in Air Through Breathing Holes

In Place of Lungs, Insects Have Breathing Holes

The Minute Animal Which Causes the “Sleeping Sickness”

The Caterpillar Changes into a Moth

Accidents to Growing Fish Eggs

A Two-headed Turtle, a Crab with an Eye on One Side and a Feeler on the Other, and a Child With Two Great Toes on Each Foot

The Fangs of a Rattlesnake

Early Man Scratched Pictures of the Mammoth on Pieces of Its Own Bones

The Elephant Has Lost the Front of His Face

Our Single-toed Horse Has Been Made Over from a Four-toed One

How the Chicken Gets Inside the Egg

There is no more fascinating sight to be seen anywhere than an incubator full of eggs just as the chickens begin to hatch out. You look through the little glass window in the side and see, at first, only rows of clean white eggs, dozens upon dozens of them, looking as if they were all ready to go into the family ice-chest or to be made into omelets for breakfast.

But they are not. First you begin to hear faint scratchy sounds. Pretty soon, here and there, a hole breaks through the broad end of an egg, and a tiny bill sticks out. The little chick is packed so tightly into the egg that it can move only its head. So it pecks and pecks; and stops to rest; and pecks again; and the hole in the shell gets larger and larger; until by and by, the egg cracks open, and a brand-new chicken draws its first long breath and looks out into the world.

After that, the chick usually takes a long rest, for it is pretty tired. When it feels better, it begins to move its legs and wings, and a half-hour or more after it first began work, it gets clear of the shell and stands up on wabbly legs, wet, bedraggled, weary, as disconsolate looking a little object as can well be imagined. Shortly, however, the feathers, which at first were plastered tight to the skin, dry off and fluff out, the legs get steady, and soon there is running about a rolypoly yellow chick, seemingly at least twice as large as the egg which held him only an hour before. Truly it is a wonderful sight, five hundred eggs turning into little chicks in an incubator, for all the world like the kernels of corn changing to pop-corn in the popper.

But wonderful as it is to see the way a chick comes out of an egg, it is still more wonderful to see the way it gets in. A fresh, new-laid egg has no chick inside. After it has been kept warm three weeks, it has—all ready to come out. The question is how the chicken got there.

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