Part 39

With a mental picture of this vast country thus stripped with carpet, you wonder if there is that much carpet in the world. It seems incredible that this great sweep of land could be measured with carpet--and yet enough material comes every year from the looms of one carpet factory alone in this country to strip the United States East and West, and North and South as indicated above.]

The weave is now completed; the rug comes out. But it is rough and has to be finished. It is passed through a machine that removes the roughness of the face as a lawn-mower cuts away the top-grass. The ends are finished, and the carpet is complete.

~SOME DESIGNS STAMPED ON YARN BEFORE WEAVING~

The pattern of tapestry carpet is obtained by printing the colors to appear in the design on the yarn which forms the face before the weaving is started, by means of large drums. After all rugs leave the weave-shop a force of skilled women examine them carefully to make sure that there are no defects. Every yard of the annual output of carpet and rugs is inspected five times before it leaves the factory.

Why Do I Yawn?

When you yawn, you do so because you have not been breathing quite properly and for some reason or other your blood supply has not been getting sufficient oxygen through the air which has been taken into your lungs. Nature’s way, in this instance, is to call for a big intake of air all at one time, and since it is important at such times that a large quantity of air should be supplied to the lungs at once, nature has so arranged matters that certain muscles shall cause you to open your mouth wide and take in as much air as you can at one time, and also has arranged so that it is almost impossible to keep from yawning when the demand for it is once made. The yawn is controlled by a part of our nerve structure which looks after the breathing apparatus.

The satisfaction we feel after a wholesome yawn is due to the fact that having replied to nature’s demand that we bring in more air, our blood secures the oxygen which it needs and we feel the effect of better blood in our arteries at once.

A peculiar thing about the process of yawning is that one person in a room yawning will quite likely set all or nearly all the others to yawning also. There seems to be no explanation of this excepting that when a number of people are in one room and one of them begins to yawn, the others do so, not because they perceive the first yawn so much as the probable fact that the air in the room has become so poor that there is not enough good air for all the people in it, breathing normally, and many of them are forced to yawn at about the same time.

Where Do Living Things Come From?

This is a big subject, but a very interesting one. To understand it fully we must begin at the very beginning of the world.

God made first of all the rocks, the mountains, the sun, the moon, the stars, the soil, and put the water in the lakes, rivers and oceans. This took a long time, but they had to be there before the living things could begin to be.

What is Inorganic Matter?

This thing we have spoken of is called inorganic matter, which means “without life,” and everything in the world which has no life is called inorganic matter. These things do not die, and for that reason do not have to be replaced. The form and appearance of inorganic matter and its location is often changed by man or other causes, but even when man burns the coal which he has dug up out of the ground in the furnace, no part of it is destroyed. Some of it is turned into smoke and gas and some of it is turned into ashes, while every other particle which went to make up the coal originally is still in existence. It remains as inorganic matter in some form or other.

Where Did Life Begin on Earth?

After the inorganic things had been made and the earth was ready for life, the different kinds of living things which we find on the earth began to exist. These are called organic objects, which means objects “with life.” The first living things to appear were the bushes, the grass, the garden vegetables, the flowers, trees, and all the kinds of life which we ordinarily think of as growing things.

This division of living things makes up what we call the vegetable kingdom, and in a general way of classing it is the kind of life which cannot move about from place to place and which has not a sense of feeling, or any of the other senses, seeing, hearing, tasting or smelling.

After this division of life had been established the world was ready for the other and more important form of life--the fishes, the birds, cats, dogs, horses, cows, with others that we call domestic animals, and also the lions, tigers, elephants and others which constitute the division of wild animals.

This kind of life was given some or all of the five senses, but not all classes of animal life possess all these senses. Some of the lower forms of animal life, like the oysters, clams, in the fish family, cannot see, hear, smell or taste. They can only feel; others are able to do more of these things, and many have all of the five senses.

When Did Man Begin to Live?

Man was not created until all the other living things on earth had been started, and he was given additional powers so that he might become the ruler of all the other living things, principally because he was given a brain with power to think, reason and originate.

Why Must Life Be Reproduced?

Life must be reproduced because living things die. They have power to live only for a certain length of time. The other life in the world is used to provide food for man, and if there were no way of reproducing life it would not be long before man had eaten all the vegetables and the animals too, and would himself then starve to death.

To avoid such a calamity God put into each living thing, both vegetables and animals, a power to cause other things of the same kind as itself to grow. This is called the power of reproduction. With this power each kind of living thing can bring other specimens of the same kind into the world and each kind of living thing can do this without aid from any other kind of life.

The trees, the flowers, and other kinds of vegetable life would reproduce themselves without the aid of man, as would also the fishes and other kinds of animal life. Man, however, just to have things conveniently at hand, uses his power over other life to cause his vegetables to grow near where he lives, and keep the animals which he wishes to use as food in some place where he doesn’t have to hunt for them every time he wishes meat for his table. This, however, he does only with the animals which he has domesticated or tamed. When he wants meat from the animals which are still wild he must hunt for them as he used to do.

Each kind of life has the power, however, to reproduce only its own kind. If you plant a peach stone you will sooner or later have a peach tree which will bear peaches, and these peaches from the young tree will look and taste just like the peach whose pit or stone you planted. There may be other kinds of fruit trees all about, and also trees which do not bear fruit. All of the trees secure the food upon which they live and grow from the same soil. Even the grass under your peach tree eats the same things as your peach tree, but it remains always true that things in the vegetable kingdom will grow only to be like the thing from which it came.

Have Plants Fathers and Mothers?

The little trees grow up to be exactly like their fathers and mothers (for they have fathers and mothers), which is something all living things must have. These are not the same kind of fathers, or mothers either, that a boy or girl has, exactly, but they are parents just the same. So far as the trees, flowers and plants are concerned we call the parents father and mother natures, which is a term used merely to keep you from confusing vegetable life fathers and mothers with the regular kind.

In the vegetable kingdom you cannot always see these father and mother natures, which enable them to reproduce their kind of life, but everything in the vegetable and also in the animal kingdom has them.