The 'look About You' Nature Study Books, Book 2 [of 7]

BOOK II.. By

BY THOMAS W. HOARE

TEACHER OF NATURE STUDY to the Falkirk School Board and Stirlingshire County Council

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, Ltd. 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. AND EDINBURGH

PREFACE.

This little book should be used as a simple guide to the practical study of Nature rather than as a mere reader.

Every lesson herein set down has, during the author’s many years’ experience in teaching Nature Study, been taught by observation and practice again and again; and each time with satisfactory result. The materials required for the lessons are within everybody’s reach.

There is nothing that appeals to the heart of the ordinary child like living things, be they animal or vegetable, and there is no branch of education at the present day that bears, in the young mind, such excellent fruit as the study of the simple, living things around us.

Your child is nothing if not curious. He wants to understand everything that lives in his bright little world.

Nature Study involves so many ingenious little deductions, that the reasoning powers are almost constantly employed, and intelligence grows proportionately. The child’s powers of observation are stimulated, and his memory is cultivated in the way most pleasing to his inquiring nature. By drawing his specimens, no matter how roughly or rapidly, his eye is trained more thoroughly than any amount of enforced copying of stiff, uninteresting models of prisms, cones, etc., ever could train it.

The love of flowers and animals is one of the most commendable traits in the disposition of the wondering child, and ought to be encouraged above all others. A few lessons on Nature Phenomena are added.

It is the author’s fondest and most sanguine hope that his little pupils may study further the great book of Nature, whose broad pages are ever open to us, and whose silent answers to our manifold questions are never very difficult to read.

T. W. H.

CONTENTS

LESSON PAGE I. How Plants take Food from the Soil (1) 5 II. How Plants take Food from the Soil (2) 13 III. The Weasel and the Otter 20 IV. Dwellers in the Corn Field 27 V. Harvest Time 33 VI. The Squirrel 40 VII. How the Fire Burns 48 VIII. The Fire-Balloon 55 IX. The Gull 61 X. Dew, Frost, Rain 68

“LOOK ABOUT YOU.”

BOOK II.

I.—HOW PLANTS TAKE FOOD FROM THE SOIL (1).

Uncle George had taught his little friends many things from what he called the Book of Nature, and what they had learnt made them eager to know more.

One day as Dolly, the boys, and Uncle George were in the garden they saw that a tulip, which the day before was in full bloom and strong, was now lying dead on the ground.

“Poor little tulip!” said Dolly. Both the boys were sorry too. They had watched it come through the ground like a blade of grass, open out its bud, and expand its bloom. Now all was over. The little flower would no longer enjoy the bright sunshine or the rain. It would no longer send forth its rootlets in search of the food it so much liked.

“Have you ever thought, Dolly, how the tulip, and indeed all plants, take their food from the soil?” asked Uncle George.

“I know they must feed in some way,” said Dolly, “or they would not grow. But I do not know how they do it.”

“Should you like to know, Dolly?” asked Uncle George.

“Indeed I should,” said the little girl.

The boys were just as eager as Dolly to know about this, so Uncle George and the children went indoors for a lesson.

“I cannot tell you how plants take their food from the soil without first of all showing you what happens when water and soil are mixed together in a tumbler,” said Uncle George. “Tom will fetch me a tumbler, and you, Frank, bring me a little water.”

When these were brought, Uncle George put a spoonful of soil into the tumbler, and then poured some water on it.

“Stir it up, please, Dolly,” said Uncle George, “and you may pretend you are going to make a pudding.”

Dolly did so.

“Now let us put it aside for a few minutes, while we place the flowers we have gathered into the vases,” said Uncle George. “Then we will look at our tumbler of muddy water.”

How pretty the flowers were made to look! How fresh they were! and how pleasant was their scent! The children hardly thought of the tumbler, but Uncle George was ready now for the lesson.

“Look! look, at the tumbler,” said he. “Do you see a change?”

“Indeed we do,” said all the children in one voice.

“The mud has sunk to the bottom of the glass,” added Tom, “and the water on the top is clear.”

Uncle George poured some of the clear water into a clean flat dish. Then he took a spirit-lamp from a little cabinet, and heated the water in the dish with it.

The children watched to see what would happen. Soon a cloud was seen over the dish, and by and by all the water had gone.

“But what is that at the bottom of the dish?” asked Uncle George.

“It looks like powder,” said Frank.

“And it must have been in the water all the time,” added Tom.

“And yet the water was clear,” said Uncle George. “Look once more.”

As he spoke, Uncle George took a glass of clean water from the tap. He put two large spoonfuls of salt in, and stirred it up.

“You see,” he said, “the salt has gone from sight. Still the water is clear. Where has it gone?”

“Into the water,” said Tom.

Uncle George put more salt in the water, and stirred it up. He kept on doing this until the water would take up no more salt, no matter how much it was stirred. This he called brine.

“Now, Frank, please go and ask mother for a fresh egg,” he said, “and you, Tom, please bring me some fresh water in another glass.”

Uncle George placed the egg in the glass in which the salt had been put, and it floated in it. He then placed the egg in the glass of fresh water, and it at once sank to the bottom.

“Can you explain this!” he said.

“The salt water is heavier and thicker than the fresh water. That is why it bears up the egg,” said Frank.

“That is very good indeed, Frank. That is just the reason. The salt water or brine is denser, or heavier, than the other.”

Uncle George next took a glass tube with a thistle-shaped bulb at the end of it. Frank kept his finger on the small end, while his uncle poured some of the brine into the bulb. He next tied a piece of bladder skin over the bulb, and placed it in a glass of fresh water, so that the salt water in the tube was at the same level as the fresh water in the glass.

Then he took two small glass bottles. He filled one with fresh water and the other with brine, and tied a piece of bladder skin over the mouth of each. The one which was filled with brine he placed in a larger dish of fresh water. The other, that is the one filled with fresh water, he placed in a dish of brine.

“Now, children, we will go and have tea,” he said, “and when we come back we will see if any change has taken place.”

About an hour later Uncle George, Dolly, and the boys came back.

“Oh,” said Frank, “look, Uncle George! The water has risen up in the thistle tube.”

“Yes, how do you account for that, Frank?”

“Some of the fresh water has passed through the skin,” Frank answered.

“Now taste the water in the glass outside the skin,” said Uncle George. “It was fresh water when we put it in, wasn’t it?”

Frank did so. Tom tasted it too. Both boys declared that it was now salt.

“Where did the salt taste come from?” their uncle asked.

“It must have come through the skin,” said Tom.

“Then some of the salt water in the thistle tube has passed through the skin into the glass; and some of the fresh water in the glass has passed through the skin into the thistle tube. Can you tell me any more?”

Frank thought for a little while and then said, “Oh yes, more fresh water than salt water has passed through the skin, because the salt water is now far up the tube.”

“Quite right, my boy. Now let us look at the small bottles. The skin on the one filled with brine is swollen out like a ball, while the water in the dish tastes salt. The skin of the other is drawn far in, showing us that much of the fresh water which it contained has passed out. If you taste the water in this bottle, you will find that a very little of the brine in the dish has passed into it through the skin.

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