Part I: Geography

Stories In Geography: Children Of Our Own And Other Lands

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.The study of descriptive and political Geography is introduced into the very first year of school, through travel stories. The first interest that ...

Children Of Our Own And Other Lands. I. The Red Child Of The Forest

You are proud of being an American boy, aren't you? Perhaps you will be surprised to learn that there is another boy who has a better right to the name than you have. He was here four hundred ...

II. The Little Pale Faces Who Came Over The Sea

Six year old Faithful was knitting a stocking. Her home was a pretty stone cottage with a thick roof of straw. It was in a village, in England. Roses grew around the open door. Through the door ...

III. Little Wooden Two Shoes

Let us follow the Mayflower as it sails back home. All the white children who came to America had to cross the Atlantic ocean. We won't stop when the ship comes to England. We will go farther ...

IV. Ship Loads Of Politeness

Very near Holland lived other children who came to America. They were French. Their names were Louis and Jeanne. French people did not like to live alone, on separate farms. When the day's work ...

V. Little Friends In Furs

Before they came to America to live, the English and Dutch people were great sailors and traders. If they heard of anything they wanted, in far-away lands, they sailed away in stout ships to get ...

VI. Children From Spain

Other ships sailed away for sugar. They found sugar right here in the New World. When Columbus came across the sea, before any other white man, he came in a Spanish ship. He found warm islands ...

VII. The Little Black Children Who Lived in a Zoo

It was noon but the little boys and girls were all asleep, in the huts under the palm trees. No, they were not still asleep. They had got up with the sun, but when the sun was high and hot they ...

VIII. Babes In The Woods

Once they got started, people kept coming and coming and coming to America as if they never would stop! In our own part of North America, that is now the United States, three million people were ...

IX. Pioneer Days And Ways

It was a cold morning in mid-winter, one hundred years ago. Around the little log cabin the snow lay deep among the stumps of trees in the clearing. A zig-zag fence of rails was around the field ...

X. What "Liebe Mutter" Brought To America

Once upon a time a woman was packing everything, just as the Puritans did, to come to America. She was a German woman. The children called her Hebe mutter (dear mother). She was like the ...

XI. The Miraculous Pitcher

If the German people brought the Christmas tree to America the Irish brought us something for every day in the year. It was like the milk in the mi-rac-u-lous pitcher. No matter how much was ...

XII. The Golden Fleece Of America.

Did you ever hear the old Greek story of Jason who sailed away to find the golden fleece? Many people think this a story of the world-old hunt for gold mines. Nearly every people has some such ...

XIII. Alice In Wonderland

Alice never forgot the time she went to California with her grandpapa. Grandpapa was going back to California. The first time he went in an ox-wagon, when he was ten years old. Now he was going ...

XIV. The Children Of Topsy-Turvy Land.

Wouldn't you like to visit some children who never cry when they are babies? No, they are not Indians, although they ride around on their mother's backs. Their faces are yellow. Their almond-...

XV. All Work And No Play For Little Wung Foo

If Wung Foo had studied very hard at school, and learned as many as twenty-five new sign words, his grandmother told him stories in the evening. Wung Foo was a little Chinese boy, eight years ...

XVI. All Play And No Work For Manuelo

Manuelo was a little brown Filipino boy who played nearly all day long. He did not care how many Chinese boys came to his home in The Philippine Islands to be rich merchants. It seemed very ...

XVII. Children Of "The Arabian Nights"

You have taken a long journey since you sailed through the Golden Gate at San Francisco. Now it is time to go home. There is more than one way of going home from school, and a lot of things to ...

XVIII. The Little Country Of The Big Mountain

After you have watched the ships of the desert sail away across the sea of sand, with Mehemet and Zaidee, you go down to a seaport town and get on a real ship. It steams for hours between yellow ...

XIX. The "Front Door" Of America

The very nicest time to get home to America is on a summer morning. You have been on the water nearly a week. You have crossed the same Atlantic ocean, that the white children and the black ...

Part II: Land

Wonders Of The World We Live On

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.When the writer was a child, Physical Geography was a high school study. A hard name often makes a simple thing difficult. Physical Geography is only ...

The Story Told In The Rocks

I. Land

When you went around the world you found that this earth we live upon is made of just land and water. But what a number of things were made with them. No two countries looked just the same, but ...

I. Land. Part 2

Water is very heavy. A little boy or girl cannot carry a wooden pail full of it very far. Every pint of water weighs a pound. The ocean is deep. There are hills and valleys and mountain ranges ...

II. Water

The other thing this round world is made of is water. In going around the earth you crossed oceans, lakes and rivers. You saw ice or frozen water. You saw water broken up into rain drops, frozen ...

II. Water. Part 2

These get so heavy that they roll down the glass. They roll down the walls, too, and drop from the ceiling. If vapor is not turned out of doors it makes a room damp. That is just what happens ...

II. Water. Part 3

Jack Frost is busy with you, too. He takes the vapor of your breath and per-spi-ra-tion, as you lie warm in bed, and makes pictures with it on the cold window pane. Such pretty pictures ! They ...

III. Air

Besides land and water on the earth, there is something that is all around it, and all through both land and water. You cannot see it, or feel it, or taste it, or smell it, or hear it. But you ...

III. Air. Part 2

Sometimes air rivers flow up and down so rapidly, pushing each other out of place that they makewhat? See the leaves blowing on the trees. Wind! Wind is air that is in a hurry. You can ...

Part III: Plants

The Story Of Life. Part I. Plants

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.A little child is interested, first of all, in the world outside of himself; but parts of himself seem external. A baby is surprised that he cannot ...

I. We Meet The Fairy Godmother

What if you had never seen an apple, or an apple tree! Little Esquimo boys and girls never saw them. So, just imagine that you never saw them, either. Then, if a traveler from a ...

II. How The Yeast Plant Grows In A Loaf Of Bread

Which would you rather do, get inside a loaf of bread, or put the bread inside of you? That makes you laugh. But you never tried getting inside a loaf of bread. If you get inside ...

III. Sailor Plants And Robinson Crusoes

The first little plants were sailors. As they floated about in the water, the living drop of jelly or protoplasm, soaked food through the thin walls of the cells. One cell budded from another, ...

IV. Water Babies That Live On Land

Did you ever see a tad-pole? A tad-pole is a baby frog, you know, but it looks more like a baby fish. It breathes through feather-like gills. You can keep one in a gold fish bowl and watch it ...

V. Pygmy Plants And Their Wonderful Labors

Next above the liver-wort, is a plant that will tell you how to find your way home if you ever get lost in the woods. One of the very first lessons a little Indian boy learned, when he went ...

VI. How The Fern Grew Bones And Babies

In order to stand alone you must have a backbone. And you must have bones in your legs, too. Your bones are on the inside and are covered with muscles. A turtle's leg bones are on the inside, ...

VII. How Fairy Fungi Turned Into A Dandelion

That was a great day in your family when you stood alone for the first time. It was just as great a thing in the plant world when the first fern leaf lifted on its slender stem and stood alone. ...

Dandelion, Showing Plant, Flowers And Seed Heads.

The palm, in some ways, is simpler than the pine. It has less bark, and its stem does not branch. Its bark often seems to be mere bundles of loose, dry fibres left by leaves that fell as the ...

VIII. Why Plants Are Like Squirrels

Did you ever see a squirrel gathering acorns and nuts in the autumn? All summer long squirrels eat their food as they find it, bring up their babies, grow fat themselves and play a great deal. ...

VIII. Why Plants Are Like Squirrels. Part 2

The leaves are little plant-food factories. In them they have water and minerals from the roots, and oxygen, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide from the air. Oxygen is a purifier. We use oxygen to ...

IX. Plants Have Visitors And Travel Abroad

What a great thing it is for little boys and girls to have play mates. How many more things you learn to know and to do, and how much better a time you have, if you play with others. It is best ...

X. How Plants Are Promoted To A Higher Class

A long time ago people thought that flowers were given their beautiful colors and perfumes just to make the world a pleasanter place for people to live in. But now we know that everything lives ...

Part IV: Animals

Part II. Animals. I. The Little Animal That Walks With Its Stomach And Eats With Its Feet

Don't you like the menagerie part of the circus best? And the Zoo in the city park? Wild animals are so strange and interesting. In every pond and creek there are animals that are ...

I. The Little Animal That Walks With Its Stomach And Eats With Its Feet. Part 2

As the cells of plants change into roots or leaves or bark, when leaves or roots or bark are needed, so all the different parts of animals, from the amoeba up to man, have been made to grow by ...

II. Water Babies That Live In A Village

If the amoeba is ever to get up in the world very far, it must stop using all its parts for everything. The first little creature to make a stomach on the inside, you know very well. Or, rather, ...

III. A Sea Flower That Eats With Its Petals And Moves When It Wants To

The sponge, the jelly fish and the coral builder are hollow-bodied animals. They are higher than the amoeba because they have more different parts. The locomotive is a higher order of machine ...

III.2 A Sea Flower That Eats With Its Petals And Moves When It Wants To

The sea-anemone not only looks like the flower of that name, but it has something that reminds us of the vine called the Virginia Creeper. The anemone is fastened to a rock by a sucking disc. It ...

IV. The Web Of Life: Mother Nature At Her Loom

Big boys and girls, when they finish high-school, have to write graduation essays. One of the subjects they often choose to write about is The Web of Life is Strangely Woven. They ...

V. Starfish, And Sea Urchins That Play With Live Dolls

Animals like the sponge and the sea-anemone rank higher in the scale of life than the amoeba because they are hollow-bodied. The next higher step is taken by the group of animals to which the ...

VI. A Long Speech By A Little Worm

All worms are of a higher order than the spiny-bodied animals such as the sea-urchin and the starfish. This is not exactly because some of them do such bright things as to build houses and hang ...

VII. The Earthworm Puts On Armor

You needn't be afraid of him, little friend Earthworm. This armored monster, with his long feelers, his stalk eyes and his great crooked arms with battle axes on the end of them! ...

VII. The Earthworm Puts On Armor. Part 2

The blood of the crawfish circulates very much as the blood of the earthworm does. He has two long tubes for carrying it. One of these tubes runs along his back, the other along the underside of ...

VIII. How The Worm In Armor Counts By Twos And Threes

Like ourselves, the crawfish is divided into three main parts, but differently. The front third of him carries his brain, his arms and legs, his eyes and feelers. The second third is ...

IX. Mr. Crawfish And His Table Manners

When Mr. Crawfish was an earthworm he felt his way along with his pointed nose. Now that he is shut up inside of his shellnose and allwhat is he going to do? Why, I'...

X. The Crawfish, The Spider And The Fly

If you were giving Mr. Crawfish, Mr. Spider and Mr. Fly their places in the long line of march, wouldn't you put them in the order I have named: first Mr. Crawfish, then Mr. Spider, then Mr. Fly?...

XI. Why The Crawfish Crawled Into A Shell

If I were to ask you What is the best part of an oyster, or a clam? You would say: The inside, of course. And you would be right; but you might not mean just ...

XII. The Oyster Learns To Swim

Of course no oyster ever did learn to swim, because when he did learn he was no longer an oyster. It looks more as if he once knew how to swim and then forgot. You see his near cousins, the ...

XIII. The Oyster-Fish That Climbed On Shore

Why we can almost see him do it. What? Why see Mr. Frog change into himself from a fish Right under our eyes, if we have him in an aquarium, where we can watch him, he changes from a ...

XIV. Birds Of The Water And Birds Of The Air

What animals build nests? And lay eggs in the spring and early summer? And go in large companies with their mates from one part of the world to another, at certain seasons, ...

XV. Water Babies And Other Babies That Drink Milk

As we have seen all the way throughand will see a great deal more, the more we look carefully at the picture in Nature's wonder book, the higher forms of life keep summing up the lives ...

XV. Water Babies And Other Babies That Drink Milk. Part 2

As we have seen that the lowest forms of life, both animal and vegetable, begin in the water so, in each new class of animals, there is this same grading up. Each begins as a water kind, goes up ...

Part V: Flowers

Nature Study. Part I - Flowers

Editors' Note to Mother and TeacherOne day, more than sixty years ago, a group of young men in Harvard University were assigned a lesson in Zoology, by a new professor from Switzerland. ...

I. A Wild Garden And Its Tenants

This is the story of a wild garden that was found near a public school on the edge of a big city. None of the children had the tiniest garden, and they were not allowed to pick flowers in the ...

I. A Wild Garden And Its Tenants. Part 2

Lower down, hidden in wire grass, were yellow-flowered sorrel, with acid leaves that the children liked to nibble. There was many a sturdy bunch of butter and eggs, with their cream and gold, ...

II. Little Lion Tooth And Its Cousins

In the spring, the grass that bordered the cement walk around the wild garden was not two inches high before it began to be dotted with the golden rosettes of the dandelion. When the warm ...

II. Little Lion Tooth And Its Cousins. Part 2

Did you ever split a hollow stem of dandelion in strips, and pull it through your mouth to make a bunch of curls? It tasted bitter, didn't it? Every part of the plant has that bitter taste, very ...

III. A "Good Luck" Family

Did you ever find a four-leafed clover? It's good luck to find one. With a four-leafed clover in your shoe you can walk right in among goblins and witches in any fairy story, and they can't play ...

III. A "Good Luck" Family. Part 2

If you see pussy prowling around a clover field, leave her alone. Pussy eats' field mice. Field mice eat baby bumble bees. If the mice were so many that they ate all the bumble bees, the clover ...

IV. The Bonny Briar Bush

It was a little bird that told how the wild rose came to be growing in the wild garden. There wasn't another wild rose anywhere in the neighborhood. Roses are something like human ...

IV. The Bonny Briar Bush. Part 2

Thorns are curious things. They start to be leaves or branches but get nipped, in some way, so they turn into thorns. They are very useful to roses. They help the slender canes catch on supports,...

IV. The Bonny Briar Bush. Part 3

Yes, those plants are cousins of the rose. They have the same bright-barked, thorny, woody stems; the same spiny, compound leaves, and the many five-petaled rosette flowers, with forests of ...

Part VI: Trees

Trees. Part II. A Year In The Forest

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.Do you remember Eagle Heart, the little red American boy? His home was in the forest. We cannot find such a beautiful forest in our country today, as ...

I. Spring: "Rockaby Babies"

Where do you look for flowers in the Spring, and when? Why, on the ground, of course, and in late April or early May. The Indian boy looked up, in March. He saw flowers much earlier ...

I. Spring: "Rockaby Babies". Part 2

The snow is still trickling away in little icy streams when the first willow pussies come out for an airing. You will not find them on the big willow trees, but on bundles of knobby switches of ...

I. Spring: "Rockaby Babies". Part 3

The acorn is really a kind of nut. And you might say that all of our forest nuts are made in much the same way as acorns. The chestnut seed-cone grows on the same twig as the pollen-catkin. As ...

II. Summer: "In The Tree Tops"

Summer is the leafy season. But the time to begin to study leaves is in the early spring. On nearly all trees the leaf comes as soon as the blossom falls. The first leaves are very small, and ...

III. Autumn: "When The Wind Blows"

What is it the magician says in fairy stories, when he makes the most surprising things happen? Presto, change! and he claps his hands. Jack Frost is this wonder ...

III. Autumn: "When The Wind Blows". Part 2

Chestnuts are very near relatives of the oaks. The cups are closed burs, very stiff and woody, with prickly thorns. You have to let Jack Frost open them for you. He can split them into four ...

IV. Winter: "The Cradles Will Rock"

Who says there is no use in going to the forests again until spring? What a funny mistake! It's worth while going if only for the pictures in black and white. Many people, who know a great deal ...

IV. Winter: "The Cradles Will Rock". Part 2

But we are forgetting our winter pictures in black and white.' There are other trees with white, or silvery gray bark as well as the birches. Some willows and poplars, the silver maple and the ...

IV. Winter: "The Cradles Will Rock". Part 3

Winter is the best time for studying the cone-bearers. Perhaps you call all of these trees pines. Many people do. Only one of their family is a pine, and you would never pick that one out for a ...

Part VII: Insects

Part III - Insects, Etc. I. Mrs. Musca Domestica Calls

Were you speaking of me? Here I am. A very dignified little visitor, about a quarter of an inch long, drops out of the nowhere in the most surprising way! But ...

I. Mrs. Musca Domestica Calls. Part 2

Well! with a little bristle of wings. No wonder! You ought to see where I have to bring up my babies. I can't carry them around, all legs and no arms as I am, now can I? I have ...

II. Mrs. Garden Spider "At Home"

Mrs. Garden Spider won't come to see you and buzz by the hour. If you go to see her she'll tell you plainly that she doesn't care for society. It takes all her time to build her house, earn her ...

II. Mrs. Garden Spider "At Home". Part 2

Finished? No, indeed. When men build houses they first put up the frame work, then cheap scaffolding to stand on. Mrs. Spider sets up scaffolding to walk on. She starts back from the outside ...

III. Gulliver Man And His Lilliputian Enemies

Once upon a time a baby was born. It was a very, very small baby, and almost too feeble to move. Yet, the very first day of its life, it ate two hundred times its own weight. As long as it lived ...

III. Gulliver Man And His Lilliputian Enemies. Part 2

Wheat has three insect enemiesthe chinch bug, the Hessian fly and the wheat midge. When ground into flour the meal worm often hatches out and makes it unfit for use. On the potato plant ...

IV. Pygmy Friends That Fly And Hop And Creep

Lions and tigers are such terrible beasts that you are very glad they live in circus menageries, park zoos and far-away jungles. As for dragons, very likely they never lived at all, except in ...

IV. Pygmy Friends That Fly And Hop And Creep. Part 2

There is another insect something like the dragon fly that looks as if it might sting. It has a long, wire-like tail that it can curl over its back and poke into a hole in a tree. This is the ...

IV. Pygmy Friends That Fly And Hop And Creep. Part 3

Did you ever catch a pretty red, black-spotted lady-bird beetle on a rose bush, and say: Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn!...

Part VIII: Birds

Part IV - Birds. A Bird-Lover'S Outdoor Aviary

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.Your mother and grandmother can remember the time when it wasn't thought to be so very wicked to rob birds' nests, or even to kill song birds for their ...

I. Bird Songs And Colors

The doctor was never quite sure which of his little friends in feathers arrived first in the springthe bluebird, the song sparrow or the phoebe. Some morning in March, often before the ...

I. Bird Songs And Colors. Part 2

If ever you do that take a thrush for first choice. The robin, the bluebird, the brown thrasher and the mocking bird are thrushes. Nearly all the thrushes have beautiful manners and sweet ...

I. Bird Songs And Colors. Part 3

No blackbird is shy, you may be sure. The orioles always fly about in plain sight, and talk freely of themselves and their affairs. A hot-headed, blustering little fellow is the oriole, noisy, ...

I. Bird Songs And Colors. Part 4

The cinnamon-brown, spotted-breasted hermit-thrush of our northern pine woods can throw his voice, too. He is as shy as the tanager. Perhaps both of them do that to deceive hawks and ...

II. Bird Nests And Babies

One spring the doctor got all ready to put a new roof on the kitchen wing of the house. Mrs. Doctor said it leaked ter-ri-bly every time it rained. The carpenter came one Monday, early in April. ...

II. Bird Nests And Babies. Part 2

Oh how her mate sings to her ! He flashes about the tree, chasing away other birds. He relieves her when she wants a lunch. He brags and trills ; he tumbles about and very nearly goes crazy with ...

II. Bird Nests And Babies. Part 3

You wouldn't expect as wild and silent a bird as the scarlet tanager, to build a nest ten feet from the ground, at the end of the limb of a wild crab-apple tree, would you? It is made of twigs, ...

II. Bird Nests And Babies. Part 4

What a hurried, worried time it is for the parent birds when the baby birds are out of their shells. The nests must be cleaned of the egg-shells and dirt, and every baby kept perfectly clean. ...

III. Little Friends In Feathers

One sunny Saturday afternoon in June, a tanned, dusty-legged boy came to the doctor's side porch. In one hand he had a soft, limp bundle of snow-white, dead-black and rose-colored feathers. In ...

III. Little Friends In Feathers. Part 2

A barn-swallow, hurt in some way on its northward flight, had fed on cotton-boll weevil, in flying over the young cotton plants in the south. And she had eaten flies, mosquitoes, gnats and ...

III. Little Friends In Feathers. Part 3

We have taken the trouble, here, to find out for you, from many bird books, and from farmer's bulletins printed by our government, just what our commonest wild birds eat, and how they help us. ...

Part IX: Wild Animals

Wild Animals You Would Like To Know

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.Wild animals have a wonderful fascination for children. About the traits, habits and homes of those most commonly to be seen in menageries and city ...

I. Big Brother Bear

W'y, wunst they wuz a Little Boy went out In the woods, to shoot a Bearan' he Wuz goin' alongan' goin' along, you know, An' purty soon he heerd somefin ...

I. Big Brother Bear. Part 2

That must have been one of the smaller black bears that used to be so common everywhere in American woods. The black bear is so bright that the Indians called him brother. They never ...

I. Big Brother Bear. Part 3

All wild animals are fond of their mates and babies, and will fight for them. But there are few that are as brave and loving as the polar bears. Explorers and whalers tell stories that make the ...

II. Pet Pussy And King Lion

Men have known lions longer than they have bears. They have lived right next door to lions for thousands of years, but they never called a lion brother. They never felt as friendly ...

II. Pet Pussy And King Lion. Part 2

There's one thing that lions can't do that cats can. They can't climb trees. But tigers, leopards, panthers and all the other big wild cats are great climbers, so it must be that lions have ...

II. Pet Pussy And King Lion. Part 3

Ostriches must admire the lion's roar, for they seem to try to imitate it. African travellers say they do it very well, too. Hunters can be sure of one thing. A roar at night means a lion; a ...

III. Here Come The Elephants!

That is what the children shout when a circus parade marches through a town. The elephant is the children's delight. Draped in purple and gold he walks with the tread of an emperor before a ...

III. Here Come The Elephants!. Part 2

It takes an elephant thirty years to grow up to eleven feet in height, twelve in length, with tusks and trunk six or eight feet long, and a weight of three tons. He has plenty of time, for, if ...

III. Here Come The Elephants!. Part 3

Elephants live in herds like buffaloes. There are from twenty-five to one hundred in a herd. They wander about together in the woods and on the open plains of Africa and India, wherever there is ...

III. Here Come The Elephants!. Part 4

Elephants hate flies. The flies and stinging insects of hot countries are large and thick and tough as is the elephant's hide they manage to get into the folds and creases and sting him. He ...

IV. The Animal Acrobat And Clown

Can you think of anything that will collect a crowd of children so quickly, or keep them happy so long as an organ grinder with a monkey? The music is often very dreadful, but the ...

IV. The Animal Acrobat And Clown. Part 2

Some of these monkeys have the prettiest homes! They camp out all the year round. They love the dense woods of very hot countries. In the beautiful tropical forests along the Amazon River, in ...

IV. The Animal Acrobat And Clown. Part 3

Another South American monkey is the Saki. He has a ruddy back, and an almost human habit of cupping a hand and dipping up water when he wants to drink. He is so delicate that he seldom lives ...

V. The Ship Of The Desert

There is one baby animal that rides when he goes bye-bye. He isn't carried on his mother's back, or in her breast pocket. He rides in a hammock on the back of a trained nurse. Something dreadful ...

V. The Ship Of The Desert. Part 2

In the hot, dry desert regions the camel is the horse, the cow and the sheep of the Arabian herders and traders. He carries all the burdens, he furnishes flesh and milk for food, and hair for ...

V. The Ship Of The Desert. Part 3

It is a wonderful thing to see a camel caravan start from a town on the edge of the desert. There are hundreds of animals in a great yard, tons of goods in bales, dozens of drivers and ...

VI. Kangaroo And 'Possum, Too

If you like to be surprised, all of a sudden, just stand by the kangaroo pen in a park zoo awhile. In fact, if you are lucky, you will be surprised twice. You are sure to wonder, at ...

VI. Kangaroo And 'Possum, Too. Part 2

There is only one other animal in the world that has a pouch just like the kangaroo's. Curiously enough this little cousin of the Australian kangaroo lives in the southern part of the United ...

VII. The Graceful Camelopard

If anyone ever held his head high in this world it is Mr. Giraffe. If you could keep him for a pet he could easily poke his head in at a second-story window, and wake you up in the morning. He ...

VII. The Graceful Camelopard. Part 2

If closely pursued, a giraffe can escape through a jungle of thorn bushes where men and horses cannot follow, and come through without a scratch. His skin looks to be thin and tender, but it is ...

VIII. Mr. Nose Horn And Mr. River Horse

How do you say them? And which is which? That is what the very little boy asked about the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus when he came home from the London zoo. Their ...

VIII. Mr. Nose Horn And Mr. River Horse. Part 2

It is the rhinoceros, or nose horn, that ought to have hippo (horse) in his name. He is a very distant relation of the horse. He has teeth like a horse and a three-toed foot. The horse, today, ...

IX. Wild Animals Near Home

Do you live on a farm? Or in a small town with woods and fields around it? There is a creek, perhaps, a swamp, hillside pastures, stone or rail fences bordered by briars. Then you have animal ...

IX. Wild Animals Near Home. Part 2

No country in the Old World has so many true ground squirrels as we have. Prairie dogs, gophers and woodchucks are ground squirrels. The gopher is the ill-tempered, rat-like hermit of the garden....

IX. Wild Animals Near Home. Part 3

When crossing a field in winter, stop and listen at hay and Straw stacks, and shocks of corn fodder. On the stillest, frosty day you may hear a crisp rustling within. Look all around for the ...

Part X: Typical Industries

Typical Industries

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher: And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar. ...

I. Big Businesses From Little Seeds

What did you have for breakfast? Bread and butter, toast, muffins, batter cakes. You had other things, too, but all of you had some kind of bread made of wheat flour. For dinner you ...

I. Big Businesses From Little Seeds. Part 2

How is the soil everywhere wheat grows? Is there enough rain? Or too much? Owners of railroads and ships are interested in the size of the next wheat crop, for they will have to carry the grain ...

I. Big Businesses From Little Seeds. Part 3

In every town in a wheat-growing country there is an elevator and a grain buyer. How is the wheat taken from the low wagon bed and put into the high elevator? Did you ever see a link belt? It is ...

II. The Wonderful Gift Of Good King Cotton

Did you ever sing Dixie Land? Dixie is a loving nickname for our warm southern states, where cotton grows over hundreds of miles of country. The white men who own the ...

II. The Wonderful Gift Of Good King Cotton. Part 2

The pickers in the field carry big brown bags that will hold many pounds of bolls. When a bag is full it is emptied in a wagon bed. When the wagon is full a man drives away with it to a cotton-...

II. The Wonderful Gift Of Good King Cotton. Part 3

Perhaps you think all cotton is alike. It isn't. There are as many kinds of cotton as there are of apples. Most of the little cotton hairs are less than an inch long, but we have one kind that ...

III. Iron. The Little Pig That Goes To Market

Oh! The baby's little big toe! No, that is just a play to amuse the baby. This is a real pig. Then, it's the squealy little fellow that pays the rent of the Irish farmer. No, again. ...

III. Iron. The Little Pig That Goes To Market. Part 2

There are iron mines in a great many of our states. The biggest ones that are now worked are near the shore of Lake Superior. The ore is found deep in the heart of some low mountain ranges that ...

III. Iron. The Little Pig That Goes To Market. Part 3

The furnaces where iron is melted out of the ores, are tall towers of iron plates bolted together and lined thick with fire clays that will not melt. The furnaces are often as tall as a six or ...

IV. Pottery. The Wonderful Art Of Making Mud Pies

Isn't it fun to make mud pies? You get dreadfully dirty, but no natural child minds that. Mama is apt to say that washing dishes is a much more useful thing to do. But you can tell her ...

IV. Pottery. The Wonderful Art Of Making Mud Pies. Part 2

Now the Dutch had wind-mills that did the hard work of pumping water, sawing wood and grinding grain. So it was only natural that these clever people should give the wind-mills a new task of ...

IV. Pottery. The Wonderful Art Of Making Mud Pies. Part 3

Saucers and bowls and plates and many, many articles are molded over plaster of paris shapes. For a plate or saucer a sheet of clay, like a rolled piecrust, is pressed on a mould and smoothed on ...

V. Woodworking. When A Tree Is Lumber

Have you a wooden top to spin? As it spins, it stands upright on its tip. But the first time your top spun was when it was made. It was held between two pivots and whirled side ways. Spinning ...

V. Woodworking. When A Tree Is Lumber. Part 2

But first a road has to be made for the sledges. A snowy track is cleared of stones, trees and underbrush and is packed hard by the horses and sledges. Then it is flushed with water and let ...

VI. Matches. Just To Light A Fire

When the Puritans came to America they had to bring everything you could think of with themeven pins and needles and matches ? Oh, dear no! There were no matches in those ...

VI. Matches. Just To Light A Fire. Part 2

To make the square match sticks, a round block of wood quite twelve or fifteen inches long is turned against a strong knife blade of the same length. The block is peeled away in a continuous ...

VII. Glass Making. A Look Through A Window Into One Of Nature's Workshops

When you make taffy, you drop a spoonful of the boiling mixture into a glass of cold water to find out when it is just right to pull. Wouldn't it surprise you to learn that the glass itself was ...

VII. Glass Making p2. A Look Through A Window Into One Of Nature's Workshops

Clean, white sand, soda and lime are put into enormous pots of fireclay in very hot furnaces. Some broken glass is added. For seed? Perhaps. It may be that the bits of glass, having been through ...

VIII. Rice Growing. The Bread Of Nogi, Wung Foo And Manuelo

If you should ever go to Japan, one of the very first things you would want to buy is a fat little image that is to be found in all the curio shops. It will remind you of Billikens, the comical ...

VIII. Rice Growing p2. The Bread Of Nogi, Wung Foo And Manuelo

In China, the rice field are in the flood lands along the big rivers. There, it is often a question of keeping the water out when it is not wanted. So banks have to be built, and treadmill pumps ...

IX. Watches And Clocks. Brownie Tick-Tock And The Stars

It's great fun to hold a watch up to a baby's pink ear. He is so as-ton-ished by the busy tick-tick-ticking. One little girl remembers thinking a Brownie did the ticking, and that the mouse that ...

IX. Watches And Clocks. Brownie Tick-Tock And The Stars. Part 2

The whole duty of a good clock is to drive the hour hand at a regular rate of travel around the dial, twice in twenty-four hours. So the barrel turns entirely over twice, letting down two coils ...

IX. Watches And Clocks. Brownie Tick-Tock And The Stars. 3

The first things you see in a watch factory are spinning wheels little whirling tables no bigger than the head of mama's sewing machine. There are rows and rows of them, connected by ...

Part XI: Good Health

Good Health

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.Do you remember the first time you opened the old-fashioned text-book on Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene? It. began by enumerating the two ...

I. Your Own Health

You live in a little house all by yourself. You were born in it. You will have to live in it all your life. It is your body. People who own houses are proud of them. They take care of them, and ...

I. Your Own Health. Part 2

When you were rubbing yourself dry, after a bath, did you ever rub little rolls up on your skin? That was dead skin, dust, dried sweat and oil. An air-tight coating soon forms on the outside of ...

I. Your Own Health. Part 3

Fresh air never made anyone catch cold. But impure air, living in houses that are too warm and close, sitting in drafts when overheated, and sitting with wet clothing and feet, will ...

II. The Family Health

As each person has to live in his own little body house, so we all have to live with other people, in houses that have been built of wood or stone or brick. Some of these houses are very old, ...

II. The Family Health. Part 2

Heat is the next important thing. You do not want a hothouse. Hot-houses are useful for growing delicate plants. Hot dwelling houses grow delicate people. The temperature of a house should be ...

Part XII: Soldiers Of Peace

I. Soldiers Of Peace. Fighters For Everybody's Health

In the story about America's Front Door you learned that United States health officers meet every ship that enters an American harbor. If there is one case of yellow fever, smallpox ...

I. Soldiers Of Peace. Fighters For Everybody's Health. Part 2

Snow is one of the hardest things in a city to deal with. It cannot be allowed to lie on the ground as in the country, where it packs into hard, white roads. In cities snow is soon cut up into ...

II. Fire Fighters

Do you have fire drills in your school? If you do, the fire signal is struck on the gong at the most unexpected times. That is the way a fire happens, you know. When the gong strikes, every ...

II. Fire Fighters. Part 2

Never drop a match. Even if it is unlighted, some one may step on it and set it on fire. Keep matches in covered metal or china boxes, away from children and mice. Mice bite match heads and ...

II. Fire Fighters. Part 3

Do you know how quickly a fire company can get to a fire ? You ought to be in a city engine house sometime at midnight, when an alarm is turned in. It's like a cavalry charge on a battle field. ...

III. Fighters For Law And Order

When you grow older you will study the Declaration of Independence. This is a paper that was signed by some heroes who started our United States. They wanted a country where everybody could be ...

III. Fighters For Law And Order. Part 2

Policemen are often in as great danger as firemen. Sometimes they beat the firemen to a fire. If they do, it is their duty to go into a burning house and help get people out. They often stop ...

Part XIII: How And Why Of Common Things

How And Why Of Common Things

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.There is a period in a little child's life when he is just an animated question mark. He wants to know the how and why of everything. Now this betrays ...

What Are Tears For?

That is what a little blue-eyed girl asked her mama, when told that she shouldn't cry so much. She had the perfectly right idea that there must be some good reason for tears since she had so ...

Doggie Knows With His Nose

If you have a dog it will be very interesting to find out in what way he knows you. Mr. John Burroughs says he appeared one day before his dog in a new outing suit of khaki. The dog eyed him ...

What Is Smoke?

That depends upon the kind of fuel that is burned. Smoke from a fire of dry hard wood, from anthracite coal or from a gas flame is chiefly a column of hot air. Often it cannot be seen. There is ...

What Is Color Blindness?

There are a certain number of people in every hundred whose eyes seem to be perfect except in color seeing. One doctor has discovered that one person out of every fifty-five cannot tell red.from ...

Why The Needle In The Compass Points North

Have you a little iron horse-shoe magnet? It looks like any-other bent bar of iron, but pins, needles and other bits of metal will cling to the ends of the horse-shoe. They will even jump a ...

How The Moon Causes Tides In The Sea

Did you ever go to the sea shore for a vacation? And did you build forts and dig caves in the sand on the beach? Then, when you went to play the next morning, you found the beach smooth. Your ...

Sound Waves And The Telephone

Hello, central! Hello! The answer comes back in a second. You don't know, perhaps, that as soon as you unhook the receiver, a tiny knob of light flashes out ...

The Gas We Burn

When coal was first mined in England, it was noticed that an ill-smelling gas often escaped from the seams of the coal and made miners ill. In several mines this gas was accidentally set afire ...

Birds And Balloons, Kites And Air Ships

The Chinese and Japanese people have a kite-flying day. Most of their kites are made in the shapes of birds and butterflies, with wide-spread wings. They make them of hollow bamboo, the lightest ...

Why Rain Falls In Drops

It's very lucky for us that it does. If rain fell from a cloud in a continuous stream, like a river, anyone caught under it would be drowned. There are two perfectly good reasons why rain cannot ...

How To Find Your Way By The Stars

Away down in the kindergarten the little tots sing a song: This way's east and this way's west, Soon I'll learn to know the rest.'' They do learn, too. They learn that ...

How The Days Were Named

Sunday gets its name from the Sun. In olden times many peoples worshiped the sun, the heat and light giver. The sun was believed to be the source of all life. Because they were the most ...

How The Months Were Named

Four of the months aren't named. They just have numbers, but as the numbers are given in Latin, and Latin is a dead and by-gone language, their numbers pass for names, and few people are any the ...

What Are "Dog Days?

This is a very interesting question. To answer it completely one would need a book. It goes away-way back, farther than history, into many strange beliefs of many ancient peoples. Today, ...

Why An Apple Falls To The Ground

Foolish question ! You think. It falls because nothing holds it up. Exactly. But nothing seems to pull it down, either. Why doesn't it fall up, instead of down? Ah, you never thought ...

What Is An Eclipse?

Do you know the poem : I have a little shadow that follows after me? The little boy's shadow puzzled him. If he had only known it, there are big shadows that puzzle grown up people....

What Makes The Hum Of A Bee?

Hm! Hm! Let's see. A bee isn't the only thing that hums. A wheel, turning rapidly, whirs. A teakettle sings when the water boils. A violin string quivers with a musical note that ...

Why Onions Make You Cry

Your eyes really water a little all the time. All of our special sense organsthe tongue, the nose, the ears and eyes are kept moist by special glands. They are exposed to the ...

Why We Count By Tens

We count by tens because we have ten fingersfive on each hand. Nature is very fond of counting by fives. Five fingers on each hand; five toes on each foot; five petals in an apple blossom;...

Why Does Iron Rust?

When you grow up and are very, very wise you will not say that iron rusts. You will say it becomes oxidized. That means that the surface of the iron is burnt by the oxygen of the air. Rust is ...

Why Does Heat Make Water Boil?

I'll read you your riddle, if you'll read mine? When is water not water? When it's ice or vapor! Right. Water is very uncertain. Most of the time it is a liquid. But ...

Why An Iron Ship Does Not Sink

If you put a nail or a lump of iron in a vessel of water it sinks at once. A piece of wood of the same size floats. So, until fifty years or so ago, people thought all boats and ships must be ...

Why We Have Two Eyes

Have you a stereoscope with views? The views show two photographs, almost alike, mounted side by side on the same card. Yet when you look at them through the lens of the stereoscope, you see but ...

Alva And His Electric Lamp

Is your house lighted by electricity? Did you ever stop to think that every other kind of lightof a candle, an oil lamp, or of gas, must have the oxygen of the air to feed the flame. But ...

What Keeps A Moving Car On The Track?

A great many boys will think they know the answer to that. They will say it is because of the rim, or flange, that is on the inside edge of the car wheel. That rim merely steadies the ...

What Sours Milk?

You know milk turns sour when it is a day old, sometimes. But you can buy milk that is a year old, or more, that is just as sweet as it was when it came from the cow. It is condensed, or ...

Children, Birds And Teakettles

Guess why they are alike. They all sing. They all sing in much the same way, too. Watch very close and find out how you sing. You fill your lungs with air. Then you nearly close your ...

Water And A Duck'S Back

What is quite so wretched looking as a wet hen ? She is drenched by a hard rain just as quickly as you are. But you never saw a wet duck, did you? Yet a duck spends most of its life swimming in ...

Why Frozen Water Bursts Pipes

Nearly everything we know is expanded or swollen by heat, and contracted or shrunken by cold. But water is queer. It's ; particles huddle closest together, and fill the smallest amount of space ...

Why We Are Tanned By The Sun

To tan has two meanings. One is to turn anything a yellowish-brown color. The other meaning is to toughen and harden skins into leather. In the making of leather, both the ...

Why And How We Sleep

Why do we go to sleep? That is what the little why boy asked his mama. Because we are sleepy. Why do we get sleepy? &...

The Ages Of Animals

No one knows exactly how long animals live in a wild state, but records have been kept of animals that have been tamed by men. And scientists are able to come very close to the ages of wild ...

How Bears Live All Winter Without Eating

One-half of the answer to this is: As bears sleep most of the time in a warm place in winter, they do not need as much food as when they are active. The other half is that they eat themselves. ...

What Makes The Sky Look Blue?

That is a hard question! But it isn't a foolish one, by any means. It was only about fifty years ago that a great English scientist named John Tyndall worked out the puzzle. See if you can ...

Why The Sky Is Many Colored At Sunset

You can't imagine a rainbow-colored sky! Oh, yes, you can. Haven't you seen the brilliant colors of sunset? When the sun is above us, at noon, the light rays come straight down to us, ...

Sound Waves And The Phonograph

You remember how, in the telephone, the sound waves made by the voice are caught on an iron disc, or drumhead, and sent on to the wire. Now phone means sound and graph means write. In the ...

How Does Soap Make Things Clean?

You can find out the answer to this by making a little soap in a greasy frying pan. Put a very little water and a big spoon full of washing (lump) soda in it, and let them boil together. You get ...

What Is The Horizon?

The horizon is the boundary of as much of the world as you can see from the place in which you happen to be standing. If you are on the ocean, or on a flat plain with no houses or trees to break ...

Why The Edges Of Coins Are "Milled"

Have you a silver dollar, or a gold piece? Your papa has. Perhaps you never noticed that coins are cut in regular up and down grooves around the edges. This is called milling, ...

How Trains Run Around Curves

The first law of motion, as you learned in what keeps a bicycle upright, is that a moving thing goes forward in a straight line. If the direction of the moving is changed some other force must ...

Sources And Kinds Of Oil

Oil is made by animals and plants. The flesh of all animals contain fat that is easily melted into oils. Mutton fat or tallow is so waxy that it hardens and makes good candles. Whales have a ...

What Keeps A Bicycle Upright

Motion. A bicycle keeps upright only as long as it is moving. When standing still it has to be supported against something. It seems rather odd that the bicycle wasn't invented long before our ...

Is There A Man In The Moon?

There is no man in the moon, for the moon is an airless, waterless, dead world. There is no life on it at all. And if there were men there, the moon is so far away we could not see them. ...

Why Birds Moult

Birds moult, or drop their feathers and grow new ones once a year or, in some kinds twice, for the same reason that you buy new suits of clothes. Feathers wear out. They get dirty and ragged ...

Why People Become Seasick

As human beings are land animals their bodies are fitted to live on a stationary base. The sea is always in motion. Anything floating on a big body of water is constantly lifted and let fall and ...

How A Photograph Is Taken

Of all machines a camera is the Chinaman. It does everything upside down, wrong side before, and right side out. Then the eyes in our heads are Chinamen, too, for they are Nature's cameras. ...

Don't Put Boiling Water In A Cold Glass

If you docrack! You may break it. If the glass is thick it is almost sure to crack. The thinner the glass the smaller the risk. That's odd, isn't it? Why is this? Heat expands. When a ...

Why Salt Causes Thirst

We need salt in our bodies to keep us healthy. Our blood is just about as salty as sea-water. Isn't that curious when we think that animal life began on our earth in the sea? Now salt melts or ...

How Steam Makes A Locomotive Go

An engineer would tell you that a locomotive is driven by steam power. He understands what that means, but you don't. So that is no answer for you. You know what steam is, of course. It is vapor,...

What Makes An Automobile Go?

Not steam. An automobile couldn't carry a big iron boiler around. One might say that an automobile is driven by canned sunshine, or gasoline. Gasoline is a refined preparation of petroleum that ...

Why Washington's Eyes Follow Us

There is one picture of Washington in which the eyes follow any one who looks at it. It is the portrait painted by an American artist, Gilbert Stuart. The eyes are very large and mild and noble. ...

What Rings The Door Bell?

A current of electricity running around a wire, rings the door bell. Then why doesn't it ring all the time? For the same reason that an electric lamp doesn't give light all the time. In both ...

What Makes The Music In A Pipe Organ?

The pipe organ in the church is a wind instrument. Although it has a keyboard, and is played like a piano or parlor organ by striking the keys, the music is not made in the same way. In a piano ...

What Makes A Mirage?

Every child who has read stories of the desert, knows that sometimes travellers over the burning sands often think they see, in the distance, one of those green places with water and palm trees ...

Day And Night

Why we have both day and night following each other regularly once every twenty-four hours, is supposed to be very hard to understand. It isn't explained to children in school until they get ...

Where The Date Changes

This is a little harder to understand. Perhaps you don't know that the date does changebut if it didn't, then when it is Sunday on one side of the earth it would be Monday on the other....

How The Spectrum Explains The Sun

Do you remember about the wise manIsaac Newton who was set to thinking out the law of falling bodies by seeing an apple fall to the ground? He was always curious about common ...

A World Of Wonders In A Soap Bubble

A soap bubble really makes one able to believe in worlds where fairies live. Like our world of land and water it is round. It floats in space. Although it is hollow, it is packed and crammed ...

Why Is The Water Of The Ocean Salt?

There is no salt in fresh rain-water. River water tastes fresh, sea water salty. Yet the oceans are fed by the rivers that flow into them. Then where does the salt in the sea come from? ...

What Is "Horse Power?"

When James Watt invented the stationary steam engine, one of the difficulties he had was to be certain how large an engine was needed to do a given amount of work. He would get an order ...

How Quickly Do Things Fall?

That depends. On the weight of it? No, indeed. You remember how Galileo, the great astronomer, dropped a one-pound and a ten pound cannon ball together from the leaning tower of Pisa? They ...

Are The Stars Inhabited?

When you look up at the stars at night don't you wonder if people like ourselves live upon any of them? Some of the stars we know are far away suns, much larger than the sun that lights and ...

Why Lightning Rods Protect Houses

In the first place a lightning rod does not protect a house unless the lower end is well buried in the ground. If the lower part of the rod is rusted and broken off at the ground it really ...

Why A Dog Turns Around Before Lying Down

Dogs are wild animals that have been tamed. They have been tamed for so many hundreds of years that they are very different from any and all of their wild brothers of todaywolves, foxes, ...

How Does Cloth, Paper Or A Sponge Soak Up And Hold Water?

Do you want to be told? It's more fun to find things out for yourself. Get the smallest glass tube that is sold in drug stores. Put one end of it into a glass full of water and see what happens. ...

Why Some People Are Left-Handed

Are you left-handed? If you are, very likely it worries mama and papa and all your teachers. It shouldn't worry them. And really it is a great waste of useful time to try to make you right ...

Why A Pop-Gun Pops

A pop-gun pops from an air explosion. The front end of the gun is made air-tight with a cork or plug. At the other end is the plunger, that fits the round bore just tight enough so it can be ...

Why Is A Cat Able To See In The Dark?

In the first place a cat cannot see in pitch dark. It can only see by less light than you can. You can see in very bright light, and also in dim light. If you come out of a rather dark room ...

Live Silver—What Is It?

When mama sends you for something in a hurry, she says: Run, quick! The real old meaning of quick is to be alive. When you run quick you have to be very much alive. So when men found ...

Thumb Print Autographs

Look at the ball of your right thumb very closely. It would be better to look at it through a reading glass or microscope. It is covered with very fine lines that sweep in curves around a ...

Fairy Prince Echo

Nearly all ancient peoples had pretty, poetic stories about the echo. Some, very likely, thought merry little fairies really lived in rocky caves and valleys, to shout and laugh back at them. No ...

Why The Earth Is Round

Well, why is a raindrop round? Why is lead shot round? Maybe you think shot is moulded like bullets. It isn't. The lead is melted. Then it is showered like rain from a tall shot tower. As it ...

Thunder And Lightning

That is the order in which we speak of them. But really we should say lightning and thunder. They are both made the same instant, by two electric currents in storm clouds coming violently ...