The land is at rest

The
“LOOK ABOUT YOU”
Nature Study Books

BOOK II.

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.

Glass of Mud and Water.

“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