Natural Wonders

Front matter

Reading edition

THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARY

NATURAL WONDERS

The Robin Moth

THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARY

NATURAL WONDERS

By EDWIN TENNEY BREWSTER

Garden City — New York DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. 1928

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. IHow The Chicken Gets Inside The Egg

Chap. IISome Other Sorts of Eggs

Chap. IIILittle Fishes in The Brook

Chap. IVOf Plants’ Eggs

Chap. VWhat Little Boys And Girls Are Made Of

Chap. VIMore About Living Bricks

Chap. VIIHow Much Of Us Is Alive

Chap. VIIIHow We Grow

Chap. IXHow We Grow Up

Chap. XHow We Grow Old

Chap. XIWhy We Grow At All

Chap. XIIThings That Do Not Have To Be Learned

Chap. XIIIWhy We Like Certain Things

Chap. XIVAnimals’ Games

Chap. XVSome Instincts Of Chicks And Kittens

Chap. XVICertain Stupidities Of Animals

Chap. XVIIHow We Differ From The Animals

Chap. XVIIISomething More About Speech And Thinking

Chap. XIXWhy Most Of Us Are Right-Handed

Chap. XXWhere We Do Our Thinking

Chap. XXIWhere Some Of The Animals Do Their Thinking

Chap. XXIIWhat Plants Know

Chap. XXIIIWhat Plants Can Do

Chap. XXIVSome Plant-Like Doings Of Animals

Chap. XXVThe Five Senses And The Other Five

Chap. XXVIEyes

Chap. XXVIISeeing And Believing

Chap. XXVIIISome Other Senses

Chap. XXIXThe Sight And Hearing Of Ants

Chap. XXXAnts’ Noses

Chap. XXXISome Other Eyes And Ears

Chap. XXXIIHaving Senses And Using Them

Chap. XXXIIISeeing In The Mind’s Eye

Chap. XXXIVEar Minds And Others

Chap. XXXVLiving Automobiles

Chap. XXXVIAir And Fuel

Chap. XXXVIIMen In Glass Boxes

Chap. XXXVIIIOf Sugar And Other Poisons

Chap. XXXIXSnake Venoms And Others

Chap. XLOf Measles And Rusty Nails

Chap. XLIThe Great War

Chap. XLIIMore About The Great War

Chap. XLIIILiving Apothecary Shops

Chap. XLIVWhat Becomes Of The Tadpoles

Chap. XLVNature’s Repair Shop

Chap. XLVILittle Monsters

Chap. XLVIIHow The Animals Keep Their Tools Sharp

Chap. XLVIIIWhy The Blood Is Salt

Chap. XLIXHorses’ Fingers

Chap. LHow The Elephant Got His Trunk

Chap. LISomething Nobody Understands

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

The Robin Moth

Full Page Illustrations

How the Chicken Gets Inside the Egg

Seeds That Have Plumes and Wings

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

Ear of a Mole Cricket on the Front Leg

Back of the Frog’s Eyes Are the Ear Drums

A Newt

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