the master key an electrical fairy tale founded upon the mysteries of electricity and the optimism of its devotees. it was written for boys, but others may read it by l. frank baum contents --who knows?- 1. rob's workshop 2. the demon of electricity 3. the three gifts 4. testing the instruments 5. the cannibal island 6. the buccaneers 7. the demon becomes angry 8. rob acquires new powers 9. the second journey 10. how rob served a mighty king 11. the man of science 12. how rob saved a republic 13. rob loses his treasures 14. turk and tatar 15. a battle with monsters 16. shipwrecked mariners 17. the coast of oregon 18. a narrow escape 19. rob makes a resolution 20. the unhappy fate of the demon who knows? these things are quite improbable, to be sure; but are they impossible? our big world rolls over as smoothly as it did centuries ago, without a squeak to show it needs oiling after all these years of revolution. but times change because men change, and because civilization, like john brown's soul, goes ever marching on. the impossibilities of yesterday become the accepted facts of to-day. here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of electricity and written for children of this generation. yet when my readers shall have become men and women my story may not seem to their children like a fairy tale at all. perhaps one, perhaps two--perhaps several of the demon's devices will be, by that time, in popular use. who knows? 1. rob's workshop when rob became interested in electricity his clear-headed father considered the boy's fancy to be instructive as well as amusing; so he heartily encouraged his son, and rob never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort that his experiments might require. he fitted up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in rob's workshop. the gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; a bell rang whenever the postman dropped a letter into the box; there were bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. and there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed. his mother and sisters soon came to vote the boy's scientific craze a nuisance; but his father was delighted with these evidences of rob's skill as an electrician, and insisted that he be allowed perfect freedom in carrying out his ideas. "electricity," said the old gentleman, sagely, "is destined to become the motive power of the world. the future advance of civilization will be along electrical lines. our boy may become a great inventor and astonish the world with his wonderful creations." "and in the meantime," said the mother, despairingly, "we shall all be electrocuted, or the house burned down by crossed wires, or we shall be blown into eternity by an explosion of chemicals!" "nonsense!" ejaculated the proud father. "rob's storage batteries are not powerful enough to electrocute one or set the house on fire. do give the boy a chance, belinda." "and the pranks are so humiliating," continued the lady. "when the minister called yesterday and rang the bell a big card appeared on the front door on which was printed the words: 'busy; call again.' fortunately helen saw him and let him in, but when i reproved robert for the act he said he was just trying the sign to see if it would work." "exactly! the boy is an inventor already. i shall have one of those cards attached to the door of my private office at once. i tell you, belinda, our son will be a great man one of these days," said mr. joslyn, walking up and down with pompous strides and almost bursting with the pride he took in his young hopeful. mrs. joslyn sighed. she knew remonstrance was useless so long as her husband encouraged the boy, and that she would be wise to bear her cross with fortitude. rob also knew his mother's protests would be of no avail; so he continued to revel in electrical processes of all sorts, using the house as an experimental station to test the powers of his productions. it was in his own room, however,--his "workshop"--that he especially delighted. for not only was it the center of all his numerous "lines" throughout the house, but he had rigged up therein a wonderful array of devices for his own amusement. a trolley-car moved around a circular track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their trades in awkward but persevering fashion. the room was crossed and recrossed with wires. they crept up the walls, lined the floor, made a grille of the ceiling and would catch an unwary visitor under the chin or above the ankle just when he least expected it. yet visitors were forbidden in so crowded a room, and even his father declined to go farther than the doorway. as for rob, he thought he knew all about the wires, and what each one was for; but they puzzled even him, at times, and he was often perplexed to know how to utilize them all. one day when he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he planned the electrical illumination of a gorgeous pasteboard palace, he really became confused over the network of wires. he had a "switchboard," to be sure, where he could make and break connections as he chose; but the wires had somehow become mixed, and he could not tell what combinations to use to throw the power on to his miniature electric lights. so he experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination. then he thought the combination might be right and there was a lack of power; so he added other lines of wire to his connections, and still others, until he had employed almost every wire in the room. yet it would not work; and after pausing a moment to try to think what was wrong he went at it again, putting this and that line into connection, adding another here and another there, until suddenly, as he made a last change, a quick flash of light almost blinded him, and the switch-board crackled ominously, as if struggling to carry a powerful current. rob covered his face at the flash, but finding himself unhurt he took away his hands and with blinking eyes attempted to look at a wonderful radiance which seemed to fill the room, making it many times brighter than the brightest day. although at first completely dazzled, he peered before him until he discovered that the light was concentrated near one spot, from which all the glorious rays seemed to scintillate. he closed his eyes a moment to rest them; then re-opening them and shading them somewhat with his hands, he made out the form of a curious being standing with majesty and composure in the center of the magnificent radiance and looking down upon him! 2. the demon of electricity rob was a courageous boy, but a thrill of fear passed over him in spite of his bravest endeavor as he gazed upon the wondrous apparition that confronted him. for several moments he sat as if turned to stone, so motionless was he; but his eyes were nevertheless fastened upon the being and devouring every detail of his appearance. and how strange an appearance he presented! his jacket was a wavering mass of white light, edged with braid of red flames that shot little tongues in all directions. the buttons blazed in golden fire. his trousers had a bluish, incandescent color, with glowing stripes of crimson braid. his vest was gorgeous with all the colors of the rainbow blended into a flashing, resplendent mass. in feature he was most majestic, and his eyes held the soft but penetrating brilliance of electric lights. it was hard to meet the gaze of those searching eyes, but rob did it, and at once the splendid apparition bowed and said in a low, clear voice: "i am here." "i know that," answered the boy, trembling, "but why are you here?" "because you have touched the master key of electricity, and i must obey the laws of nature that compel me to respond to your summons." "i--i didn't know i touched the master key," faltered the boy. "i understand that. you did it unconsciously. no one in the world has ever done it before, for nature has hitherto kept the secret safe locked within her bosom." rob took time to wonder at this statement. "then who are you?" he inquired, at length. "the demon of electricity," was the solemn answer. "good gracious!" exclaimed rob, "a demon!" "certainly. i am, in truth, the slave of the master key, and am forced to obey the commands of any one who is wise and brave enough--or, as in your own case, fortunate and fool-hardy enough--to touch it." "i--i've never guessed there was such a thing as a master key, or--or a demon of electricity, and--and i'm awfully sorry i--i called you up!" stammered the boy, abashed by the imposing appearance of his companion. the demon actually smiled at this speech,--a smile that was almost reassuring. "i am not sorry," he said, in kindlier tone, "for it is not much pleasure waiting century after century for some one to command my services. i have often thought my existence uncalled for, since you earth people are so stupid and ignorant that you seem unlikely ever to master the secret of electrical power." "oh, we have some great masters among us!" cried rob, rather nettled at this statement. "now, there's edison--" "edison!" exclaimed the demon, with a faint sneer; "what does he know?" "lots of things," declared the boy. "he's invented no end of wonderful electrical things." "you are wrong to call them wonderful," replied the demon, lightly. "he really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. his inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. why, i've stood for months by edison's elbow, hoping and longing for him to touch the master key; but i can see plainly he will never accomplish it." "then there's tesla," said the boy. the demon laughed. "there is tesla, to be sure," he said. "but what of him?" "why, he's discovered a powerful light," the demon gave an amused chuckle, "and he's in communication with the people in mars." "what people?" "why, the people who live there." "there are none." this great statement almost took rob's breath away, and caused him to stare hard at his visitor. "it's generally thought," he resumed, in an annoyed tone, "that mars has inhabitants who are far in advance of ourselves in civilization. many scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us for years, only we don't understand their signals. and great novelists have written about the martians and their wonderful civilization, and--" "and they all know as much about that little planet as you do yourself," interrupted the demon, impatiently. "the trouble with you earth people is that you delight in guessing about what you can not know. now i happen to know all about mars, because i can traverse all space and have had ample leisure to investigate the different planets. mars is not peopled at all, nor is any other of the planets you recognize in the heavens. some contain low orders of beasts, to be sure, but earth alone has an intelligent, thinking, reasoning population, and your scientists and novelists would do better trying to comprehend their own planet than in groping through space to unravel the mysteries of barren and unimportant worlds." rob listened to this with surprise and disappointment; but he reflected that the demon ought to know what he was talking about, so he did not venture to contradict him. "it is really astonishing," continued the apparition, "how little you people have learned about electricity. it is an earth element that has existed since the earth itself was formed, and if you but understood its proper use humanity would be marvelously benefited in many ways." "we are, already," protested rob; "our discoveries in electricity have enabled us to live much more conveniently." "then imagine your condition were you able fully to control this great element," replied the other, gravely. "the weaknesses and privations of mankind would be converted into power and luxury." "that's true, mr.--mr.--demon," said the boy. "excuse me if i don't get your name right, but i understood you to say you are a demon." "certainly. the demon of electricity." "but electricity is a good thing, you know, and--and--" "well?" "i've always understood that demons were bad things," added rob, boldly. "not necessarily," returned his visitor. "if you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. i do not know why. should you read hesiod you will find he says: 'soon was a world of holy demons made, aerial spirits, by great jove designed to be on earth the guardians of mankind.'" "but jove was himself a myth," objected rob, who had been studying mythology. the demon shrugged his shoulders. "then take the words of mr. shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "do you not remember that he says: 'thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.'" "oh, if shakespeare says it, that's all right," answered the boy. "but it seems you're more like a genius, for you answer the summons of the master key of electricity in the same way aladdin's genius answered the rubbing of the lamp." "to be sure. a demon is also a genius; and a genius is a demon," said the being. "what matters a name? i am here to do your bidding." 3. the three gifts familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. the great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors. so rob, having conversed for a time with the glorious demon of electricity, began to regard him with more composure and less awe, as his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the splendor that at first had well-nigh blinded them. when the demon announced himself ready to do the boy's bidding, he frankly replied: "i am no skilled electrician, as you very well know. my calling you here was an accident. so i don't know how to command you, nor what to ask you to do." "but i must not take advantage of your ignorance," answered the demon. "also, i am quite anxious to utilize this opportunity to show the world what a powerful element electricity really is. so permit me to inform you that, having struck the master key, you are at liberty to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks. these gifts, provided they are within the scope of electricity, i will grant." rob shook his head regretfully. "if i were a great electrician i should know what to ask," he said. "but i am too ignorant to take advantage of your kind offer." "then," replied the demon, "i will myself suggest the gifts, and they will be of such a character that the earth people will learn the possibilities that lie before them and be encouraged to work more intelligently and to persevere in mastering those natural and simple laws which control electricity. for one of the greatest errors they now labor under is that electricity is complicated and hard to understand. it is really the simplest earth element, lying within easy reach of any one who stretches out his hand to grasp and control its powers." rob yawned, for he thought the demon's speeches were growing rather tiresome. perhaps the genius noticed this rudeness, for he continued: "i regret, of course, that you are a boy instead of a grown man, for it will appear singular to your friends that so thoughtless a youth should seemingly have mastered the secrets that have baffled your most learned scientists. but that can not be helped, and presently you will become, through my aid, the most powerful and wonderful personage in all the world." "thank you," said rob, meekly. "it'll be no end of fun." "fun!" echoed the demon, scornfully. "but never mind; i must use the material fate has provided for me, and make the best of it." "what will you give me first?" asked the boy, eagerly. "that requires some thought," returned the demon, and paused for several moments, while rob feasted his eyes upon the gorgeous rays of color that flashed and vibrated in every direction and surrounded the figure of his visitor with an intense glow that resembled a halo. then the demon raised his head and said: "the thing most necessary to man is food to nourish his body. he passes a considerable part of his life in the struggle to procure food, to prepare it properly, and in the act of eating. this is not right. your body can not be very valuable to you if all your time is required to feed it. i shall, therefore, present you, as my first gift, this box of tablets. within each tablet are stored certain elements of electricity which are capable of nourishing a human body for a full day. all you need do is to toss one into your mouth each day and swallow it. it will nourish you, satisfy your hunger and build up your health and strength. the ordinary food of mankind is more or less injurious; this is entirely beneficial. moreover, you may carry enough tablets in your pocket to last for months." here he presented rob the silver box of tablets, and the boy, somewhat nervously, thanked him for the gift. "the next requirement of man," continued the demon, "is defense from his enemies. i notice with sorrow that men frequently have wars and kill one another. also, even in civilized communities, man is in constant danger from highwaymen, cranks and policemen. to defend himself he uses heavy and dangerous guns, with which to destroy his enemies. this is wrong. he has no right to take away what he can not bestow; to destroy what he can not create. to kill a fellow-creature is a horrid crime, even if done in self-defense. therefore, my second gift to you is this little tube. you may carry it within your pocket. whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. an electric current will instantly be directed upon your foe, rendering him wholly unconscious for the period of one hour. during that time you will have opportunity to escape. as for your enemy, after regaining consciousness he will suffer no inconvenience from the encounter beyond a slight headache." "that's fine!" said rob, as he took the tube. it was scarcely six inches long, and hollow at one end. "the busy lives of men," proceeded the demon, "require them to move about and travel in all directions. yet to assist them there are only such crude and awkward machines as electric trolleys, cable cars, steam railways and automobiles. these crawl slowly over the uneven surface of the earth and frequently get out of order. it has grieved me that men have not yet discovered what even birds know: that the atmosphere offers them swift and easy means of traveling from one part of the earth's surface to another." "some people have tried to build airships," remarked rob. "so they have; great, unwieldy machines which offer so much resistance to the air that they are quite useless. a big machine is not needed to carry one through the air. there are forces in nature which may be readily used for such purpose. tell me, what holds you to the earth, and makes a stone fall to the ground?" "attraction of gravitation," said rob, promptly. "exactly. that is one force i refer to," said the demon. "the force of repulsion, which is little known, but just as powerful, is another that mankind may direct. then there are the polar electric forces, attracting objects toward the north or south poles. you have guessed something of this by the use of the compass, or electric needle. opposed to these is centrifugal electric force, drawing objects from east to west, or in the opposite direction. this force is created by the whirl of the earth upon its axis, and is easily utilized, although your scientific men have as yet paid little attention to it. "these forces, operating in all directions, absolute and immutable, are at the disposal of mankind. they will carry you through the atmosphere wherever and whenever you choose. that is, if you know how to control them. now, here is a machine i have myself perfected." the demon drew from his pocket something that resembled an open-faced watch, having a narrow, flexible band attached to it. "when you wish to travel," said he, "attach this little machine to your left wrist by means of the band. it is very light and will not be in your way. on this dial are points marked 'up' and 'down' as well as a perfect compass. when you desire to rise into the air set the indicator to the word 'up,' using a finger of your right hand to turn it. when you have risen as high as you wish, set the indicator to the point of the compass you want to follow and you will be carried by the proper electric force in that direction. to descend, set the indicator to the word 'down.' do you understand?" "perfectly!" cried rob, taking the machine from the demon with unfeigned delight. "this is really wonderful, and i'm awfully obliged to you!" "don't mention it," returned the demon, dryly. "these three gifts you may amuse yourself with for the next week. it seems hard to entrust such great scientific discoveries to the discretion of a mere boy; but they are quite harmless, so if you exercise proper care you can not get into trouble through their possession. and who knows what benefits to humanity may result? one week from to-day, at this hour, i will again appear to you, at which time you shall receive the second series of electrical gifts." "i'm not sure," said rob, "that i shall be able again to make the connections that will strike the master key." "probably not," answered the demon. "could you accomplish that, you might command my services forever. but, having once succeeded, you are entitled to the nine gifts--three each week for three weeks--so you have no need to call me to do my duty. i shall appear of my own accord." "thank you," murmured the boy. the demon bowed and spread his hands in the form of a semi-circle. an instant later there was a blinding flash, and when rob recovered from it and opened his eyes the demon of electricity had disappeared. 4. testing the instruments there is little doubt that this strange experience befallen a grown man he would have been stricken with a fit of trembling or a sense of apprehension, or even fear, at the thought of having faced the terrible demon of electricity, of having struck the master key of the world's greatest natural forces, and finding himself possessed of three such wonderful and useful gifts. but a boy takes everything as a matter of course. as the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. it takes a great deal to startle a boy. rob was full of delight at his unexpected good fortune; but he did not stop to consider that there was anything remarkably queer or uncanny in the manner in which it had come to him. his chief sensation was one of pride. he would now be able to surprise those who had made fun of his electrical craze and force them to respect his marvelous powers. he decided to say nothing about the demon or the accidental striking of the master key. in exhibiting to his friends the electrical devices he had acquired it would be "no end of fun" to mark their amazement and leave them to guess how he performed his feats. so he put his treasures into his pocket, locked his workshop and went downstairs to his room to prepare for dinner. while brushing his hair he remembered it was no longer necessary for him to eat ordinary food. he was feeling quite hungry at that moment, for he had a boy's ravenous appetite; but, taking the silver box from his pocket, he swallowed a tablet and at once felt his hunger as fully satisfied as if he had partaken of a hearty meal, while at the same time he experienced an exhilarating glow throughout his body and a clearness of brain and gaiety of spirits which filled him with intense gratification. still, he entered the dining-room when the bell rang and found his father and mother and sisters already assembled there. "where have you been all day, robert?" inquired his mother. "no need to ask," said mr. joslyn, with a laugh. "fussing over electricity, i'll bet a cookie!" "i do wish," said the mother, fretfully, "that he would get over that mania. it unfits him for anything else." "precisely," returned her husband, dishing the soup; "but it fits him for a great career when he becomes a man. why shouldn't he spend his summer vacation in pursuit of useful knowledge instead of romping around like ordinary boys?" "no soup, thank you," said rob. "what!" exclaimed his father, looking at him in surprise, "it's your favorite soup." "i know," said rob, quietly, "but i don't want any." "are you ill, robert?" asked his mother. "never felt better in my life," answered rob, truthfully. yet mrs. joslyn looked worried, and when rob refused the roast, she was really shocked. "let me feel your pulse, my poor boy!" she commanded, and wondered to find it so regular. in fact, rob's action surprised them all. he sat calmly throughout the meal, eating nothing, but apparently in good health and spirits, while even his sisters regarded him with troubled countenances. "he's worked too hard, i guess," said mr. joslyn, shaking his head sadly. "oh, no; i haven't," protested rob; "but i've decided not to eat anything, hereafter. it's a bad habit, and does more harm than good." "wait till breakfast," said sister helen, with a laugh; "you'll be hungry enough by that time." however, the boy had no desire for food at breakfast time, either, as the tablet sufficed for an entire day. so he renewed the anxiety of the family by refusing to join them at the table. "if this goes on," mr joslyn said to his son, when breakfast was finished, "i shall be obliged to send you away for your health." "i think of making a trip this morning," said rob, carelessly. "where to?" "oh, i may go to boston, or take a run over to cuba or jamaica," replied the boy. "but you can not go so far by yourself," declared his father; "and there is no one to go with you, just now. nor can i spare the money at present for so expensive a trip." "oh, it won't cost anything," replied rob, with a smile. mr. joslyn looked upon him gravely and sighed. mrs. joslyn bent over her son with tears in her eyes and said: "this electrical nonsense has affected your mind, dear. you must promise me to keep away from that horrid workshop for a time." "i won't enter it for a week," he answered. "but you needn't worry about me. i haven't been experimenting with electricity all this time for nothing, i can tell you. as for my health, i'm as well and strong as any boy need be, and there's nothing wrong with my head, either. common folks always think great men are crazy, but edison and tesla and i don't pay any attention to that. we've got our discoveries to look after. now, as i said, i'm going for a little trip in the interests of science. i may be back to-night, or i may be gone several days. anyhow, i'll be back in a week, and you mustn't worry about me a single minute." "how are you going?" inquired his father, in the gentle, soothing tone persons use in addressing maniacs. "through the air," said rob. his father groaned. "where's your balloon?" inquired sister mabel, sarcastically. "i don't need a balloon," returned the boy. "that's a clumsy way of traveling, at best. i shall go by electric propulsion." "good gracious!" cried mr. joslyn, and the mother murmured: "my poor boy! my poor boy!" "as you are my nearest relatives," continued rob, not noticing these exclamations, "i will allow you to come into the back yard and see me start. you will then understand something of my electrical powers." they followed him at once, although with unbelieving faces, and on the way rob clasped the little machine to his left wrist, so that his coat sleeve nearly hid it. when they reached the lawn at the back of the house rob kissed them all good-by, much to his sisters' amusement, and turned the indicator of the little instrument to the word "up." immediately he began to rise into the air. "don't worry about me!" he called down to them. "good-by!" mrs. joslyn, with a scream of terror, hid her face in her hands. "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father, tipping back his head to look after his departing son. "come back! come back!" shouted the girls to the soaring adventurer. "i will--some day!" was the far-away answer. having risen high enough to pass over the tallest tree or steeple, rob put the indicator to the east of the compass-dial and at once began moving rapidly in that direction. the sensation was delightful. he rode as gently as a feather floats, without any exertion at all on his own part; yet he moved so swiftly that he easily distanced a railway train that was speeding in the same direction. "this is great!" reflected the youth. "here i am, traveling in fine style, without a penny to pay any one! and i've enough food to last me a month in my coat pocket. this electricity is the proper stuff, after all! and the demon's a trump, and no mistake. whee-ee! how small everything looks down below there. the people are bugs, and the houses are soap-boxes, and the trees are like clumps of grass. i seem to be passing over a town. guess i'll drop down a bit, and take in the sights." he pointed the indicator to the word "down," and at once began dropping through the air. he experienced the sensation one feels while descending in an elevator. when he reached a point just above the town he put the indicator to the zero mark and remained stationary, while he examined the place. but there was nothing to interest him, particularly; so after a brief survey he once more ascended and continued his journey toward the east. at about two o'clock in the afternoon he reached the city of boston, and alighting unobserved in a quiet street he walked around for several hours enjoying the sights and wondering what people would think of him if they but knew his remarkable powers. but as he looked just like any other boy no one noticed him in any way. it was nearly evening, and rob had wandered down by the wharves to look at the shipping, when his attention was called to an ugly looking bull dog, which ran toward him and began barking ferociously. "get out!" said the boy, carelessly, and made a kick at the brute. the dog uttered a fierce growl and sprang upon him with bared teeth and flashing red eyes. instantly rob drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the dog and pressed the button. almost at the same moment the dog gave a yelp, rolled over once or twice and lay still. "i guess that'll settle him," laughed the boy; but just then he heard an angry shout, and looking around saw a policeman running toward him. "kill me dog, will ye--eh?" yelled the officer; "well, i'll just run ye in for that same, an' ye'll spend the night in the lockup!" and on he came, with drawn club in one hand and a big revolver in the other. "you'll have to catch me first," said rob, still laughing, and to the amazement of the policeman he began rising straight into the air. "come down here! come down, or i'll shoot!" shouted the fellow, flourishing his revolver. rob was afraid he would; so, to avoid accidents, he pointed the tube at him and pressed the button. the red-whiskered policeman keeled over quite gracefully and fell across the body of the dog, while rob continued to mount upward until he was out of sight of those in the streets. "that was a narrow escape," he thought, breathing more freely. "i hated to paralyze that policeman, but he might have sent a bullet after me. anyhow, he'll be all right again in an hour, so i needn't worry." it was beginning to grow dark, and he wondered what he should do next. had he possessed any money he would have descended to the town and taken a bed at a hotel, but he had left home without a single penny. fortunately the nights were warm at this season, so he determined to travel all night, that he might reach by morning some place he had never before visited. cuba had always interested him, and he judged it ought to lie in a southeasterly direction from boston. so he set the indicator to that point and began gliding swiftly toward the southeast. he now remembered that it was twenty-four hours since he had eaten the first electrical tablet. as he rode through the air he consumed another. all hunger at once left him, while he felt the same invigorating sensations as before. after a time the moon came out, and rob amused himself gazing at the countless stars in the sky and wondering if the demon was right when he said the world was the most important of all the planets. but presently he grew sleepy, and before he realized what was happening he had fallen into a sound and peaceful slumber, while the indicator still pointed to the southeast and he continued to move rapidly through the cool night air. 5. the cannibal island doubtless the adventures of the day had tired rob, for he slept throughout the night as comfortably as if he had been within his own room, lying upon his own bed. when, at last, he opened his eyes and gazed sleepily about him, he found himself over a great body of water, moving along with considerable speed. "it's the ocean, of course," he said to himself. "i haven't reached cuba yet." it is to be regretted that rob's knowledge of geography was so superficial; for, as he had intended to reach cuba, he should have taken a course almost southwest from boston, instead of southeast. the sad result of his ignorance you will presently learn, for during the entire day he continued to travel over a boundless waste of ocean, without the sight of even an island to cheer him. the sun shone so hot that he regretted he had not brought an umbrella. but he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, which protected him somewhat, and he finally discovered that by rising to a considerable distance above the ocean he avoided the reflection of the sun upon the water and also came with the current of good breeze. of course he dared no stop, for there was no place to land; so he calmly continued his journey. "it may be i've missed cuba," he thought; "but i can not change my course now, for if i did i might get lost, and never be able to find land again. if i keep on as i am i shall be sure to reach land of some sort, in time, and when i wish to return home i can set the indicator to the northwest and that will take me directly back to boston." this was good reasoning, but the rash youth had no idea he was speeding over the ocean, or that he was destined to arrive shortly at the barbarous island of brava, off the coast of africa. yet such was the case; just as the sun sank over the edge of the waves he saw, to his great relief, a large island directly in his path. he dropped to a lower position in the air, and when he judged himself to be over the center of the island he turned the indicator to zero and stopped short. the country was beautifully wooded, while pretty brooks sparkled through the rich green foliage of the trees. the island sloped upwards from the sea-coast in all directions, rising to a hill that was almost a mountain in the center. there were two open spaces, one on each side of the island, and rob saw that these spaces were occupied by queer-looking huts built from brushwood and branches of trees. this showed that the island was inhabited, but as rob had no idea what island it was he wisely determined not to meet the natives until he had discovered what they were like and whether they were disposed to be friendly. so he moved over the hill, the top of which proved to be a flat, grass-covered plateau about fifty feet in diameter. finding it could not be easily reached from below, on account of its steep sides, and contained neither men nor animals, he alighted on the hill-top and touched his feet to the earth for the first time in twenty-four hours. the ride through the air had not tired him in the least; in fact, he felt as fresh and vigorous as if he had been resting throughout the journey. as he walked upon the soft grass of the plateau he felt elated, and compared himself to the explorers of ancient days; for it was evident that civilization had not yet reached this delightful spot. there was scarcely any twilight in this tropical climate and it grew dark quickly. within a few minutes the entire island, save where he stood, became dim and indistinct. he ate his daily tablet, and after watching the red glow fade in the western sky and the gray shadows of night settle around him he stretched himself comfortably upon the grass and went to sleep. the events of the day must have deepened his slumber, for when he awoke the sun was shining almost directly over him, showing that the day was well advanced. he stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and decided he would like a drink of water. from where he stood he could see several little brooks following winding paths through the forest, so he settled upon one that seemed farthest from the brushwood villages, and turning his indicator in that direction soon floated through the air to a sheltered spot upon the bank. kneeling down, he enjoyed a long, refreshing drink of the clear water, but as he started to regain his feet a coil of rope was suddenly thrown about him, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him absolutely helpless. at the same time his ears were saluted with a wild chattering in an unknown tongue, and he found himself surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance. they were nearly naked, and bore spears and heavy clubs as their only weapons. their hair was long, curly, and thick as bushes, and through their noses and ears were stuck the teeth of sharks and curious metal ornaments. these creatures had stolen upon rob so quietly that he had not heard a sound, but now they jabbered loudly, as if much excited. finally one fat and somewhat aged native, who seemed to be a chief, came close to rob and said, in broken english: "how get here?" "i flew," said the boy, with a grin. the chief shook his head, saying: "no boat come. how white man come?" "through the air," replied rob, who was rather flattered at being called a "man." the chief looked into the air with a puzzled expression and shook his head again. "white man lie," he said calmly. then he held further conversation with his fellows, after which he turned to rob and announced: "me see white man many times. come in big boats. white man all bad. make kill with bang-sticks. we kill white man with club. then we eat white man. dead white man good. live white man bad!" this did not please rob at all. the idea of being eaten by savages had never occurred to him as a sequel to his adventures. so he said rather anxiously to the chief. "look here, old fellow; do you want to die?" "me no die. you die," was the reply. "you'll die, too, if you eat me," said rob. "i'm full of poison." "poison? don't know poison," returned the chief, much perplexed to understand him. "well, poison will make you sick--awful sick. then you'll die. i'm full of it; eat it every day for breakfast. it don't hurt white men, you see, but it kills black men quicker than the bang-stick." the chief listened to this statement carefully, but only understood it in part. after a moment's reflection he declared: "white man lie. lie all time. me eat plenty white man. never get sick; never die." then he added, with renewed cheerfulness: "me eat you, too!" before rob could think of a further protest, his captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away through the forest. he was tightly bound, and one strand of rope ran across the machine on his wrist and pressed it into his flesh until the pain was severe. but he resolved to be brave, whatever happened, so he stumbled along after the savages without a word. after a brief journey they came to a village, where rob was thrust into a brushwood hut and thrown upon the ground, still tightly bound. "we light fire," said the chief. "then kill little white man. then eat him." with this comforting promise he went away and left rob alone to think the matter over. "this is tough," reflected the boy, with a groan. "i never expected to feed cannibals. wish i was at home with mother and dad and the girls. wish i'd never seen the demon of electricity and his wonderful inventions. i was happy enough before i struck that awful master key. and now i'll be eaten--with salt and pepper, probably. wonder if there'll be any gravy. perhaps they'll boil me, with biscuits, as mother does chickens. oh-h-h-h-h! it's just awful!" in the midst of these depressing thoughts he became aware that something was hurting his back. after rolling over he found that he had been lying upon a sharp stone that stuck out of the earth. this gave him an idea. he rolled upon the stone again and began rubbing the rope that bound him against the sharp edge. outside he could hear the crackling of fagots and the roar of a newly-kindled fire, so he knew he had no time to spare. he wriggled and pushed his body right and left, right and left, sawing away at the rope, until the strain and exertion started the perspiration from every pore. at length the rope parted, and hastily uncoiling it from his body rob stood up and rubbed his benumbed muscles and tried to regain his lost breath. he had not freed himself a moment too soon, he found, for hearing a grunt of surprise behind him he turned around and saw a native standing in the door of the hut. rob laughed, for he was not a bit afraid of the blacks now. as the native made a rush toward him the boy drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the foe, and pressed the button. the fellow sank to the earth without even a groan, and lay still. then another black entered, followed by the fat chief. when they saw rob at liberty, and their comrade lying apparently dead, the chief cried out in surprise, using some expressive words in his own language. "if it's just the same to you, old chap," said rob, coolly, "i won't be eaten to-day. you can make a pie of that fellow on the ground." "no! we eat you," cried the chief, angrily. "you cut rope, but no get away; no boat!" "i don't need a boat, thank you," said the boy; and then, as the other native sprang forward, he pointed the tube and laid him out beside his first victim. at this act the chief stood an instant in amazed uncertainty. then he turned and rushed from the hut. laughing with amusement at the waddling, fat figure, rob followed the chief and found himself standing almost in the center of the native village. a big fire was blazing merrily and the blacks were busy making preparations for a grand feast. rob was quickly surrounded by a crowd of the villagers, who chattered fiercely and made threatening motions in his direction; but as the chief cried out to them a warning in the native tongue they kept a respectful distance and contented themselves with brandishing their spears and clubs. "if any of your fellows come nearer," rob said to the fat chief, "i'll knock 'em over." "what you make do?" asked the chief, nervously. "watch sharp, and you'll see," answered rob. then he made a mocking bow to the circle and continued: "i'm pleased to have met you fellows, and proud to think you like me well enough to want to eat me; but i'm in a bit of a hurry to-day, so i can't stop to be digested." after which, as the crowd broke into a hum of surprise, he added: "good-day, black folks!" and quickly turned the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up." slowly he rose into the air, until his heels were just above the gaping blacks; but there he stopped short. with a thrill of fear he glanced at the indicator. it was pointed properly, and he knew at once that something was wrong with the delicate mechanism that controlled it. probably the pressure of the rope across its face, when he was bound, had put it out of order. there he was, seven feet in the air, but without the power to rise an inch farther. this short flight, however, had greatly astonished the blacks, who, seeing his body suspended in mid-air, immediately hailed him as a god, and prostrated themselves upon the ground before him. the fat chief had seen something of white men in his youth, and had learned to mistrust them. so, while he remained as prostrate as the rest, he peeped at rob with one of his little black eyes and saw that the boy was ill at ease, and seemed both annoyed and frightened. so he muttered some orders to the man next him, who wriggled along the ground until he had reached a position behind rob, when he rose and pricked the suspended "god" with the point of his spear. "ouch!" yelled the boy; "stop that!" he twisted his head around, and seeing the black again make a movement with the spear, rob turned his electric tube upon him and keeled him over like a ten-pin. the natives, who had looked up at his cry of pain, again prostrated themselves, kicking their toes against the ground in a terrified tattoo at this new evidence of the god's powers. the situation was growing somewhat strained by this time, and rob did not know what the savages would decide to do next; so he thought it best to move away from them, since he was unable to rise to a greater height. he turned the indicator towards the south, where a level space appeared between the trees; but instead of taking that direction he moved towards the northeast, a proof that his machine had now become absolutely unreliable. moreover, he was slowly approaching the fire, which, although it had ceased blazing, was a mass of glowing red embers. in his excitement he turned the indicator this way and that, trying to change the direction of his flight, but the only result of his endeavor was to carry him directly over the fire, where he came to a full stop. "murder! help! fire and blazes!" he cried, as he felt the glow of the coals beneath him. "i'll be roasted, after all! here; help, fatty, help!" the fat chief sprang to his feet and came to the rescue. he reached up, caught rob by the heels, and pulled him down to the ground, away from the fire. but the next moment, as he clung to the boy's feet, they both soared into the air again, and, although now far enough from the fire to escape its heat, the savage, finding himself lifted from the earth, uttered a scream of horror and let go of rob, to fall head over heels upon the ground. the other blacks had by this time regained their feet, and now they crowded around their chief and set him upright again. rob continued to float in the air, just above their heads, and now abandoned all thoughts of escaping by means of his wrecked traveling machine. but he resolved to regain a foothold upon the earth and take his chances of escape by running rather than flying. so he turned the indicator to the word "down," and very slowly it obeyed, allowing him, to his great relief, to sink gently to the ground. 6. the buccaneers once more the blacks formed a circle around our adventurer, who coolly drew his tube and said to the chief: "tell your people i'm going to walk away through those trees, and if any one dares to interfere with me i'll paralyze him." the chief understood enough english to catch his meaning, and repeated the message to his men. having seen the terrible effect of the electric tube they wisely fell back and allowed the boy to pass. he marched through their lines with a fine air of dignity, although he was fearful lest some of the blacks should stick a spear into him or bump his head with a war-club. but they were awed by the wonders they had seen and were still inclined to believe him a god, so he was not molested. when he found himself outside the village he made for the high plateau in the center of the island, where he could be safe from the cannibals while he collected his thoughts. but when he reached the place he found the sides so steep he could not climb them, so he adjusted the indicator to the word "up" and found it had still had enough power to support his body while he clambered up the rocks to the level, grass-covered space at the top. then, reclining upon his back, he gave himself up to thoughts of how he might escape from his unpleasant predicament. "here i am, on a cannibal island, hundreds of miles from civilization, with no way to get back," he reflected. "the family will look for me every day, and finally decide i've broken my neck. the demon will call upon me when the week is up and won't find me at home; so i'll miss the next three gifts. i don't mind that so much, for they might bring me into worst scrapes than this. but how am i to get away from this beastly island? i'll be eaten, after all, if i don't look out!" these and similar thoughts occupied him for some time, yet in spite of much planning and thinking he could find no practical means of escape. at the end of an hour he looked over the edge of the plateau and found it surrounded by a ring of the black cannibals, who had calmly seated themselves to watch his movements. "perhaps they intend to starve me into surrender," he thought; "but they won't succeed so long as my tablets hold out. and if, in time, they should starve me, i'll be too thin and tough to make good eating; so i'll get the best of them, anyhow." then he again lay down and began to examine his electrical traveling machine. he did not dare take it apart, fearing he might not be able to get it together again, for he knew nothing at all about its construction. but he discovered two little dents on the edge, one on each side, which had evidently been caused by the pressure of the rope. "if i could get those dents out," he thought, "the machine might work." he first tried to pry out the edges with his pocket knife, but the attempt resulted in failure, then, as the sides seemed a little bulged outward by the dents, he placed the machine between two flat stones and pressed them together until the little instrument was nearly round again. the dents remained, to be sure, but he hoped he had removed the pressure upon the works. there was just one way to discover how well he had succeeded, so he fastened the machine to his wrist and turned the indicator to the word "up." slowly he ascended, this time to a height of nearly twenty feet. then his progress became slower and finally ceased altogether. "that's a little better," he thought. "now let's see if it will go sidewise." he put the indicator to "north-west,"--the direction of home--and very slowly the machine obeyed and carried him away from the plateau and across the island. the natives saw him go, and springing to their feet began uttering excited shouts and throwing their spears at him. but he was already so high and so far away that they failed to reach him, and the boy continued his journey unharmed. once the branches of a tall tree caught him and nearly tipped him over; but he managed to escape others by drawing up his feet. at last he was free of the island and traveling over the ocean again. he was not at all sorry to bid good-by to the cannibal island, but he was worried about the machine, which clearly was not in good working order. the vast ocean was beneath him, and he moved no faster than an ordinary walk. "at this rate i'll get home some time next year," he grumbled. "however, i suppose i ought to be glad the machine works at all." and he really was glad. all the afternoon and all the long summer night he moved slowly over the water. it was annoying to go at "a reg'lar jog-trot," as rob called it, after his former swift flight; but there was no help for it. just as dawn was breaking he saw in the distance a small vessel, sailing in the direction he was following, yet scarcely moving for lack of wind. he soon caught up with it, but saw no one on deck, and the craft had a dingy and uncared-for appearance that was not reassuring. but after hovering over it for some time rob decided to board the ship and rest for a while. he alighted near the bow, where the deck was highest, and was about to explore the place when a man came out of the low cabin and espied him. this person had a most villainous countenance, and was dark-skinned, black-bearded and dressed in an outlandish, piratical costume. on seeing the boy he gave a loud shout and was immediately joined by four companions, each as disagreeable in appearance as the first. rob knew there would be trouble the moment he looked at this evil crew, and when they drew their daggers and pistols and began fiercely shouting in an unknown tongue, the boy sighed and took the electric tube from his coat pocket. the buccaneers did not notice the movement, but rushed upon him so quickly that he had to press the button at a lively rate. the tube made no noise at all, so it was a strange and remarkable sight to see the pirates suddenly drop to the deck and lie motionless. indeed, one was so nearly upon him when the electric current struck him that his head, in falling, bumped into rob's stomach and sent him reeling against the side of the vessel. he quickly recovered himself, and seeing his enemies were rendered harmless, the boy entered the cabin and examined it curiously. it was dirty and ill-smelling enough, but the corners and spare berths were heaped with merchandise of all kinds which had been taken from those so unlucky as to have met these cruel and desperate men. after a short inspection of the place he returned to the deck and again seated himself in the bow. the crippled condition of his traveling machine was now his chief trouble, and although a good breeze had sprung up to fill the sails and the little bark was making fair headway, rob knew he could never expect to reach home unless he could discover a better mode of conveyance than this. he unstrapped the machine from his wrist to examine it better, and while holding it carelessly in his hand it slipped and fell with a bang to the deck, striking upon its round edge and rolling quickly past the cabin and out of sight. with a cry of alarm he ran after it, and after much search found it lying against the bulwark near the edge of a scupper hole, where the least jar of the ship would have sent it to the bottom of the ocean. rob hastily seized his treasure and upon examining it found the fall had bulged the rim so that the old dents scarcely showed at all. but its original shape was more distorted than ever, and rob feared he had utterly ruined its delicate mechanism. should this prove to be true, he might now consider himself a prisoner of this piratical band, the members of which, although temporarily disabled, would soon regain consciousness. he sat in the bow, sadly thinking of his misfortunes, until he noticed that one of the men began to stir. the effect of the electric shock conveyed by the tube was beginning to wear away, and now the buccaneer sat up, rubbed his head in a bewildered fashion and looked around him. when he saw rob he gave a shout of rage and drew his knife, but one motion of the electric tube made him cringe and slip away to the cabin, where he remained out of danger. and now the other four sat up, groaning and muttering in their outlandish speech; but they had no notion of facing rob's tube a second time, so one by one they joined their leader in the cabin, leaving the boy undisturbed. by this time the ship had begun to pitch and toss in an uncomfortable fashion, and rob noticed that the breeze had increased to a gale. there being no one to look after the sails, the vessel was in grave danger of capsizing or breaking her masts. the waves were now running high, too, and rob began to be worried. presently the captain of the pirates stuck his head out of the cabin door, jabbered some unintelligible words and pointed to the sails. the boy nodded, for he understood they wanted to attend to the rigging. so the crew trooped forth, rather fearfully, and began to reef the sails and put the ship into condition to weather the storm. rob paid no further attention to them. he looked at his traveling machine rather doubtfully and wondered if he dared risk its power to carry him through the air. whether he remained in the ship or trusted to the machine, he stood a good chance of dropping into the sea at any moment. so, while he hesitated, he attached the machine to his wrist and leaned over the bulwarks to watch the progress of the storm. he might stay in the ship until it foundered, he thought, and then take his chances with the machine. he decided to wait until a climax arrived. the climax came the next moment, for while he leaned over the bulwarks the buccaneers stole up behind him and suddenly seized him in their grasp. while two of them held his arms the others searched his pockets, taking from him the electric tube and the silver box containing his tablets. these they carried to the cabin and threw upon the heap of other valuables they had stolen. they did not notice his traveling machine, however, but seeing him now unarmed they began jeering and laughing at him, while the brutal captain relieved his anger by giving the prisoner several malicious kicks. rob bore his misfortune meekly, although he was almost ready to cry with grief and disappointment. but when one of the pirates, to inflict further punishment on the boy, came towards him with a heavy strap, he resolved not to await the blow. turning the indicator to the word "up" he found, to his joy and relief, that it would yet obey the influence of the power of repulsion. seeing him rise into the air the fellow made a grab for his foot and held it firmly, while his companions ran to help him. weight seemed to make no difference in the machine; it lifted the pirate as well as rob; it lifted another who clung to the first man's leg, and another who clung to him. the other two also caught hold, hoping their united strength would pull him down, and the next minute rob was soaring through the air with the entire string of five buccaneers dangling from his left leg. at first the villains were too astounded to speak, but as they realized that they were being carried through the air and away from their ship they broke into loud shouts of dismay, and finally the one who grasped rob's leg lost his hold and the five plunged downward and splashed into the sea. finding the machine disposed to work accurately, rob left the buccaneers to swim to the ship in the best way they could, while he dropped down to the deck again and recovered from the cabin his box of tablets and the electric tube. the fellows were just scrambling on board when he again escaped, shooting into the air with considerable speed. indeed, the instrument now worked better than at any time since he had reached the cannibal island, and the boy was greatly delighted. the wind at first sent him spinning away to the south, but he continued to rise until he was above the air currents, and the storm raged far beneath him. then he set the indicator to the northwest and breathlessly waited to see if it would obey. hurrah! away he sped at a fair rate of speed, while all his anxiety changed to a feeling of sweet contentment. his success had greatly surprised him, but he concluded that the jar caused by dropping the instrument had relieved the pressure upon the works, and so helped rather than harmed the free action of the electric currents. while he moved through the air with an easy, gliding motion he watched with much interest the storm raging below. above his head the sun was peacefully shining and the contrast was strange and impressive. after an hour or so the storm abated, or else he passed away from it, for the deep blue of the ocean again greeted his eyes. he dropped downward until he was about a hundred feet above the water, when he continued his northwesterly course. but now he regretted having interfered for a moment with the action of the machine, for his progress, instead of being swift as a bird's flight, became slow and jerky, nor was he sure that the damaged machine might not break down altogether at any moment. yet so far his progress was in the right direction, and he resolved to experiment no further with the instrument, but to let it go as it would, so long as it supported him above the water. however irregular the motion might be, it was sure, if continued, to bring him to land in time, and that was all he cared about just then. when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy, for he wakened more than once with a start of fear that the machine had broken and he was falling into the sea. sometimes he was carried along at a swift pace, and again the machine scarcely worked at all; so his anxiety was excusable. the following day was one of continued uneasiness for the boy, who began to be harrassed by doubts as to whether, after all, he was moving in the right direction. the machine had failed at one time in this respect and it might again. he had lost all confidence in its accuracy. in spite of these perplexities rob passed the second night of his uneven flight in profound slumber, being exhausted by the strain and excitement he had undergone. when he awoke at daybreak, he saw, to his profound delight, that he was approaching land. the rising sun found him passing over a big city, which he knew to be boston. he did not stop. the machine was so little to be depended upon that he dared make no halt. but he was obliged to alter the direction from northwest to west, and the result of this slight change was so great a reduction in speed that it was mid-day before he saw beneath him the familiar village in which he lived. carefully marking the location of his father's house, he came to a stop directly over it, and a few moments later he managed to land upon the exact spot in the back yard whence he had taken his first successful flight. 7. the demon becomes angry when rob had been hugged and kissed by his mother and sisters, and even mr. joslyn had embraced him warmly, he gave them a brief account of his adventures. the story was received with many doubtful looks and much grave shaking of heads, as was quite natural under the circumstances. "i hope, my dear son," said the father, "that you have now passed through enough dangers to last you a lifetime, so that hereafter you will be contented to remain at home." "oh, robert!" cried his mother, with tears in her loving eyes, "you don't know how we've all worried about you for the past week!" "a week?" asked rob, with surprise. "yes; it's a week to-morrow morning since you flew into the air and disappeared." "then," said the boy, thoughtfully, "i've reached home just in time." "in time for what?" she asked. but he did not answer that question. he was thinking of the demon, and that on the afternoon of this very day he might expect the wise and splendid genius to visit him a second time. at luncheon, although he did not feel hungry, he joined the family at the table and pleased his mother by eating as heartily as of old. he was surprised to find how good the food tasted, and to realize what a pleasure it is to gratify one's sense of taste. the tablets were all right for a journey, he thought, but if he always ate them he would be sure to miss a great deal of enjoyment, since there was no taste to them at all. at four o'clock he went to his workshop and unlocked the door. everything was exactly as he had left it, and he looked at his simple electrical devices with some amusement. they seemed tame beside the wonders now in his possession; yet he recollected that his numerous wires had enabled him to strike the master key, and therefore should not be despised. before long he noticed a quickening in the air, as if it were suddenly surcharged with electric fluid, and the next instant, in a dazzling flash of light, appeared the demon. "i am here!" he announced. "so am i," answered rob. "but at one time i really thought i should never see you again. i've been--" "spare me your history," said the demon, coldly. "i am aware of your adventures." "oh, you are!" said rob, amazed. "then you know--" "i know all about your foolish experiences," interrupted the demon, "for i have been with you constantly, although i remained invisible." "then you know what a jolly time i've had," returned the boy. "but why do you call them foolish experiences?" "because they were, abominably foolish!" retorted the demon, bitterly. "i entrusted to you gifts of rare scientific interest--electrical devices of such utility that their general adoption by mankind would create a new era in earth life. i hoped your use of these devices would convey such hints to electrical engineers that they would quickly comprehend their mechanism and be able to reproduce them in sufficient quantities to supply the world. and how do you treat these marvelous gifts? why, you carry them to a cannibal island, where even your crude civilization has not yet penetrated!" "i wanted to astonish the natives," said rob, grinning. the demon uttered an exclamation of anger, and stamped his foot so fiercely that thousands of electric sparks filled the air, to disappear quickly with a hissing, crinkling sound. "you might have astonished those ignorant natives as easily by showing them an ordinary electric light," he cried, mockingly. "the power of your gifts would have startled the most advanced electricians of the world. why did you waste them upon barbarians?" "really," faltered rob, who was frightened and awed by the demon's vehement anger, "i never intended to visit a cannibal island. i meant to go to cuba." "cuba! is that a center of advanced scientific thought? why did you not take your marvels to new york or chicago; or, if you wished to cross the ocean, to paris or vienna?" "i never thought of those places," acknowledged rob, meekly. "then you were foolish, as i said," declared the demon, in a calmer tone. "can you not realize that it is better to be considered great by the intelligent thinkers of the earth, than to be taken for a god by stupid cannibals?" "oh, yes, of course," said rob. "i wish now that i had gone to europe. but you're not the only one who has a kick coming," he continued. "your flimsy traveling machine was nearly the death of me." "ah, it is true," acknowledged the demon, frankly. "the case was made of too light material. when the rim was bent it pressed against the works and impeded the proper action of the currents. had you gone to a civilized country such an accident could not have happened; but to avoid possible trouble in the future i have prepared a new instrument, having a stronger case, which i will exchange for the one you now have." "that's very kind of you," said rob, eagerly handing his battered machine to the demon and receiving the new one in return. "are you sure this will work?" "it is impossible for you to injure it," answered the other. "and how about the next three gifts?" inquired the boy, anxiously. "before i grant them," replied the demon, "you must give me a promise to keep away from uncivilized places and to exhibit your acquirements only among people of intelligence." "all right," agreed the boy; "i'm not anxious to visit that island again, or any other uncivilized country." "then i will add to your possessions three gifts, each more precious and important than the three you have already received." at this announcement rob began to quiver with excitement, and sat staring eagerly at the demon, while the latter increased in stature and sparkled and glowed more brilliantly than ever. 8. rob acquires new powers "i have seen the folly of sending you into the world with an offensive instrument, yet with no method of defense," resumed the demon, presently. "you have knocked over a good many people with that tube during the past week." "i know," said rob; "but i couldn't help it. it was the only way i had to protect myself." "therefore my next gift shall be this garment of protection. you must wear it underneath your clothing. it has power to accumulate and exercise electrical repellent force. perhaps you do not know what that means, so i will explain more fully. when any missile, such as a bullet, sword or lance, approaches your person, its rush through the air will arouse the repellent force of which i speak, and this force, being more powerful than the projective force, will arrest the flight of the missile and throw it back again. therefore nothing can touch your person that comes with any degree of force or swiftness, and you will be safe from all ordinary weapons. when wearing this garment you will find it unnecessary to use the electric tube except on rare occasions. never allow revenge or animosity to influence your conduct. men may threaten, but they can not injure you, so you must remember that they do not possess your mighty advantages, and that, because of your strength, you should bear with them patiently." rob examined the garment with much curiosity. it glittered like silver, yet was soft and pliable as lamb's wool. evidently the demon had prepared it especially for his use, for it was just rob's size. "now," continued the demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even i am awed when i contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand even its possibilities." the being paused, and drew from an inner pocket something resembling a flat metal box. in size it was about four inches by six, and nearly an inch in thickness. "what is it?" asked rob, wonderingly. "it is an automatic record of events," answered the demon. "i don't understand," said rob, with hesitation. "i will explain to you its use," returned the demon, "although the electrical forces which operate it and the vibratory currents which are the true records must remain unknown to you until your brain has mastered the higher knowledge of electricity. at present the practical side of this invention will be more interesting to you than a review of its scientific construction. "suppose you wish to know the principal events that are occurring in germany at the present moment. you first turn this little wheel at the side until the word 'germany' appears in the slot at the small end. then open the top cover, which is hinged, and those passing events in which you are interested will appear before your eyes." the demon, as he spoke, opened the cover, and, looking within, the boy saw, as in a mirror, a moving picture before him. a regiment of soldiers was marching through the streets of berlin, and at its head rode a body of horsemen, in the midst of which was the emperor himself. the people who thronged the sidewalks cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs with enthusiasm, while a band of musicians played a german air, which rob could distinctly hear. while he gazed, spell-bound, the scene changed, and he looked upon a great warship entering a harbor with flying pennants. the rails were lined with officers and men straining their eyes for the first sight of their beloved "vaterland" after a long foreign cruise, and a ringing cheer, as from a thousand throats, came faintly to rob's ear. again the scene changed, and within a dingy, underground room, hemmed in by walls of stone, and dimly lighted by a flickering lamp, a body of wild-eyed, desperate men were plighting an oath to murder the emperor and overthrow his government. "anarchists?" asked rob, trembling with excitement. "anarchists!" answered the demon, with a faint sneer, and he shut the cover of the record with a sudden snap. "it's wonderful!" cried the boy, with a sigh that was followed by a slight shiver. "the record is, indeed, proof within itself of the marvelous possibilities of electricity. men are now obliged to depend upon newspapers for information; but these can only relate events long after they have occurred. and newspaper statements are often unreliable and sometimes wholly false, while many events of real importance are never printed in their columns. you may guess what an improvement is this automatic record of events, which is as reliable as truth itself. nothing can be altered or falsified, for the vibratory currents convey the actual events to your vision, even as they happen." "but suppose," said rob, "that something important should happen while i'm asleep, or not looking at the box?" "i have called this a record," replied the demon, "and such it really is, although i have shown you only such events as are in process of being recorded. by pressing this spring you may open the opposite cover of the box, where all events of importance that have occurred throughout the world during the previous twenty-four hours will appear before you in succession. you may thus study them at your leisure. the various scenes constitute a register of the world's history, and may be recalled to view as often as you desire." "it's--it's like knowing everything," murmured rob, deeply impressed for perhaps the first time in his life. "it is knowing everything," returning the demon; "and this mighty gift i have decided to entrust to your care. be very careful as to whom you permit to gaze upon these pictures of passing events, for knowledge may often cause great misery to the human race." "i'll be careful," promised the boy, as he took the box reverently within his own hands. "the third and last gift of the present series," resumed the demon, "is one no less curious than the record of events, although it has an entirely different value. it is a character marker." "what's that?" inquired rob. "i will explain. perhaps you know that your fellow-creatures are more or less hypocritical. that is, they try to appear good when they are not, and wise when in reality they are foolish. they tell you they are friendly when they positively hate you, and try to make you believe they are kind when their natures are cruel. this hypocrisy seems to be a human failing. one of your writers has said, with truth, that among civilized people things are seldom what they seem." "i've heard that," remarked rob. "on the other hand," continued the demon, "some people with fierce countenances are kindly by nature, and many who appear to be evil are in reality honorable and trustworthy. therefore, that you may judge all your fellow-creatures truly, and know upon whom to depend, i give you the character marker. it consists of this pair of spectacles. while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. the good will bear the letter 'g,' the evil the letter 'e.' the wise will be marked with a 'w' and the foolish with an 'f.' the kind will show a 'k' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'c.' thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter." "and are these, also, electrical in their construction?" asked the boy, as he took the spectacles. "certainly. goodness, wisdom and kindness are natural forces, creating character. for this reason men are not always to blame for bad character, as they acquire it unconsciously. all character sends out certain electrical vibrations, which these spectacles concentrate in their lenses and exhibit to the gaze of their wearer, as i have explained." "it's a fine idea," said the boy; "who discovered it?" "it is a fact that has always existed, but is now utilized for the first time." "oh!" said rob. "with these gifts, and the ones you acquired a week ago, you are now equipped to astound the world and awaken mankind to a realization of the wonders that may be accomplished by natural forces. see that you employ these powers wisely, in the interests of science, and do not forget your promise to exhibit your electrical marvels only to those who are most capable of comprehending them." "i'll remember," said rob. "then adieu until a week from to-day, when i will meet you here at this hour and bestow upon you the last three gifts which you are entitled to receive. good-by!" "good-by!" repeated rob, and in a gorgeous flash of color the demon disappeared, leaving the boy alone in the room with his new and wonderful possessions. 9. the second journey by this time you will have gained a fair idea of rob's character. he is, in truth, a typical american boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. the mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. aside from the extraordinary accident which had forced the electrical demon into this life, rob may be considered one of those youngsters who might possibly develop into a brilliant manhood or enter upon an ordinary, humdrum existence, as fate should determine. just at present he had no thought beyond the passing hour, nor would he bother himself by attempting to look ahead or plan for the future. yet the importance of his electrical possessions and the stern injunction of the demon to use them wisely had rendered the boy more thoughtful than at any previous time during his brief life, and he became so preoccupied at the dinner table that his father and mother cast many anxious looks in his direction. of course rob was anxious to test his newly-acquired powers, and decided to lose no time in starting upon another journey. but he said nothing to any of the family about it, fearing to meet with opposition. he passed the evening in the sitting-room, in company with his father and mother and sisters, and even controlled his impatience to the extent of playing a game of carom with nell; but he grew so nervous and impatient at last that his sister gave up the game in disgust and left him to his own amusement. at one time he thought of putting on the electric spectacles and seeing what the real character of each member of his family might be; but a sudden fear took possession of him that he might regret the act forever afterward. they were his nearest and dearest friends on earth, and in his boyish heart he loved them all and believed in their goodness and sincerity. the possibility of finding a bad character mark on any of their familiar faces made him shudder, and he determined then and there never to use the spectacles to view the face of a friend or relative. had any one, at that moment, been gazing at rob through the lenses of the wonderful character marker, i am sure a big "w" would have been found upon the boy's forehead. when the family circle broke up, and all retired for the night, rob kissed his parents and sisters with real affection before going to his own room. but, on reaching his cozy little chamber, instead of preparing for bed rob clothed himself in the garment of repulsion. then he covered the glittering garment with his best summer suit of clothes, which effectually concealed it. he now looked around to see what else he should take, and thought of an umbrella, a rain-coat, a book or two to read during the journey, and several things besides; but he ended by leaving them all behind. "i can't be loaded down with so much truck," he decided; "and i'm going into civilized countries, this time, where i can get anything i need." however, to prevent a recurrence of the mistake he had previously made, he tore a map of the world and a map of europe from his geography, and, folding them up, placed them in his pocket. he also took a small compass that had once been a watch-charm, and, finally, the contents of a small iron bank that opened with a combination lock. this represented all his savings, amounting to two dollars and seventeen cents in dimes, nickles and pennies. "it isn't a fortune," he thought, as he counted it up, "but i didn't need any money the last trip, so perhaps i'll get along somehow. i don't like to tackle dad for more, for he might ask questions and try to keep me at home." by the time he had finished his preparations and stowed all his electrical belongings in his various pockets, it was nearly midnight and the house was quiet. so rob stole down stairs in his stocking feet and noiselessly opened the back door. it was a beautiful july night and, in addition to the light of the full moon, the sky was filled with the radiance of countless thousands of brilliant stars. after rob had put on his shoes he unfolded the map, which was plainly visible by the starlight, and marked the direction he must take to cross the atlantic and reach london, his first stopping place. then he consulted his compass, put the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up," and shot swiftly into the air. when he had reached a sufficient height he placed the indicator to a point north of east and, with a steady and remarkably swift flight, began his journey. "here goes," he remarked, with a sense of exaltation, "for another week of adventure! i wonder what'll happen between now and next saturday." 10. how rob served a mighty king the new traveling machine was a distinct improvement over the old one, for it carried rob with wonderful speed across the broad atlantic. he fell asleep soon after starting, and only wakened when the sun was high in the heavens. but he found himself whirling along at a good rate, with the greenish shimmer of the peaceful ocean waves spread beneath him far beyond his range of vision. being in the track of the ocean steamers it was not long before he found himself overtaking a magnificent vessel whose decks were crowded with passengers. he dropped down some distance, to enable him to see these people more plainly, and while he hovered near he could hear the excited exclamations of the passengers, who focused dozens of marine glasses upon his floating form. this inspection somewhat embarrassed him, and having no mind to be stared at he put on additional speed and soon left the steamer far behind him. about noon the sky clouded over, and rob feared a rainstorm was approaching. so he rose to a point considerably beyond the clouds, where the air was thin but remarkably pleasant to inhale and the rays of the sun were not so hot as when reflected by the surface of the water. he could see the dark clouds rolling beneath him like volumes of smoke from a factory chimney, and knew the earth was catching a severe shower of rain; yet he congratulated himself on his foresight in not being burdened with umbrella or raincoat, since his elevated position rendered him secure from rain-clouds. but, having cut himself off from the earth, there remained nothing to see except the clear sky overhead and the tumbling clouds beneath; so he took from his pocket the automatic record of events, and watched with breathless interest the incidents occurring in different parts of the world. a big battle was being fought in the philippines, and so fiercely was it contested that rob watched its progress for hours, with rapt attention. finally a brave rally by the americans sent their foes to the cover of the woods, where they scattered in every direction, only to form again in a deep valley hidden by high hills. "if only i was there," thought rob, "i could show that captain where to find the rebels and capture them. but i guess the philippines are rather out of my way, so our soldiers will never know how near they are to a complete victory." the boy also found considerable amusement in watching the course of an insurrection in venezuela, where opposing armies of well-armed men preferred to bluster and threaten rather than come to blows. during the evening he found that an "important event" was madame bernhardt's production of a new play, and rob followed it from beginning to end with great enjoyment, although he felt a bit guilty at not having purchased a ticket. "but it's a crowded house, anyway," he reflected, "and i'm not taking up a reserved seat or keeping any one else from seeing the show. so where's the harm? yet it seems to me if these records get to be common, as the demon wishes, people will all stay at home and see the shows, and the poor actors 'll starve to death." the thought made him uneasy, and he began, for the first time, to entertain a doubt of the demon's wisdom in forcing such devices upon humanity. the clouds had now passed away and the moon sent her rays to turn the edges of the waves into glistening showers of jewels. rob closed the lid of the wonderful record of events and soon fell into a deep sleep that held him unconscious for many hours. when he awoke he gave a start of surprise, for beneath him was land. how long it was since he had left the ocean behind him he could not guess, but his first thought was to set the indicator of the traveling machine to zero and to hover over the country until he could determine where he was. this was no easy matter. he saw green fields, lakes, groves and villages; but these might exist in any country. being still at a great elevation he descended gradually until he was about twenty feet from the surface of the earth, where he paused near the edge of a small village. at once a crowd of excited people assembled, shouting to one another and pointing towards him in wonder. in order to be prepared for emergencies rob had taken the electric tube from his pocket, and now, as he examined the dress and features of the people below, the tube suddenly slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground, where one end stuck slantingly into the soft earth. a man rushed eagerly towards it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell upon his back, unconscious. others who ran to assist their fallen comrade quickly tumbled into a heap beside him. it was evident to rob that the tube had fallen in such a position that the button was being pressed continually and a current of electric fluid issued to shock whoever came near. not wishing to injure these people he dropped to the ground and drew the tube from the earth, thus releasing the pressure upon the button. but the villagers had now decided that the boy was their enemy, and no sooner had he touched the ground than a shower of stones and sticks rained about him. not one reached his body, however, for the garment of repulsion stopped their flight and returned them to rattle with more or less force against those who had thrown them--"like regular boomerangs," thought rob. to receive their own blows in this fashion seemed so like magic to the simple folk that with roars of fear and pain they ran away in all directions. "it's no use stopping here," remarked rob, regretfully, "for i've spoiled my welcome by this accident. i think these people are irish, by their looks and speech, so i must be somewhere in the emerald isle." he consulted his map and decided upon the general direction he should take to reach england, after which he again rose into the air and before long was passing over the channel towards the shores of england. either his map or compass or his calculations proved wrong, for it was high noon before, having changed his direction a half dozen times, he came to the great city of london. he saw at a glance that it would never do to drop into the crowded streets, unless he wanted to become an object of public curiosity; so he looked around for a suitable place to alight. near by was a monstrous church that sent a sharp steeple far into the air. rob examined this spire and saw a narrow opening in the masonry that led to a small room where a chime of bells hung. he crept through the opening and, finding a ladder that connected the belfry with a platform below, began to descend. there were three ladders, and then a winding flight of narrow, rickety stairs to be passed before rob finally reached a small room in the body of the church. this room proved to have two doors, one connecting with the auditorium and the other letting into a side street. both were locked, but rob pointed the electric tube at the outside door and broke the lock in an instant. then he walked into the street as composedly as if he had lived all his life in london. there were plenty of sights to see, you may be sure, and rob walked around until he was so tired that he was glad to rest upon one of the benches in a beautiful park. here, half hidden by the trees, he amused himself by looking at the record of events. "london's a great town, and no mistake," he said to himself; "but let's see what the british are doing in south africa to-day." he turned the cylinder to "south africa," and, opening the lid, at once became interested. an english column, commanded by a brave but stubborn officer, was surrounded by the boer forces and fighting desperately to avoid capture or annihilation. "this would be interesting to king edward," thought the boy. "guess i'll hunt him up and tell him about it." a few steps away stood a policeman. rob approached him and asked: "where's the king to-day?" the officer looked at him with mingled surprise and suspicion. "'is majesty is sojournin' at marlb'ro 'ouse, just now," was the reply. "per'aps you wants to make 'im a wissit," he continued, with lofty sarcasm. "that's it, exactly," said rob. "i'm an american, and thought while i was in london i'd drop in on his royal highness and say 'hello' to him." the officer chuckled, as if much amused. "hamericans is bloomin' green," he remarked, "so youse can stand for hamerican, right enough. no other wissitors is such blarsted fools. but yon's the palace, an' i s'pose 'is majesty'll give ye a 'ot reception." "thanks; i'll look him up," said the boy, and left the officer convulsed with laughter. he soon knew why. the palace was surrounded by a cordon of the king's own life guards, who admitted no one save those who presented proper credentials. "there's only one thing to do;" thought rob, "and that's to walk straight in, as i haven't any friends to give me a regular introduction." so he boldly advanced to the gate, where he found himself stopped by crossed carbines and a cry of "halt!" "excuse me," said rob; "i'm in a hurry." he pushed the carbines aside and marched on. the soldiers made thrusts at him with their weapons, and an officer jabbed at his breast with a glittering sword, but the garment of repulsion protected him from these dangers as well as from a hail of bullets that followed his advancing figure. he reached the entrance of the palace only to face another group of guardsmen and a second order to halt, and as these soldiers were over six feet tall and stood shoulder to shoulder rob saw that he could not hope to pass them without using his electric tube. "stand aside, you fellows!" he ordered. there was no response. he extended the tube and, as he pressed the button, described a semi-circle with the instrument. immediately the tall guardsmen toppled over like so many tenpins, and rob stepped across their bodies and penetrated to the reception room, where a brilliant assemblage awaited, in hushed and anxious groups, for opportunity to obtain audience with the king. "i hope his majesty isn't busy," said rob to a solemn-visaged official who confronted him. "i want to have a little talk with him." "i--i--ah--beg pardon!" exclaimed the astounded master of ceremonies. "what name, please?" "oh, never mind my name," replied rob, and pushing the gentleman aside he entered the audience chamber of the great king. king edward was engaged in earnest consultation with one of his ministers, and after a look of surprise in rob's direction and a grave bow he bestowed no further attention upon the intruder. but rob was not to be baffled now. "your majesty," he interrupted, "i've important news for you. a big fight is taking place in south africa and your soldiers will probably be cut into mince meat." the minister strode towards the boy angrily. "explain this intrusion!" he cried. "i have explained. the boers are having a regular killing-bee. here! take a look at it yourselves." he drew the record from his pocket, and at the movement the minister shrank back as if he suspected it was an infernal machine and might blow his head off; but the king stepped quietly to the boy's side and looked into the box when rob threw open the lid. as he comprehended the full wonder of the phenomenon he was observing edward uttered a low cry of amazement, but thereafter he silently gazed upon the fierce battle that still raged far away upon the african veld. before long his keen eye recognized the troops engaged and realized their imminent danger. "they'll be utterly annihilated!" he gasped. "what shall we do?" "oh, we can't do anything just now," answered rob. "but it's curious to watch how bravely the poor fellows fight for their lives." the minister, who by this time was also peering into the box, groaned aloud, and then all three forgot their surroundings in the tragedy they were beholding. hemmed in by vastly superior numbers, the english were calmly and stubbornly resisting every inch of advance and selling their lives as dearly as possible. their leader fell pierced by a hundred bullets, and the king, who had known him from boyhood, passed his hand across his eyes as if to shut out the awful sight. but the fascination of the battle forced him to look again, and the next moment he cried aloud: "look there! look there!" over the edge of a line of hills appeared the helmets of a file of english soldiers. they reached the summit, followed by rank after rank, until the hillside was alive with them. and then, with a ringing cheer that came like a faint echo to the ears of the three watchers, they broke into a run and dashed forward to the rescue of their brave comrades. the boers faltered, gave back, and the next moment fled precipitately, while the exhausted survivors of the courageous band fell sobbing into the arms of their rescuers. rob closed the lid of the record with a sudden snap that betrayed his deep feeling, and the king pretended to cough behind his handkerchief and stealthily wiped his eyes. "'twasn't so bad, after all," remarked the boy, with assumed cheerfulness; "but it looked mighty ticklish for your men at one time." king edward regarded the boy curiously, remembering his abrupt entrance and the marvelous device he had exhibited. "what do you call that?" he asked, pointing at the record with a finger that trembled slightly from excitement. "it is a new electrical invention," replied rob, replacing it in his pocket, "and so constructed that events are reproduced at the exact moment they occur." "where can i purchase one?" demanded the king, eagerly. "they're not for sale," said rob. "this one of mine is the first that ever happened." "oh!" "i really think," continued the boy, nodding sagely, "that it wouldn't be well to have these records scattered around. their use would give some folks unfair advantage over others, you know." "certainly." "i only showed you this battle because i happened to be in london at the time and thought you'd be interested." "it was very kind of you," said edward; "but how did you gain admittance?" "well, to tell the truth, i was obliged to knock over a few of your tall life-guards. they seem to think you're a good thing and need looking after, like jam in a cupboard." the king smiled. "i hope you haven't killed my guards," said he. "oh, no; they'll come around all right." "it is necessary," continued edward, "that public men be protected from intrusion, no matter how democratic they may be personally. you would probably find it as difficult to approach the president of the united states as the king of england." "oh, i'm not complaining," said rob. "it wasn't much trouble to break through." "you seem quite young to have mastered such wonderful secrets of nature," continued the king. "so i am," replied rob, modestly; "but these natural forces have really existed since the beginning of the world, and some one was sure to discover them in time." he was quoting the demon, although unconsciously. "you are an american, i suppose," said the minister, coming close to rob and staring him in the face. "guessed right the first time," answered the boy, and drawing his character marking spectacles from his pocket, he put them on and stared at the minister in turn. upon the man's forehead appeared the letter "e." "your majesty," said rob, "i have here another queer invention. will you please wear these spectacles for a few moments?" the king at once put them on. "they are called character markers," continued the boy, "because the lenses catch and concentrate the character vibrations radiating from every human individual and reflect the true character of the person upon his forehead. if a letter 'g' appears, you may be sure his disposition is good; if his forehead is marked with an 'e' his character is evil, and you must beware of treachery." the king saw the "e" plainly marked upon his minister's forehead, but he said nothing except "thank you," and returned the spectacles to rob. but the minister, who from the first had been ill at ease, now became positively angry. "do not believe him, your majesty!" he cried. "it is a trick, and meant to deceive you." "i did not accuse you," answered the king, sternly. then he added: "i wish to be alone with this young gentleman." the minister left the room with an anxious face and hanging head. "now," said rob, "let's look over the record of the past day and see if that fellow has been up to any mischief." he turned the cylinder of the record to "england," and slowly the events of the last twenty-four hours were reproduced, one after the other, upon the polished plate. before long the king uttered an exclamation. the record pictured a small room in which were seated three gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation. one of them was the accused minister. "those men," said the king in a low voice, while he pointed out the other two, "are my avowed enemies. this is proof that your wonderful spectacles indicated my minister's character with perfect truth. i am grateful to you for thus putting me upon my guard, for i have trusted the man fully." "oh, don't mention it," replied the boy, lightly; "i'm glad to have been of service to you. but it's time for me to go." "i hope you will favor me with another interview," said the king, "for i am much interested in your electrical inventions. i will instruct my guards to admit you at any time, so you will not be obliged to fight your way in." "all right. but it really doesn't matter," answered rob. "it's no trouble at all to knock 'em over." then he remembered his manners and bowed low before the king, who seemed to him "a fine fellow and not a bit stuck up." and then he walked calmly from the palace. the people in the outer room stared at him wonderingly and the officer of the guard saluted the boy respectfully. but rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them with his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets and his straw hat tipped jauntily upon the back of his head. 11. the man of science rob passed the remainder of the day wandering about london and amusing himself by watching the peculiar ways of the people. when it became so dark that there was no danger of his being observed, he rose through the air to the narrow slit in the church tower and lay upon the floor of the little room, with the bells hanging all around him, to pass the night. he was just falling asleep when a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him, and set the whole tower trembling. it was the midnight chime. rob clutched his ears tightly, and when the vibrations had died away descended by the ladder to a lower platform. but even here the next hourly chime made his ears ring, and he kept descending from platform to platform until the last half of a restless night was passed in the little room at the bottom of the tower. when, at daylight, the boy sat up and rubbed his eyes, he said, wearily: "churches are all right as churches; but as hotels they are rank failures. i ought to have bunked in with my friend, king edward." he climbed up the stairs and the ladders again and looked out the little window in the belfry. then he examined his map of europe. "i believe i'll take a run over to paris," he thought. "i must be home again by saturday, to meet the demon, so i'll have to make every day count." without waiting for breakfast, since he had eaten a tablet the evening before, he crept through the window and mounted into the fresh morning air until the great city with its broad waterway lay spread out beneath him. then he sped away to the southeast and, crossing the channel, passed between amiens and rouen and reached paris before ten o'clock. near the outskirts of the city appeared a high tower, upon the flat roof of which a man was engaged in adjusting a telescope. upon seeing rob, who was passing at no great distance from this tower, the man cried out: "approchez!--venez ici!" then he waved his hands frantically in the air, and fairly danced with excitement. so the boy laughed and dropped down to the roof where, standing beside the frenchman, whose eyes were actually protruding from their sockets, he asked, coolly: "well, what do you want?" the other was for a moment speechless. he was a tall, lean man, having a bald head but a thick, iron-gray beard, and his black eyes sparkled brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. after attentively regarding the boy for a time he said, in broken english: "but, m'sieur, how can you fly wizout ze--ze machine? i have experiment myself wiz some air-ship; but you--zere is nossing to make go!" rob guessed that here was his opportunity to do the demon a favor by explaining his electrical devices to this new acquaintance, who was evidently a man of science. "here is the secret, professor," he said, and holding out his wrist displayed the traveling machine and explained, as well as he could, the forces that operated it. the frenchman, as you may suppose, was greatly astonished, and to show how perfectly the machine worked rob turned the indicator and rose a short distance above the tower, circling around it before he rejoined the professor on the roof. then he showed his food tablets, explaining how each was stored with sufficient nourishment for an entire day. the scientist positively gasped for breath, so powerful was the excitement he experienced at witnessing these marvels. "eet is wonderful--grand--magnifique!" he exclaimed. "but here is something of still greater interest," continued rob, and taking the automatic record of events from his pocket he allowed the professor to view the remarkable scenes that were being enacted throughout the civilized world. the frenchman was now trembling violently, and he implored rob to tell him where he might obtain similar electrical machines. "i can't do that," replied the boy, decidedly; "but, having seen these, you may be able to discover their construction for yourself. now that you know such things to be possible and practical, the hint should be sufficient to enable a shrewd electrician to prepare duplicates of them." the scientist glared at him with evident disappointment, and rob continued: "these are not all the wonders i can exhibit. here is another electrical device that is, perhaps, the most remarkable of any i possess." he took the character marking spectacles from his pocket and fitted them to his eyes. then he gave a whistle of surprise and turned his back upon his new friend. he had seen upon the frenchman's forehead the letters "e" and "c." "guess i've struck the wrong sort of scientist, after all!" he muttered, in a disgusted tone. his companion was quick to prove the accuracy of the character marker. seeing the boy's back turned, he seized a long iron bar that was used to operate the telescope, and struck at rob so fiercely that had he not worn the garment of protection his skull would have been crushed by the blow. at it was, the bar rebounded with a force that sent the murderous frenchman sprawling upon the roof, and rob turned around and laughed at him. "it won't work, professor," he said. "i'm proof against assassins. perhaps you had an idea that when you had killed me you could rob me of my valuable possessions; but they wouldn't be a particle of use to a scoundrel like you, i assure you! good morning." before the surprised and baffled scientist could collect himself sufficiently to reply, the boy was soaring far above his head and searching for a convenient place to alight, that he might investigate the charms of this famed city of paris. it was indeed a beautiful place, with many stately buildings lining the shady boulevards. so thronged were the streets that rob well knew he would soon be the center of a curious crowd should he alight upon them. already a few sky-gazers had noted the boy moving high in the air, above their heads, and one or two groups stood pointing their fingers at him. pausing at length above the imposing structure of the hotel anglais, rob noticed at one of the upper floors an open window, before which was a small iron balcony. alighting upon this he proceeded to enter, without hesitation, the open window. he heard a shriek and a cry of "au voleur!" and caught sight of a woman's figure as she dashed into an adjoining room, slamming and locking the door behind her. "i don't know as i blame her," observed rob, with a smile at the panic he had created. "i s'pose she takes me for a burglar, and thinks i've climbed up the lightning rod." he soon found the door leading into the hallway and walked down several flights of stairs until he reached the office of the hotel. "how much do you charge a day?" he inquired, addressing a fat and pompous-looking gentlemen behind the desk. the man looked at him in a surprised way, for he had not heard the boy enter the room. but he said something in french to a waiter who was passing, and the latter came to rob and made a low bow. "i speak ze eengliss ver' fine," he said. "what desire have you?" "what are your rates by the day?" asked the boy. "ten francs, m'sieur." "how many dollars is that?" "dollar americaine?" "yes; united states money." "ah, oui! eet is ze two dollar, m'sieur." "all right; i can stay about a day before i go bankrupt. give me a room." "certainement, m'sieur. have you ze luggage?" "no; but i'll pay in advance," said rob, and began counting out his dimes and nickles and pennies, to the unbounded amazement of the waiter, who looked as if he had never seen such coins before. he carried the money to the fat gentleman, who examined the pieces curiously, and there was a long conference between them before it was decided to accept them in payment for a room for a day. but at this season the hotel was almost empty, and when rob protested that he had no other money the fat gentleman put the coins into his cash box with a resigned sigh and the waiter showed the boy to a little room at the very top of the building. rob washed and brushed the dust from his clothes, after which he sat down and amused himself by viewing the pictures that constantly formed upon the polished plate of the record of events. 12. how rob saved a republic while following the shifting scenes of the fascinating record rob noted an occurrence that caused him to give a low whistle of astonishment and devote several moments to serious thought. "i believe it's about time i interfered with the politics of this republic," he said, at last, as he closed the lid of the metal box and restored it to his pocket. "if i don't take a hand there probably won't be a republic of france very long and, as a good american, i prefer a republic to a monarchy." then he walked down-stairs and found his english-speaking waiter. "where's president loubet?" he asked. "ze president! ah, he is wiz his mansion. to be at his residence, m'sieur." "where is his residence?" the waiter began a series of voluble and explicit directions which so confused the boy that he exclaimed: "oh, much obliged!" and walked away in disgust. gaining the street he approached a gendarme and repeated his question, with no better result than before, for the fellow waved his arms wildly in all directions and roared a volley of incomprehensible french phrases that conveyed no meaning whatever. "if ever i travel in foreign countries again," said rob, "i'll learn their lingo in advance. why doesn't the demon get up a conversation machine that will speak all languages?" by dint of much inquiry, however, and after walking several miles following ambiguous directions, he managed to reach the residence of president loubet. but there he was politely informed that the president was busily engaged in his garden, and would see no one. "that's all right," said the boy, calmly. "if he's in the garden i'll have no trouble finding him." then, to the amazement of the frenchmen, rob shot into the air fifty feet or so, from which elevation he overlooked a pretty garden in the rear of the president's mansion. the place was protected from ordinary intrusion by high walls, but rob descended within the enclosure and walked up to a man who was writing at a small table placed under the spreading branches of a large tree. "is this president loubet?" he inquired, with a bow. the gentleman looked up. "my servants were instructed to allow no one to disturb me," he said, speaking in excellent english. "it isn't their fault; i flew over the wall," returned rob. "the fact is," he added, hastily, as he noted the president's frown, "i have come to save the republic; and i haven't much time to waste over a bundle of frenchmen, either." the president seemed surprised. "your name!" he demanded, sharply. "robert billings joslyn, united states of america!" "your business, monsieur joslyn!" rob drew the record from his pocket and placed it upon the table. "this, sir," said he, "is an electrical device that records all important events. i wish to call your attention to a scene enacted in paris last evening which may have an effect upon the future history of your country." he opened the lid, placed the record so that the president could see clearly, and then watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face; first indifference, then interest, the next moment eagerness and amazement. "mon dieu!" he gasped; "the orleanists!" rob nodded. "yes; they've worked up a rather pretty plot, haven't they?" the president did not reply. he was anxiously watching the record and scribbling notes on a paper beside him. his face was pale and his lips tightly compressed. finally he leaned back in his chair and asked: "can you reproduce this scene again?" "certainly, sir," answered the boy; "as often as you like." "will you remain here while i send for my minister of police? it will require but a short time." "call him up, then. i'm in something of a hurry myself, but now i've mixed up with this thing i'll see it through." the president touched a bell and gave an order to his servant. then he turned to rob and said, wonderingly: "you are a boy!" "that's true, mr. president," was the answer; "but an american boy, you must remember. that makes a big difference, i assure you." the president bowed gravely. "this is your invention?" he asked. "no; i'm hardly equal to that. but the inventor has made me a present of the record, and it's the only one in the world." "it is a marvel," remarked the president, thoughtfully. "more! it is a real miracle. we are living in an age of wonders, my young friend." "no one knows that better than myself, sir," replied rob. "but, tell me, can you trust your chief of police?" "i think so," said the president, slowly; "yet since your invention has shown me that many men i have considered honest are criminally implicated in this royalist plot, i hardly know whom to depend upon." "then please wear these spectacles during your interview with the minister of police," said the boy. "you must say nothing, while he is with us, about certain marks that will appear upon his forehead; but when he has gone i will explain those marks so you will understand them." the president covered his eyes with the spectacles. "why," he exclaimed, "i see upon your own brow the letters--" "stop, sir!" interrupted rob, with a blush; "i don't care to know what the letters are, if it's just the same to you." the president seemed puzzled by this speech, but fortunately the minister of police arrived just then and, under rob's guidance, the pictured record of the orleanist plot was reproduced before the startled eyes of the official. "and now," said the boy, "let us see if any of this foolishness is going on just at present." he turned to the opposite side of the record and allowed the president and his minister of police to witness the quick succession of events even as they occurred. suddenly the minister cried, "ha!" and, pointing to the figure of a man disembarking from an english boat at calais, he said, excitedly: "that, your excellency, is the duke of orleans, in disguise! i must leave you for a time, that i may issue some necessary orders to my men; but this evening i shall call to confer with you regarding the best mode of suppressing this terrible plot." when the official had departed, the president removed the spectacles from his eyes and handed them to rob. "what did you see?" asked the boy. "the letters 'g' and 'w'." "then you may trust him fully," declared rob, and explained the construction of the character marker to the interested and amazed statesman. "and now i must go," he continued, "for my stay in your city will be a short one and i want to see all i can." the president scrawled something on a sheet of paper and signed his name to it, afterward presenting it, with a courteous bow, to his visitor. "this will enable you to go wherever you please, while in paris," he said. "i regret my inability to reward you properly for the great service you have rendered my country; but you have my sincerest gratitude, and may command me in any way." "oh, that's all right," answered rob. "i thought it was my duty to warn you, and if you look sharp you'll be able to break up this conspiracy. but i don't want any reward. good day, sir." he turned the indicator of his traveling machine and immediately rose into the air, followed by a startled exclamation from the president of france. moving leisurely over the city, he selected a deserted thoroughfare to alight in, from whence he wandered unobserved into the beautiful boulevards. these were now brilliantly lighted, and crowds of pleasure seekers thronged them everywhere. rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace and enjoyed the sights of the splendid city, for it enabled him to forget, for a time, the responsibilities thrust upon him by the possession of the demon's marvelous electrical devices. 13. rob loses his treasures our young adventurer had intended to pass the night in the little bed at his hotel, but the atmosphere of paris proved so hot and disagreeable that he decided it would be more enjoyable to sleep while journeying through the cooler air that lay far above the earth's surface. so just as the clocks were striking the midnight hour rob mounted skyward and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to the east, intending to make the city of vienna his next stop. he had risen to a considerable distance, where the air was remarkably fresh and exhilarating, and the relief he experienced from the close and muggy streets of paris was of such a soothing nature that he presently fell fast asleep. his day in the metropolis had been a busy one, for, like all boys, he had forgotten himself in the delight of sight-seeing and had tired his muscles and exhausted his strength to an unusual degree. it was about three o'clock in the morning when rob, moving restlessly in his sleep, accidently touched with his right hand the indicator of the machine which was fastened to his left wrist, setting it a couple of points to the south of east. he was, of course, unaware of the slight alteration in his course, which was destined to prove of serious importance in the near future. for the boy's fatigue induced him to sleep far beyond daybreak, and during this period of unconsciousness he was passing over the face of european countries and approaching the lawless and dangerous dominions of the orient. when, at last, he opened his eyes, he was puzzled to determine where he was. beneath him stretched a vast, sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in luxuriant vegetation. the centrifugal force which propelled him was evidently, for some reason, greatly accelerated, for the scenery of the country he was crossing glided by him at so rapid a rate of speed that it nearly took his breath away. "i wonder if i've passed vienna in the night," he thought. "it ought not to have taken me more than a few hours to reach there from paris." vienna was at that moment fifteen hundred miles behind him; but rob's geography had always been his stumbling block at school, and he had not learned to gage the speed of the traveling machine; so he was completely mystified as to his whereabouts. presently a village having many queer spires and minarets whisked by him like a flash. rob became worried, and resolved to slow up at the next sign of habitation. this was a good resolution, but turkestan is so thinly settled that before the boy could plan out a course of action he had passed the barren mountain range of thian-shan as nimbly as an acrobat leaps a jumping-bar. "this won't do at all!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "the traveling machine seems to be running away with me, and i'm missing no end of sights by scooting along up here in the clouds." he turned the indicator to zero, and was relieved to find it obey with customary quickness. in a few moments he had slowed up and stopped, when he found himself suspended above another stretch of sandy plain. being too high to see the surface of the plain distinctly he dropped down a few hundred feet to a lower level, where he discovered he was surrounded by billows of sand as far as his eye could reach. "it's a desert, all right," was his comment; "perhaps old sahara herself." he started the machine again towards the east, and at a more moderate rate of speed skimmed over the surface of the desert. before long he noticed a dark spot ahead of him which proved to be a large body of fierce looking men, riding upon dromedaries and slender, spirited horses and armed with long rifles and crookedly shaped simitars. "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble," remarked the boy, as he glided over them, "and it wouldn't be exactly healthy for an enemy to get in their way. but i haven't time to stop, so i'm not likely to get mixed up in any rumpus with them." however, the armed caravan was scarcely out of sight before rob discovered he was approaching a rich, wooded oasis of the desert, in the midst of which was built the walled city of yarkand. not that he had ever heard of the place, or knew its name; for few europeans and only one american traveler had ever visited it. but he guessed it was a city of some importance from its size and beauty, and resolved to make a stop there. above the high walls projected many slender, white minarets, indicating that the inhabitants were either turks or some race of mohammedans; so rob decided to make investigations before trusting himself to their company. a cluster of tall trees with leafy tops stood a short distance outside the walls, and here the boy landed and sat down to rest in the refreshing shade. the city seemed as hushed and still as if it were deserted, and before him stretched the vast plain of white, heated sands. he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the band of warriors he had passed, but they were moving slowly and had not yet appeared. the trees that sheltered rob were the only ones without the city, although many low bushes or shrubs grew scattering over the space between him and the walls. an arched gateway broke the enclosure at his left, but the gates were tightly shut. something in the stillness and the intense heat of the mid-day sun made the boy drowsy. he stretched himself upon the ground beneath the dense foliage of the biggest tree and abandoned himself to the languor that was creeping over him. "i'll wait until that army of the desert arrives," he thought, sleepily. "they either belong in this city or have come to capture it, so i can tell better what to dance when i find out what the band plays." the next moment he was sound asleep, sprawling upon his back in the shade and slumbering as peacefully as an infant. and while he lay motionless three men dropped in quick succession from the top of the city wall and hid among the low bushes, crawling noiselessly from one to another and so approaching, by degrees, the little group of trees. they were turks, and had been sent by those in authority within the city to climb the tallest tree of the group and discover if the enemy was near. for rob's conjecture had been correct, and the city of yarkand awaited, with more or less anxiety, a threatened assault from its hereditary enemies, the tatars. the three spies were not less forbidding in appearance than the horde of warriors rob had passed upon the desert. their features were coarse and swarthy, and their eyes had a most villainous glare. old fashioned pistols and double-edged daggers were stuck in their belts and their clothing, though of gorgeous colors, was soiled and neglected. with all the caution of the american savage these turks approached the tree, where, to their unbounded amazement, they saw the boy lying asleep. his dress and fairness of skin at once proclaimed him, in their shrewd eyes, a european, and their first thought was to glance around in search of his horse or dromedary. seeing nothing of the kind near they were much puzzled to account for his presence, and stood looking down at him with evident curiosity. the sun struck the polished surface of the traveling machine which was attached to rob's wrist and made the metal glitter like silver. this attracted the eyes of the tallest turk, who stooped down and stealthily unclasped the band of the machine from the boy's outstretched arm. then, after a hurried but puzzled examination of the little instrument, he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. rob stirred uneasily in his sleep, and one of the turks drew a slight but stout rope from his breast and with gentle but deft movement passed it around the boy's wrists and drew them together behind him. the action was not swift enough to arouse the power of repulsion in the garment of protection, but it awakened rob effectually, so that he sat up and stared hard at his captors. "what are you trying to do, anyhow?" he demanded. the turks laughed and said something in their own language. they had no knowledge of english. "you're only making fools of yourselves," continued the boy, wrathfully. "it's impossible for you to injure me." the three paid no attention to his words. one of them thrust his hand into rob's pocket and drew out the electric tube. his ignorance of modern appliances was so great that he did not know enough to push the button. rob saw him looking down the hollow end of the tube and murmured: "i wish it would blow your ugly head off!" but the fellow, thinking the shining metal might be of some value to him, put the tube in his own pocket and then took from the prisoner the silver box of tablets. rob writhed and groaned at losing his possessions in this way, and while his hands were fastened behind him tried to feel for and touch the indicator of the traveling machine. when he found that the machine also had been taken, his anger gave way to fear, for he realized he was in a dangerously helpless condition. the third turk now drew the record of events from the boy's inner pocket. he knew nothing of the springs that opened the lids, so, after a curious glance at it, he secreted the box in the folds of his sash and continued the search of the captive. the character marking spectacles were next abstracted, but the turk, seeing in them nothing but spectacles, scornfully thrust them back into rob's pocket, while his comrades laughed at him. the boy was now rifled of seventeen cents in pennies, a broken pocket knife and a lead-pencil, the last article seeming to be highly prized. after they had secured all the booty they could find, the tall turk, who seemed the leader of the three, violently kicked at the prisoner with his heavy boot. his surprise was great when the garment of repulsion arrested the blow and nearly overthrew the aggressor in turn. snatching a dagger from his sash, he bounded upon the boy so fiercely that the next instant the enraged turk found himself lying upon his back three yards away, while his dagger flew through the air and landed deep in the desert sands. "keep it up!" cried rob, bitterly. "i hope you'll enjoy yourself." the other turks raised their comrade to his feet, and the three stared at one another in surprise, being unable to understand how a bound prisoner could so effectually defend himself. but at a whispered word from the leader, they drew their long pistols and fired point blank into rob's face. the volley echoed sharply from the city walls, but as the smoke drifted slowly away the turks were horrified to see their intended victim laughing at them. uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three took to their heels and bounded towards the wall, where a gate quickly opened to receive them, the populace feeling sure the tatar horde was upon them. nor was this guess so very far wrong; for as rob, sitting disconsolate upon the sand, raised his eyes, he saw across the desert a dark line that marked the approach of the invaders. nearer and nearer they came, while rob watched them and bemoaned the foolish impulse that had led him to fall asleep in an unknown land where he could so easily be overpowered and robbed of his treasures. "i always suspected these electrical inventions would be my ruin some day," he reflected, sadly; "and now i'm side-tracked and left helpless in this outlandish country, without a single hope of ever getting home again. they probably won't be able to kill me, unless they find my garment of repulsion and strip that off; but i never could cross this terrible desert on foot and, having lost my food tablets, i'd soon starve if i attempted it." fortunately, he had eaten one of the tablets just before going to sleep, so there was no danger of immediate starvation. but he was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate until a sudden shout caused him to look up. 14. turk and tatar the tatars had arrived, swiftly and noiselessly, and a dozen of the warriors, still mounted, were surrounding him. his helpless condition aroused their curiosity, and while some of them hastily cut away his bonds and raised him to his feet, other plied him with questions in their own language. rob shook his head to indicate that he could not understand; so they led him to the chief--an immense, bearded representative of the tribe of kara-khitai, the terrible and relentless black tatars of thibet. the huge frame of this fellow was clothed in flowing robes of cloth-of-gold, braided with jewels, and he sat majestically upon the back of a jet-black camel. under ordinary circumstances the stern features and flashing black eyes of this redoubtable warrior would have struck a chill of fear to the boy's heart; but now under the influence of the crushing misfortunes he had experienced, he was able to gaze with indifference upon the terrible visage of the desert chief. the tatar seemed not to consider rob an enemy. instead, he looked upon him as an ally, since the turks had bound and robbed him. finding it impossible to converse with the chief, rob took refuge in the sign language. he turned his pockets wrong side out, showed the red welts left upon his wrists by the tight cord, and then shook his fists angrily in the direction of the town. in return the tatar nodded gravely and issued an order to his men. by this time the warriors were busily pitching tents before the walls of yarkand and making preparations for a formal siege. in obedience to the chieftain's orders, rob was given a place within one of the tents nearest the wall and supplied with a brace of brass-mounted pistols and a dagger with a sharp, zigzag edge. these were evidently to assist the boy in fighting the turks, and he was well pleased to have them. his spirits rose considerably when he found he had fallen among friends, although most of his new comrades had such evil faces that it was unnecessary to put on the character markers to judge their natures with a fair degree of accuracy. "i can't be very particular about the company i keep," he thought, "and this gang hasn't tried to murder me, as the rascally turks did. so for the present i'll stand in with the scowling chief and try to get a shot at the thieves who robbed me. if our side wins i may get a chance to recover some of my property. it's a slim chance, of course, but it's the only hope i have left." that very evening an opportunity occurred for rob to win glory in the eyes of his new friends. just before sundown the gates of the city flew open and a swarm of turks, mounted upon fleet horses and camels, issued forth and fell upon their enemies. the tatars, who did not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. in such a battle, however, the turks were at a disadvantage, for the active tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and their riders to the earth. at the first onslaught rob shot his pistol at a turk and wounded him so severely that he fell from his horse. instantly the boy seized the bridle and sprang upon the steed's back, and the next moment he had dashed into the thickest part of the fray. bullets and blows rained upon him from all sides, but the garment of repulsion saved him from a single scratch. when his pistols had been discharged he caught up the broken handle of a spear, and used it as a club, galloping into the ranks of the turks and belaboring them as hard as he could. the tatars cheered and followed him, and the turks were so amazed at his miraculous escape from their bullets that they became terrified, thinking he bore a charmed life and was protected by unseen powers. this terror helped turn the tide of battle, and before long the enemy was pressed back to the walls and retreated through the gates, which were hastily fastened behind them. in order to prevent a repetition of this sally the tatars at once invested the gates, so that if the turks should open them they were as likely to let their foes in as to oppose them. while the tents were being moved up rob had an opportunity to search the battlefield for the bodies of the three turks who had robbed him, but they were not among the fallen. "those fellows were too cowardly to take part in a fair fight," declared the boy; but he was much disappointed, nevertheless, as he felt very helpless without the electric tube or the traveling machine. the tatar chief now called rob to his tent and presented him with a beautiful ring set with a glowing pigeon's-blood ruby, in acknowledgment of his services. this gift made the boy feel very proud, and he said to the chief: "you're all right, old man, even if you do look like a pirate. if you can manage to capture that city, so i can get my electrical devices back, i'll consider you a trump as long as i live." the chief thought this speech was intended to express rob's gratitude, so he bowed solemnly in return. during the night that followed upon the first engagement of the turks and tatars, the boy lay awake trying to devise some plan to capture the city. the walls seemed too high and thick to be either scaled or broken by the tatars, who had no artillery whatever; and within the walls lay all the fertile part of the oasis, giving the besieged a good supply of water and provisions, while the besiegers were obliged to subsist on what water and food they had brought with them. just before dawn rob left his tent and went out to look at the great wall. the stars gave plenty of light, but the boy was worried to find that, according to eastern custom, no sentries or guards whatever had been posted and all the tatars were slumbering soundly. the city was likewise wrapped in profound silence, but just as rob was turning away he saw a head project stealthily over the edge of the wall before him, and recognized in the features one of the turks who had robbed him. finding no one awake except the boy the fellow sat upon the edge of the wall, with his feet dangling downward, and grinned wickedly at his former victim. rob watched him with almost breathless eagerness. after making many motions that conveyed no meaning whatever, the turk drew the electric tube from his pocket and pointed his finger first at the boy and then at the instrument, as if inquiring what it was used for. rob shook his head. the turk turned the tube over several times and examined it carefully, after which he also shook his head, seeming greatly puzzled. by this time the boy was fairly trembling with excitement. he longed to recover this valuable weapon, and feared that at any moment the curious turk would discover its use. he held out his hand toward the tube, and tried to say, by motions, that he would show the fellow how to use it. the man seemed to understand, by he would not let the glittering instrument out of his possession. rob was almost in despair, when he happened to notice upon his hand the ruby ring given him by the chief. drawing the jewel from his finger he made offer, by signs, that he would exchange it for the tube. the turk was much pleased with the idea, and nodded his head repeatedly, holding out his hand for the ring. rob had little confidence in the man's honor, but he was so eager to regain the tube that he decided to trust him. so he threw the ring to the top of the wall, where the turk caught it skilfully; but when rob held out his hand for the tube the scoundrel only laughed at him and began to scramble to his feet in order to beat a retreat. chance, however, foiled this disgraceful treachery, for in his hurry the turk allowed the tube to slip from his grasp, and it rolled off the wall and fell upon the sand at rob's very feet. the robber turned to watch its fall and, filled with sudden anger, the boy grabbed the weapon, pointed it at his enemy, and pressed the button. down tumbled the turk, without a cry, and lay motionless at the foot of the wall. rob's first thought was to search the pockets of his captive, and to his delight he found and recovered his box of food tablets. the record of events and the traveling machine were doubtless in the possession of the other robbers, but rob did not despair of recovering them, now that he had the tube to aid him. day was now breaking, and several of the tatars appeared and examined the body of the turk with grunts of surprise, for there was no mark upon him to show how he had been slain. supposing him to be dead, they tossed him aside and forgot all about him. rob had secured his ruby ring again, and going to the chief's tent he showed the jewel to the guard and was at once admitted. the black-bearded chieftain was still reclining upon his pillows, but rob bowed before him, and by means of signs managed to ask for a band of warriors to assist him in assaulting the town. the chieftain appeared to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise, not being able to understand how the boy could expect to succeed; but he graciously issued the required order, and by the time rob reached the city gate he found a large group of tatars gathered to support him, while the entire camp, roused to interest in the proceedings, stood looking on. rob cared little for the quarrel between the turks and tatars, and under ordinary circumstances would have refused to side with one or the other; but he knew he could not hope to recover his electrical machines unless the city was taken by the band of warriors who had befriended him, so he determined to force an entrance for them. without hesitation he walked close to the great gate and shattered its fastenings with the force of the electric current directed upon them from the tube. then, shouting to his friends the tatars for assistance, they rushed in a body upon the gate and dashed it open. the turks had expected trouble when they heard the fastenings of the huge gate splinter and fall apart, so they had assembled in force before the opening. as the tatars poured through the gateway in a compact mass they were met by a hail of bullets, spears and arrows, which did fearful execution among them. many were killed outright, while others fell wounded to be trampled upon by those who pressed on from the rear. rob maintained his position in the front rank, but escaped all injury through the possession of the garment of repulsion. but he took an active part in the fight and pressed the button of the electric tube again and again, tumbling the enemy into heaps on every side, even the horses and camels falling helplessly before the resistless current of electricity. the tatars shouted joyfully as they witnessed this marvelous feat and rushed forward to assist in the slaughter; but the boy motioned them all back. he did not wish any more bloodshed than was necessary, and knew that the heaps of unconscious turks around him would soon recover. so he stood alone and faced the enemy, calmly knocking them over as fast as they came near. two of the turks managed to creep up behind the boy, and one of them, who wielded an immense simitar with a two-edged blade as sharp as a razor, swung the weapon fiercely to cut off rob's head. but the repulsive force aroused in the garment was so terrific that it sent the weapon flying backwards with redoubled swiftness, so that it caught the second turk at the waist and cut him fairly in two. thereafter they all avoided coming near the boy, and in a surprisingly short time the turkish forces were entirely conquered, all having been reduced to unconsciousness except a few cowards who had run away and hidden in the cellars or garrets of the houses. the tatars entered the city with shouts of triumph, and the chief was so delighted that he threw his arms around rob's neck and embraced him warmly. then began the sack of yarkand, the fierce tatars plundering the bazaars and houses, stripping them of everything of value they could find. rob searched anxiously among the bodies of the unconscious turks for the two men who had robbed him, but neither could be found. he was more successful later, for in running through the streets he came upon a band of tatars leading a man with a rope around his neck, whom rob quickly recognized as one of the thieves he was hunting for. the tatars willingly allowed him to search the fellow, and in one of his pockets rob found the record of events. he had now recovered all his property, except the traveling machine, the one thing that was absolutely necessary to enable him to escape from this barbarous country. he continued his search persistently, and an hour later found the dead body of the third robber lying in the square in the center of the city. but the traveling machine was not on his person, and for the first time the boy began to give way to despair. in the distance he heard loud shouts and sound of renewed strife, warning him that the turks were recovering consciousness and engaging the tatars with great fierceness. the latter had scattered throughout the town, thinking themselves perfectly secure, so that not only were they unprepared to fight, but they became panic-stricken at seeing their foes return, as it seemed, from death to life. their usual courage forsook them, and they ran, terrified, in every direction, only to be cut down by the revengeful turkish simitars. rob was sitting upon the edge of a marble fountain in the center of the square when a crowd of victorious turks appeared and quickly surrounded him. the boy paid no attention to their gestures and the turks feared to approach him nearly, so they stood a short distance away and fired volleys at him from their rifles and pistols. rob glared at them scornfully, and seeing they could not injure him the turks desisted; but they still surrounded him, and the crowd grew thicker every moment. women now came creeping from their hiding places and mingled with the ranks of the men, and rob guessed, from their joyous chattering, that the turks had regained the city and driven out or killed the tatar warriors. he reflected, gloomily, that this did not affect his own position in any way, since he could not escape from the oasis. suddenly, on glancing at the crowd, rob saw something that arrested his attention. a young girl was fastening some article to the wrist of a burly, villainous-looking turk. the boy saw a glitter that reminded him of the traveling machine, but immediately afterward the man and the girl bent their heads over the fellow's wrist in such a way that rob could see nothing more. while the couple were apparently examining the strange device, rob started to his feet and walked toward them. the crowd fell back at his approach, but the man and the girl were so interested that they did not notice him. he was still several paces away when the girl put out her finger and touched the indicator on the dial. to rob's horror and consternation the big turk began to rise slowly into the air, while a howl of fear burst from the crowd. but the boy made a mighty spring and caught the turk by his foot, clinging to it with desperate tenacity, while they both mounted steadily upward until they were far above the city of the desert. the big turk screamed pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of the turk's baggy trousers. then, slowly and carefully, he drew himself up and seized the leather belt that encircled the man's waist. this firm grip gave him new confidence, and he began to breathe more freely. he now clung to the body of the turk with both legs entwined, in the way he was accustomed to cling to a tree-trunk when he climbed after cherries at home. he had conquered his fear of falling, and took time to recover his wits and his strength. they had now reached such a tremendous height that the city looked like a speck on the desert beneath them. knowing he must act quickly, rob seized the dangling left arm of the unconscious turk and raised it until he could reach the dial of the traveling machine. he feared to unclasp the machine just then, for two reasons: if it slipped from his grasp they would both plunge downward to their death; and he was not sure the machine would work at all if in any other position than fastened to the left wrist. rob determined to take no chances, so he left the machine attached to the turk and turned the indicator to zero and then to "east," for he did not wish to rejoin either his enemies the turks or his equally undesirable friends the tatars. after traveling eastward a few minutes he lost sight of the city altogether; so, still clinging to the body of the turk, he again turned the indicator and began to descend. when, at last, they landed gently upon a rocky eminence of the kuen-lun mountains, the boy's strength was almost exhausted, and his limbs ached with the strain of clinging to the turk's body. his first act was to transfer the traveling machine to his own wrist and to see that his other electrical devices were safely bestowed in his pockets. then he sat upon the rock to rest until the turk recovered consciousness. presently the fellow moved uneasily, rolled over, and then sat up and stared at his surroundings. perhaps he thought he had been dreaming, for he rubbed his eyes and looked again with mingled surprise and alarm. then, seeing rob, he uttered a savage shout and drew his dagger. rob smiled and pointed the electric tube at the man, who doubtless recognized its power, for he fell back scowling and trembling. "this place seems like a good jog from civilization," remarked the boy, as coolly as if his companion could understand what he said; "but as your legs are long and strong you may be able to find your way. it's true you're liable to starve to death, but if you do it will be your own misfortune and not my fault." the turk glared at him sullenly, but did not attempt to reply. rob took out his box of tablets, ate one of them and offered another to his enemy. the fellow accepted it ungraciously enough, but seeing rob eat one he decided to follow his example, and consumed the tablet with a queer expression of distrust upon his face. "brave man!" cried rob, laughingly; "you've avoided the pangs of starvation for a time, anyhow, so i can leave you with a clear conscience." without more ado, he turned the indicator of the traveling machine and mounted into the air, leaving the turk sitting upon the rocks and staring after him in comical bewilderment. 15. a battle with monsters our young adventurer never experienced a more grateful feeling of relief and security than when he found himself once more high in the air, alone, and in undisputed possession of the electrical devices bestowed upon him by the demon. the dangers he had passed through since landing at the city of the desert and the desperate chance that alone had permitted him to regain the traveling machine made him shudder at the bare recollection and rendered him more sober and thoughtful than usual. we who stick closely to the earth's surface can scarcely realize how rob could travel through the air at such dizzy heights without any fear or concern whatsoever. but he had come to consider the air a veritable refuge. experience had given him implicit confidence in the powers of the electrical instrument whose unseen forces carried him so swiftly and surely, and while the tiny, watch-like machine was clasped to his wrist he felt himself to be absolutely safe. having slipped away from the turk and attained a fair altitude, he set the indicator at zero and paused long enough to consult his map and decide what direction it was best for him to take. the mischance that had swept him unwittingly over the countries of europe had also carried him more than half way around the world from his home. therefore the nearest way to reach america would be to continue traveling to the eastward. so much time had been consumed at the desert oasis that he felt he must now hasten if he wished to reach home by saturday afternoon; so, having quickly come to a decision, he turned the indicator and began a swift flight into the east. for several hours he traveled above the great desert of gobi, but by noon signs of a more fertile country began to appear, and, dropping to a point nearer the earth, he was able to observe closely the country of the chinese, with its crowded population and ancient but crude civilization. then he came to the great wall of china and to mighty peking, above which he hovered some time, examining it curiously. he really longed to make a stop there, but with his late experiences fresh in his mind he thought it much safer to view the wonderful city from a distance. resuming his flight he presently came to the gulf of laou tong, whose fair face was freckled with many ships of many nations, and so on to korea, which seemed to him a land fully a century behind the times. night overtook him while speeding across the sea of japan, and having a great desire to view the mikado's famous islands, he put the indicator at zero, and, coming to a full stop, composed himself to sleep until morning, that he might run no chances of being carried beyond his knowledge during the night. you might suppose it no easy task to sleep suspended in mid-air, yet the magnetic currents controlled by the traveling machine were so evenly balanced that rob was fully as comfortable as if reposing upon a bed of down. he had become somewhat accustomed to passing the night in the air and now slept remarkably well, having no fear of burglars or fire or other interruptions that dwellers in cities are subject to. one thing, however, he should have remembered: that he was in an ancient and little known part of the world and reposing above a sea famous in fable as the home of many fierce and terrible creatures; while not far away lay the land of the dragon, the simurg and other ferocious monsters. rob may have read of these things in fairy tales and books of travel, but if so they had entirely slipped his mind; so he slumbered peacefully and actually snored a little, i believe, towards morning. but even as the red sun peeped curiously over the horizon he was awakened by a most unusual disturbance--a succession of hoarse screams and a pounding of the air as from the quickly revolving blades of some huge windmill. he rubbed his eyes and looked around. coming towards him at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful than a tiger's claws. while, fascinated and horrified, he watched the approach of this feathered monster, a scream sounded just behind him and the next instant the stroke of a mighty wing sent him whirling over and over through the air. he soon came to a stop, however, and saw that another of the monsters had come upon him from the rear and was now, with its mate, circling closely around him, while both uttered continuously their hoarse, savage cries. rob wondered why the garment of repulsion had not protected him from the blow of the bird's wing; but, as a matter of fact, it had protected him. for it was not the wing itself but the force of the eddying currents of air that had sent him whirling away from the monster. with the indicator at zero the magnetic currents and the opposing powers of attraction and repulsion were so evenly balanced that any violent atmospheric disturbance affected him in the same way that thistledown is affected by a summer breeze. he had noticed something of this before, but whenever a strong wind was blowing he was accustomed to rise to a position above the air currents. this was the first time he had slept with the indicator at zero. the huge birds at once renewed their attack, but rob had now recovered his wits sufficiently to draw the electric tube from his pocket. the first one to dart towards him received the powerful electric current direct from the tube, and fell stunned and fluttering to the surface of the sea, where it floated motionless. its mate, perhaps warned by this sudden disaster, renewed its circling flight, moving so swiftly that rob could scarcely follow it, and drawing nearer and nearer every moment to its intended victim. the boy could not turn in the air very quickly, and he feared an attack in the back, mistrusting the saving power of the garment of repulsion under such circumstances; so in desperation he pressed his finger upon the button of the tube and whirled the instrument around his head in the opposite direction to that in which the monster was circling. presently the current and the bird met, and with one last scream the creature tumbled downwards to join its fellow upon the waves, where they lay like two floating islands. their presence had left a rank, sickening stench in the surrounding atmosphere, so rob made haste to resume his journey and was soon moving rapidly eastward. he could not control a shudder at the recollection of his recent combat, and realized the horror of a meeting with such creatures by one who had no protection from their sharp beaks and talons. "it's no wonder the japs draw ugly pictures of those monsters," he thought. "people who live in these parts must pass most of their lives in a tremble." the sun was now shining brilliantly, and when the beautiful islands of japan came in sight rob found that he had recovered his wonted cheerfulness. he moved along slowly, hovering with curious interest over the quaint and picturesque villages and watching the industrious japanese patiently toiling at their tasks. just before he reached tokio he came to a military fort, and for nearly an hour watched the skilful maneuvers of a regiment of soldiers at their morning drill. they were not very big people, compared with other nations, but they seemed alert and well trained, and the boy decided it would require a brave enemy to face them on a field of battle. having at length satisfied his curiosity as to japanese life and customs rob prepared for his long flight across the pacific ocean. by consulting his map he discovered that should he maintain his course due east, as before, he would arrive at a point in america very near to san francisco, which suited his plans excellently. having found that he moved more swiftly when farthest from the earth's surface, because the air was more rarefied and offered less resistance, rob mounted upwards until the islands of japan were mere specks visible through the clear, sunny atmosphere. then he began his eastward flight, the broad surface of the pacific seeming like a blue cloud far beneath him. 16. shipwrecked mariners ample proof of rob's careless and restless nature having been frankly placed before the reader in these pages, you will doubtless be surprised when i relate that during the next few hours our young gentleman suffered from a severe attack of homesickness, becoming as gloomy and unhappy in its duration as ever a homesick boy could be. it may have been because he was just then cut off from all his fellow-creatures and even from the world itself; it may have been because he was satiated with marvels and with the almost absolute control over the powers which the demon had conferred upon him; or it may have been because he was born and reared a hearty, healthy american boy, with a disposition to battle openly with the world and take his chances equally with his fellows, rather than be placed in such an exclusive position that no one could hope successfully to oppose him. perhaps he himself did not know what gave him this horrible attack of "the blues," but the truth is he took out his handkerchief and cried like a baby from very loneliness and misery. there was no one to see him, thank goodness! and the tears gave him considerable relief. he dried his eyes, made an honest struggle to regain his cheerfulness, and then muttered to himself: "if i stay up here, like an air-bubble in the sky, i shall certainly go crazy. i suppose there's nothing but water to look at down below, but if i could only sight a ship, or even see a fish jump, it would do me no end of good." thereupon he descended until, as the ocean's surface same nearer and nearer, he discovered a tiny island lying almost directly underneath him. it was hardly big enough to make a dot on the biggest map, but a clump of trees grew in the central portion, while around the edges were jagged rocks protecting a sandy beach and a stretch of flower-strewn upland leading to the trees. it looked beautiful from rob's elevated position, and his spirits brightened at once. "i'll drop down and pick a bouquet," he exclaimed, and a few moments later his feet touched the firm earth of the island. but before he could gather a dozen of the brilliant flowers a glad shout reached his ears, and, looking up, he saw two men running towards him from the trees. they were dressed in sailor fashion, but their clothing was reduced to rags and scarcely clung to their brown, skinny bodies. as they advanced they waved their arms wildly in the air and cried in joyful tones: "a boat! a boat!" rob stared at them wonderingly, and had much ado to prevent the poor fellows from hugging him outright, so great was their joy at his appearance. one of them rolled upon the ground, laughing and crying by turns, while the other danced and cut capers until he became so exhausted that he sank down breathless beside his comrade. "how came you here?" then inquired the boy, in pitying tones. "we're shipwrecked american sailors from the bark 'cynthia jane,' which went down near here over a month ago," answered the smallest and thinnest of the two. "we escaped by clinging to a bit of wreckage and floated to this island, where we have nearly starved to death. indeed, we now have eaten everything on the island that was eatable, and had your boat arrived a few days later you'd have found us lying dead upon the beach!" rob listened to this sad tale with real sympathy. "but i didn't come here in a boat," said he. the men sprang to their feet with white, scared faces. "no boat!" they cried; "are you, too, shipwrecked?" "no;" he answered. "i flew here through the air." and then he explained to them the wonderful electric traveling machine. but the sailors had no interest whatever in the relation. their disappointment was something awful to witness, and one of them laid his head upon his comrade's shoulder and wept with unrestrained grief, so weak and discouraged had they become through suffering. suddenly rob remembered that he could assist them, and took the box of concentrated food tablets from his pocket. "eat these," he said, offering one of each to the sailors. at first they could not understand that these small tablets would be able to allay the pangs of hunger; but when rob explained their virtues the men ate them greedily. within a few moments they were so greatly restored to strength and courage that their eyes brightened, their sunken cheeks flushed, and they were able to converse with their benefactor with calmness and intelligence. then the boy sat beside them upon the grass and told them the story of his acquaintance with the demon and of all his adventures since he had come into possession of the wonderful electric contrivances. in his present mood he felt it would be a relief to confide in some one, and so these poor, lonely men were the first to hear his story. when he related the manner in which he had clung to the turk while both ascended into the air, the elder of the two sailors listened with rapt attention, and then, after some thought, asked: "why couldn't you carry one or both of us to america?" rob took time seriously to consider this idea, while the sailors eyed him with eager interest. finally he said: "i'm afraid i couldn't support your weight long enough to reach any other land. it's a long journey, and you'd pull my arms out of joint before we'd been up an hour." their faces fell at this, but one of them said: "why couldn't we swing ourselves over your shoulders with a rope? our two bodies would balance each other and we are so thin and emaciated that we do not weigh very much." while considering this suggestion rob remembered how at one time five pirates had clung to his left leg and been carried some distance through the air. "have you a rope?" he asked. "no," was the answer; "but there are plenty of long, tough vines growing on the island that are just as strong and pliable as ropes." "then, if you are willing to run the chances," decided the boy, "i will make the attempt to save you. but i must warn you that in case i find i can not support the weight of your bodies i shall drop one or both of you into the sea." they looked grave at this prospect, but the biggest one said: "we would soon meet death from starvation if you left us here on the island; so, as there is at least a chance of our being able to escape in your company i, for one, am willing to risk being drowned. it is easier and quicker than being starved. and, as i'm the heavier, i suppose you'll drop me first." "certainly," declared rob, promptly. this announcement seemed to be an encouragement to the little sailor, but he said, nervously: "i hope you'll keep near the water, for i haven't a good head for heights--they always make me dizzy." "oh, if you don't want to go," began rob, "i can easily--" "but i do! i do! i do!" cried the little man, interrupting him. "i shall die if you leave me behind!" "well, then, get your ropes, and we'll do the best we can," said the boy. they ran to the trees, around the trunks of which were clinging many tendrils of greenish-brown vine which possessed remarkable strength. with their knives they cut a long section of this vine, the ends of which were then tied into loops large enough to permit the sailors to sit in them comfortably. the connecting piece rob padded with seaweed gathered from the shore, to prevent its cutting into his shoulders. "now, then," he said, when all was ready, "take your places." the sailors squatted in the loops, and rob swung the vine over his shoulders and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to "up." as they slowly mounted into the sky the little sailor gave a squeal of terror and clung to the boy's arm; but the other, although seemingly anxious, sat quietly in his place and made no trouble. "d--d--don't g--g--go so high!" stammered the little one, tremblingly; "suppose we should f--f--fall!" "well, s'pose we should?" answered rob, gruffly. "you couldn't drown until you struck the water, so the higher we are the longer you'll live in case of accident." this phase of the question seemed to comfort the frightened fellow somewhat; but, as he said, he had not a good head for heights, and so continued to tremble in spite of his resolve to be brave. the weight on rob's shoulders was not so great as he had feared, the traveling machine seeming to give a certain lightness and buoyancy to everything that came into contact with its wearer. as soon as he had reached a sufficient elevation to admit of good speed he turned the indicator once more to the east and began moving rapidly through the air, the shipwrecked sailors dangling at either side. "this is aw--aw--awful!" gasped the little one. "say, you shut up!" commanded the boy, angrily. "if your friend was as big a coward as you are i'd drop you both this minute. let go my arm and keep quiet, if you want to reach land alive." the fellow whimpered a little, but managed to remain silent for several minutes. then he gave a sudden twitch and grabbed rob's arm again. "s'pose--s'pose the vine should break!" he moaned, a horrified look upon his face. "i've had about enough of this," said rob, savagely. "if you haven't any sense you don't deserve to live." he turned the indicator on the dial of the machine and they began to descend rapidly. the little fellow screamed with fear, but rob paid no attention to him until the feet of the two suspended sailors were actually dipping into the waves, when he brought their progress to an abrupt halt. "wh--wh--what are you g--g--going to do?" gurgled the cowardly sailor. "i'm going to feed you to the sharks--unless you promise to keep your mouth shut," retorted the boy. "now, then; decide at once! which will it be--sharks or silence?" "i won't say a word--'pon my honor, i won't!" said the sailor shudderingly. "all right; remember your promise and we'll have no further trouble," remarked rob, who had hard work to keep from laughing at the man's abject terror. once more he ascended and continued the journey, and for several hours they rode along swiftly and silently. rob's shoulders were beginning to ache with the continued tugging of the vine upon them, but the thought that he was saving the lives of two unfortunate fellow-creatures gave him strength and courage to persevere. night was falling when they first sighted land; a wild and seemingly uninhabited stretch of the american coast. rob made no effort to select a landing place, for he was nearly worn out with a strain and anxiety of the journey. he dropped his burden upon the brow of a high bluff overlooking the sea and, casting the vine from his shoulders, fell to the earth exhausted and half fainting. 17. the coast of oregon when he had somewhat recovered, rob sat up and looked around him. the elder sailor was kneeling in earnest prayer, offering grateful thanks for his escape from suffering and death. the younger one lay upon the ground sobbing and still violently agitated by recollections of the frightful experiences he had undergone. although he did not show his feelings as plainly as the men, the boy was none the less gratified at having been instrumental in saving the lives of two fellow-beings. the darkness was by this time rapidly enveloping them, so rob asked his companions to gather some brushwood and light a fire, which they quickly did. the evening was cool for the time of year, and the heat from the fire was cheering and grateful; so they all lay near the glowing embers and fell fast asleep. the sound of voices aroused rob next morning, and on opening his eyes and gazing around he saw several rudely dressed men approaching. the two shipwrecked sailors were still sound asleep. rob stood up and waited for the strangers to draw near. they seemed to be fishermen, and were much surprised at finding three people asleep upon the bluff. "whar 'n thunder 'd ye come from?" asked the foremost fisherman, in a surprised voice. "from the sea," replied the boy. "my friends here are shipwrecked sailors from the 'cynthia jane.'" "but how'd ye make out to climb the bluff?" inquired a second fisherman; "no one ever did it afore, as we knows on." "oh, that is a long story," replied the boy, evasively. the two sailors had awakened and now saluted the new-comers. soon they were exchanging a running fire of questions and answers. "where are we?" rob heard the little sailor ask. "coast of oregon," was the reply. "we're about seven miles from port orford by land an' about ten miles by sea." "do you live at port orford?" inquired the sailor. "that's what we do, friend; an' if your party wants to join us we'll do our best to make you comf'table, bein' as you're shipwrecked an' need help." just then a loud laugh came from another group, where the elder sailor had been trying to explain rob's method of flying through the air. "laugh all you want to," said the sailor, sullenly; "it's true--ev'ry word of it!" "mebbe you think it, friend," answered a big, good-natured fisherman; "but it's well known that shipwrecked folks go crazy sometimes, an' imagine strange things. your mind seems clear enough in other ways, so i advise you to try and forget your dreams about flyin'." rob now stepped forward and shook hands with the sailors. "i see you have found friends," he said to them, "so i will leave you and continue my journey, as i'm in something of a hurry." both sailors began to thank him profusely for their rescue, but he cut them short. "that's all right. of course i couldn't leave you on that island to starve to death, and i'm glad i was able to bring you away with me." "but you threatened to drop me into the sea," remarked the little sailor, in a grieved voice. "so i did," said rob, laughing; "but i wouldn't have done it for the world--not even to have saved my own life. good-by!" he turned the indicator and mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him with round eyes and wide open mouths. "this sight will prove to them that the sailors are not crazy," he thought, as he turned to the south and sped away from the bluff. "i suppose those simple fishermen will never forget this wonderful occurrence, and they'll probably make reg'lar heroes of the two men who have crossed the pacific through the air." he followed the coast line, keeping but a short distance above the earth, and after an hour's swift flight reached the city of san francisco. his shoulders were sore and stiff from the heavy strain upon them of the previous day, and he wished more than once that he had some of his mother's household liniment to rub them with. yet so great was his delight at reaching once more his native land that all discomforts were speedily forgotten. much as he would have enjoyed a day in the great metropolis of the pacific slope, rob dared not delay longer than to take a general view of the place, to note its handsome edifices and to wonder at the throng of chinese inhabiting one section of the town. these things were much more plainly and quickly viewed by rob from above than by threading a way through the streets on foot; for he looked down upon the city as a bird does, and covered miles with a single glance. having satisfied his curiosity without attempting to alight, he turned to the southeast and followed the peninsula as far as palo alto, where he viewed the magnificent buildings of the university. changing his course to the east, he soon reached mount hamilton, and, being attracted by the great tower of the lick observatory, he hovered over it until he found he had attracted the excited gaze of the inhabitants, who doubtless observed him very plainly through the big telescope. but so unreal and seemingly impossible was the sight witnessed by the learned astronomers that they have never ventured to make the incident public, although long after the boy had darted away into the east they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. meantime rob rose to a higher altitude, and sped swiftly across the great continent. by noon he sighted chicago, and after a brief inspection of the place from the air determined to devote at least an hour to forming the acquaintance of this most wonderful and cosmopolitan city. 18. a narrow escape the auditorium tower, where "the weather man" sits to flash his reports throughout the country, offered an inviting place for the boy to alight. he dropped quietly upon the roof of the great building and walked down the staircase until he reached the elevators, by means of which he descended to the ground floor without exciting special attention. the eager rush and hurry of the people crowding the sidewalks impressed rob with the idea that they were all behind time and were trying hard to catch up. he found it impossible to walk along comfortably without being elbowed and pushed from side to side; so a half hour's sight-seeing under such difficulties tired him greatly. it was a beautiful afternoon, and finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest. presently an elderly gentleman with a reserved and dignified appearance and dressed in black took a seat next to the boy and drew a magazine from his pocket. rob saw that he opened it to an article on "the progress of modern science," in which he seemed greatly interested. after a time the boy remembered that he was hungry, not having eaten a tablet in more than twenty-four hours. so he took out the silver box and ate one of the small, round disks it contained. "what are those?" inquired the old gentleman in a soft voice. "you are too young to be taking patent medicines." "there are not medicines, exactly," answered the boy, with a smile. "they are concentrated food tablets, sorted with nourishment by means of electricity. one of them furnishes a person with food for an entire day." the old gentleman stared at rob a moment and then laid down his magazine and took the box in his hands, examining the tablets curiously. "are these patented?" he asked. "no," said rob; "they are unknown to any one but myself." "i will give you a half million dollars for the recipe to make them," said the gentleman. "i fear i must refuse your offer," returned rob, with a laugh. "i'll make it a million," said the gentleman, coolly. rob shook his head. "money can't buy the recipe," he said; "for i don't know it myself." "couldn't the tablets be chemically analyzed, and the secret discovered?" inquired the other. "i don't know; but i'm not going to give any one the chance to try," declared the boy, firmly. the old gentleman picked up his magazine without another word, and resumed his reading. for amusement rob took the record of events from his pocket and began looking at the scenes reflected from its polished plate. presently he became aware that the old gentleman was peering over his shoulder with intense interest. general funston was just then engaged in capturing the rebel chief, aguinaldo, and for a few moments both man and boy observed the occurrence with rapt attention. as the scene was replaced by one showing a secret tunnel of the russian nihilists, with the conspirators carrying dynamite to a recess underneath the palace of the czar, the gentleman uttered a long sigh and asked: "will you sell that box?" "no," answered rob, shortly, and put it back into his pocket. "i'll give you a million dollars to control the sale in chicago alone," continued the gentleman, with an eager inflection in his smooth voice. "you seem quite anxious to get rid of money," remarked rob, carelessly. "how much are you worth?" "personally?" "yes." "nothing at all, young man. i am not offering you my own money. but with such inventions as you have exhibited i could easily secure millions of capital. suppose we form a trust, and place them upon the market. we'll capitalize it for a hundred millions, and you can have a quarter of the stock--twenty-five millions. that would keep you from worrying about grocery bills." "but i wouldn't need groceries if i had the tablets," said rob, laughing. "true enough! but you could take life easily and read your newspaper in comfort, without being in any hurry to get down town to business. twenty-five millions would bring you a cozy little income, if properly invested." "i don't see why one should read newspapers when the record of events shows all that is going on in the world," objected rob. "true, true! but what do you say to the proposition?" "i must decline, with thanks. these inventions are not for sale." the gentleman sighed and resumed his magazine, in which he became much absorbed. rob put on the character marking spectacles and looked at him. the letters "e," "w" and "c" were plainly visible upon the composed, respectable looking brow of his companion. "evil, wise and cruel," reflected rob, as he restored the spectacles to his pocket. "how easily such a man could impose upon people. to look at him one would think that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" he decided to part company with this chance acquaintance and, rising from his seat, strolled leisurely up the walk. a moment later, on looking back, he discovered that the old gentleman had disappeared. he walked down state street to the river and back again, amused by the activity displayed in this busy section of the city. but the time he had allowed himself in chicago had now expired, so he began looking around for some high building from the roof of which he could depart unnoticed. this was not at all difficult, and selecting one of many stores he ascended by an elevator to the top floor and from there mounted an iron stairway leading to the flat roof. as he climbed this stairway he found himself followed by a pleasant looking young man, who also seemed desirous of viewing the city from the roof. annoyed at the inopportune intrusion, rob's first thought was to go back to the street and try another building; but, upon reflecting that the young man was not likely to remain long and he would soon be alone, he decided to wait. so he walked to the edge of the roof and appeared to be interested in the scenery spread out below him. "fine view from here, ain't it?" said the young man, coming up to him and placing his hand carelessly upon the boy's shoulder. "it is, indeed," replied rob, leaning over the edge to look into the street. as he spoke he felt himself gently but firmly pushed from behind and, losing his balance, he plunged headforemost from the roof and whirled through the intervening space toward the sidewalk far below. terrified though he was by the sudden disaster, the boy had still wit enough remaining to reach out his right hand and move the indicator of the machine upon his left wrist to the zero mark. immediately he paused in his fearful flight and presently came to a stop at a distance of less than fifteen feet from the flagstones which had threatened to crush out his life. as he stared downward, trying to recover his self-possession, he saw the old gentleman he had met on the lake front standing just below and looking at him with a half frightened, half curious expression in his eyes. at once rob saw through the whole plot to kill him and thus secure possession of his electrical devices. the young man upon the roof who had attempted to push him to his death was a confederate of the innocent appearing old gentleman, it seemed, and the latter had calmly awaited his fall to the pavement to seize the coveted treasures from his dead body. it was an awful idea, and rob was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life--or ever has been since. but now the shouts of a vast concourse of amazed spectators reached the boy's ears. he remembered that he was suspended in mid-air over the crowded street of a great city, while thousands of wondering eyes were fixed upon him. so he quickly set the indicator to the word "up," and mounted sky-ward until the watchers below could scarcely see him. then he fled away into the east, even yet shuddering with the horror of his recent escape from death and filled with disgust at the knowledge that there were people who held human life so lightly that they were willing to destroy it to further their own selfish ends. "and the demon wants such people as these to possess his electrical devices, which are as powerful to accomplish evil when in wrong hands as they are good!" thought the boy, resentfully. "this would be a fine world if electric tubes and records of events and traveling machines could be acquired by selfish and unprincipled persons!" so unnerved was rob by his recent experiences that he determined to make no more stops. however, he alighted at nightfall in the country, and slept upon the sweet hay in a farmer's barn. but, early the next morning, before any one else was astir, he resumed his journey, and at precisely ten o'clock of this day, which was saturday, he completed his flying trip around the world by alighting unobserved upon the well-trimmed lawn of his own home. 19. rob makes a resolution when rob opened the front door he came face to face with nell, who gave an exclamation of joy and threw herself into his arms. "oh, rob!" she cried, "i'm so glad you've come. we have all been dreadfully worried about you, and mother--" "well, what about mother?" inquired the boy, anxiously, as she paused. "she's been very ill, rob; and the doctor said to-day that unless we heard from you soon he would not be able to save her life. the uncertainty about you is killing her." rob stood stock still, all the eager joy of his return frozen into horror at the thought that he had caused his dear mother so much suffering. "where is she, nell?" he asked, brokenly. "in her room. come; i'll take you to her." rob followed with beating heart, and soon was clasped close to his mother's breast. "oh, my boy--my dear boy!" she murmured, and then for very joy and love she was unable to say more, but held him tight and stroked his hair gently and kissed him again and again. rob said little, except to promise that he would never again leave home without her full consent and knowledge. but in his mind he contrasted the love and comfort that now surrounded him with the lonely and unnatural life he had been leading and, boy though he was in years, a mighty resolution that would have been creditable to an experienced man took firm root in his heart. he was obliged to recount all his adventures to his mother and, although he made light of the dangers he had passed through, the story drew many sighs and shudders from her. when luncheon time arrived he met his father, and mr. joslyn took occasion to reprove his son in strong language for running away from home and leaving them filled with anxiety as to his fate. however, when he saw how happy and improved in health his dear wife was at her boy's return, and when he had listened to rob's manly confession of error and expressions of repentance, he speedily forgave the culprit and treated him as genially as ever. of course the whole story had to be repeated, his sisters listening this time with open eyes and ears and admiring their adventurous brother immensely. even mr. joslyn could not help becoming profoundly interested, but he took care not to show any pride he might feel in his son's achievements. when his father returned to his office rob went to his own bed-chamber and sat for a long time by the window in deep thought. when at last he aroused himself, he found it was nearly four o'clock. "the demon will be here presently," he said, with a thrill of aversion, "and i must be in the workshop to receive him." silently he stole to the foot of the attic stairs and then paused to listen. the house seemed very quiet, but he could hear his mother's voice softly humming a cradle-song that she had sung to him when he was a baby. he had been nervous and unsettled and a little fearful until then, but perhaps the sound of his mother's voice gave him courage, for he boldly ascended the stairs and entered the workshop, closing and locking the door behind him. 20. the unhappy fate of the demon again the atmosphere quickened and pulsed with accumulating vibrations. again the boy found himself aroused to eager expectancy. there was a whirl in the air; a crackling like distant musketry; a flash of dazzling light--and the demon stood before him for the third time. "i give you greetings!" said he, in a voice not unkindly. "good afternoon, mr. demon," answered the boy, bowing gravely. "i see you have returned safely from your trip," continued the apparition, cheerfully, "although at one time i thought you would be unable to escape. indeed, unless i had knocked that tube from the rascally turk's hand as he clambered to the top of the wall, i believe you would have been at the yarkand oasis yet--either dead or alive, as chance might determine." "were you there?" asked rob. "to be sure. and i recovered the tube for you, without which you would have been helpless. but that is the only time i saw fit to interfere in any way." "i'm afraid i did not get a chance to give many hints to inventors or scientists," said rob. "true, and i have deeply regretted it," replied the demon. "but your unusual powers caused more astonishment and consternation than you, perhaps, imagined; for many saw you whom you were too busy to notice. as a result several able electricians are now thinking new thoughts along new lines, and some of them may soon give these or similar inventions to the world." "you are satisfied, then?" asked rob. "as to that," returned the demon, composedly, "i am not. but i have hopes that with the addition of the three marvelous devices i shall present you with to-day you will succeed in arousing so much popular interest in electrical inventions as to render me wholly satisfied with the result of this experiment." rob regarded the brilliant apparition with a solemn face, but made no answer. "no living person," continued the demon, "has ever before been favored with such comforting devices for the preservation and extension of human life as yourself. you seem quite unappreciative, it is true; but since our connection i have come to realize that you are but an ordinary boy, with many boyish limitations; so i do not condemn your foolish actions too harshly." "that is kind of you," said rob. "to prove my friendliness," pursued the demon, "i have brought, as the first of to-day's offerings this electro-magnetic restorer. you see it is shaped like a thin metal band, and is to be worn upon the brow, clasping at the back of the head. its virtues surpass those of either the fabulous 'fountain of youth,' or the 'elixir of life,' so vainly sought for in past ages. for its wearer will instantly become free from any bodily disease or pain and will enjoy perfect health and vigor. in truth, so great are its powers that even the dead may be restored to life, provided the blood has not yet chilled. in presenting you with this appliance, i feel i am bestowing upon you the greatest blessing and most longed-for boon ever bequeathed of suffering humanity." here he held the slender, dull-colored metallic band toward the boy. "keep it," said rob. the demon started, and gave him an odd look. "what did you say?" he asked. "i told you to keep it," answered rob. "i don't want it." the demon staggered back as if he had been struck. "don't want it!" he gasped. "no; i've had enough of your infernal inventions!" cried the boy, with sudden anger. he unclasped the traveling machine from his wrist and laid it on the table beside the demon. "there's the thing that's responsible for most of my troubles," said he, bitterly. "what right has one person to fly through the air while all his fellow-creatures crawl over the earth's surface? and why should i be cut off from all the rest of the world because you have given me this confounded traveling machine? i didn't ask for it, and i won't keep it a moment longer. give it to some one you hate more than you do me!" the demon stared aghast and turned his glittering eyes wonderingly from rob to the traveling machine and back again, as if to be sure he had heard and seen aright. "and here are your food tablets," continued the boy, placing the box upon the table. "i've only enjoyed one square meal since you gave them to me. they're all right to preserve life, of course, and answer the purpose for which they were made; but i don't believe nature ever intended us to exist upon such things, or we wouldn't have the sense of taste, which enables us to enjoy natural food. as long as i'm a human being i'm going to eat like a human being, so i've consumed my last electrical concentrated food tablet--and don't you forget it!" the demon sank into a chair, nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy. "and there's another of your unnatural devices," said rob, putting the automatic record of events upon the table beside the other things. "what right have you to capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? this would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's affairs, wouldn't it? and here is your character marker. nice thing for a decent person to own, isn't it? any one who would take advantage of such a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! oh, i've used them, of course, and i ought to be spanked for having been so mean and underhanded; but i'll never be guilty of looking through them again." the demon's face was frowning and indignant. he made a motion to rise, but thought better of it and sank back in his chair. "as for the garment of protection," resumed the boy, after a pause, "i've worn it for the last time, and here it is, at your service. i'll put the electric tube with it. not that these are such very bad things in themselves, but i'll have none of your magical contrivances. i'll say this, however: if all armies were equipped with electrical tubes instead of guns and swords the world would be spared a lot of misery and unnecessary bloodshed. perhaps in time; but that time hasn't arrived yet." "you might have hastened it," said the demon, sternly, "if you had been wise enough to use your powers properly." "that's just it," answered rob. "i'm not wise enough. nor is the majority of mankind wise enough to use such inventions as yours unselfishly and for the good of the world. if people were better, and every one had an equal show, it would be different." for some moments the demon sat quietly thinking. finally the frown left his face and he said, with animation: "i have other inventions, which you may use without any such qualms of conscience. the electro-magnetic restorer i offered you would be a great boon to your race, and could not possibly do harm. and, besides this, i have brought you what i call the illimitable communicator. it is a simple electric device which will enable you, wherever you may be, to converse with people in any part of the world, without the use of such crude connections as wires. in fact, you may--" "stop!" cried rob. "it is useless for you to describe it, because i'll have nothing more to do with you or your inventions. i have given them a fair trial, and they've got me into all sorts of trouble and made all my friends miserable. if i was some high-up scientist it would be different; but i'm just a common boy, and i don't want to be anything else." "but, your duty--" began the demon. "my duty i owe to myself and to my family," interrupted rob. "i have never cultivated science, more than to fool with some simple electrical experiments, so i owe nothing to either science or the demon of electricity, so far as i can see." "but consider," remonstrated the demon, rising to his feet and speaking in a pleading voice, "consider the years that must elapse before any one else is likely to strike the master key! and, in the meanwhile, consider my helpless position, cut off from all interest in the world while i have such wonderful inventions on my hands for the benefit of mankind. if you have no love for science or for the advancement of civilization, do have some consideration for your fellow-creatures, and for me!" "if my fellow-creatures would have as much trouble with your electrical inventions as i had, i am doing them a service by depriving them of your devices," said the boy. "as for yourself, i've no fault to find with you, personally. you're a very decent sort of demon, and i've no doubt you mean well; but there's something wrong about our present combination, i'm sure. it isn't natural." the demon made a gesture of despair. "why, oh why did not some intelligent person strike the master key!" he moaned. "that's it!" exclaimed rob. "i believe that's the root of the whole evil." "what is?" inquired the demon, stupidly. "the fact that an intelligent person did not strike the master key. you don't seem to understand. well, i'll explain. you're the demon of electricity, aren't you?" "i am," said the other, drawing himself up proudly. "your mission is to obey the commands of whoever is able to strike the master key of electricity." "that is true." "i once read in a book that all things are regulated by exact laws of nature. if that is so you probably owe your existence to those laws." the demon nodded. "doubtless it was intended that when mankind became intelligent enough and advanced enough to strike the master key, you and all your devices would not only be necessary and acceptable to them, but the world would be prepared for their general use. that seems reasonable, doesn't it?" "perhaps so. yes; it seems reasonable," answered the demon, thoughtfully. "accidents are always liable to happen," continued the boy. "by accident the master key was struck long before the world of science was ready for it--or for you. instead of considering it an accident and paying no attention to it you immediately appeared to me--a mere boy--and offered your services." "i was very anxious to do something," returned the demon, evasively. "you've no idea how stupid it is for me to live invisible and unknown, while all the time i have in my possession secrets of untold benefit to the world." "well, you'll have to keep cool and bide your time," said rob. "the world wasn't made in a minute, and while civilization is going on at a pretty good pace, we're not up to the demon of electricity yet." "what shall i do!" groaned the apparition, wringing his hands miserably; "oh, what shall i do!" "go home and lie down," replied rob, sympathetically. "take it easy and don't get rattled. nothing was every created without a use, they say; so your turn will come some day, sure! i'm sorry for you, old fellow, but it's all your own fault." "you are right!" exclaimed the demon, striding up and down the room, and causing thereby such a crackling of electricity in the air that rob's hair became rigid enough to stand on end. "you are right, and i must wait--wait--wait--patiently and silently--until my bonds are loosed by intelligence rather than chance! it is a dreary fate. but i must wait--i must wait--i must wait!" "i'm glad you've come to your senses," remarked rob, drily. "so, if you've nothing more to say--" "no! i have nothing more to say. there is nothing more to say. you and i are two. we should never had met!" retorted the demon, showing great excitement. "oh, i didn't seek your acquaintance," said rob. "but i've tried to treat you decently, and i've no fault to find with you except that you forgot you were a slave and tried to be a master." the demon did not reply. he was busily forcing the various electrical devices that rob had relinquished into the pockets of his fiery jacket. finally he turned with an abrupt movement. "good-by!" he cried. "when mortal eyes next behold me they will be those of one fit to command my services! as for you, your days will be passed in obscurity and your name be unknown to fame. good-by,--forever!" the room filled with a flash of white light so like a sheet of lightning that the boy went reeling backwards, half stunned and blinded by its dazzling intensity. when he recovered himself the demon of electricity had disappeared. rob's heart was very light as he left the workshop and made his way down the attic stairs. "some people might think i was a fool to give up those electrical inventions," he reflected; "but i'm one of those persons who know when they've had enough. it strikes me the fool is the fellow who can't learn a lesson. i've learned mine, all right. it's no fun being a century ahead of the times!" the master key [illustration: rob was surrounded by a group of natives] the master key _an electrical fairy tale_ founded upon the mysteries of electricity and the optimism of its devotees. it was written for boys, but others may read it by l. frank baum illustrations by f. y. cory _the_ bowen-merrill company publishers · indianapolis copyright 1901 the bowen-merrill company press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n. y. to my son robert stanton baum [illustration] contents _chapter_ _page_ i rob's workshop 1 ii the demon of electricity 9 iii the three gifts 18 iv testing the instruments 29 v the cannibal island 43 vi the buccaneers 60 vii the demon becomes angry 78 viii rob acquires new powers 86 ix the second journey 97 x how rob served a mighty king 104 xi the man of science 126 xii how rob saved a republic 136 xiii rob loses his treasures 146 xiv turk and tatar 160 xv a battle with monsters 182 xvi shipwrecked mariners 192 xvii the coast of oregon 206 xviii a narrow escape 214 xix rob makes a resolution 225 xx the unhappy fate of the demon 230 [illustration] [illustration] illustrations _page_ rob was surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance--_frontispiece_ from his workshop ran a network of wires throughout the house--_headpiece_ 1 a quick flash of light almost blinded rob 6 a curious being looked upon him from a magnificent radiance--_tailpiece_ 8 scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us--_headpiece_ 9 i am here to do your bidding, said the demon--_tailpiece_ 17 men have not yet discovered what the birds know--_headpiece_ 18 these three gifts may amuse you for the next week--_tailpiece_ 28 rob's action surprised them all--_headpiece_ 29 "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father 36 the red-whiskered policeman keeled over--_tailpiece_ 42 rob's captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away--_headpiece_ 43 "if it's just the same to you, old chap, i won't be eaten to-day"--_tailpiece_ 59 rob soared through the air with five buccaneers dangling from his leg--_headpiece_ 60 it was a strange sight to see the pirates drop to the deck and lie motionless 66 when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy--_tailpiece_ 77 when rob had been kissed by his mother, he gave an account of his adventures--_headpiece_ 78 rob sat staring eagerly at the demon--_tailpiece_ 85 the being drew from an inner pocket something resembling a box--_headpiece_ 86 these spectacles will indicate the character of every one you meet--_tailpiece_ 96 rob is in truth a typical american boy--_headpiece_ 97 rob placed the indicator to a point north of east and began his journey--_tailpiece_ 103 a crowd assembled, all shouting and pointing toward him in wonder--_headpiece_ 104 a man rushed toward it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell unconscious 108 rob reached the entrance of the palace, only to face another group of guardsmen 114 rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them--_tailpiece_ 125 a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him--_headpiece_ 126 the eyes of the frenchman were actually protruding from their sockets 128 from an elevation of fifty feet or more rob overlooked a pretty garden--_headpiece_ 136 placing the record so that the president could see clearly, rob watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face 140 rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace--_tailpiece_ 145 beneath him stretched a vast sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in vegetation--_headpiece_ 146 "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble" 150 uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three turks took to their heels 158 rob was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate--_tailpiece_ 159 the tatars arrived swiftly and noiselessly--_headpiece_ 160 the turk rose slowly into the air, with rob clinging to him with desperate tenacity 176 without more ado rob mounted into the air, leaving the turk staring after him--_tailpiece_ 181 coming toward him was an immense bird--_headpiece_ 186 with one last scream the creature tumbled downward to join its fellow--_tailpiece_ 191 during the next few hours rob suffered from a severe attack of homesickness--_headpiece_ 192 the disappointment of the sailors was something awful to witness 196 as they slowly mounted into the sky the sailor gave a squeal of terror--_tailpiece_ 205 rob mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him--_headpiece_ 206 rob hovered over the great tower of the lick observatory until he attracted the excited gaze of its inhabitants--_tailpiece_ 213 finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest--_headpiece_ 214 as he started downward he saw the old gentleman looking at him with a half-frightened, half-curious expression--_tailpiece_ 224 at precisely ten o'clock rob reached the front door of his own house--_headpiece_ 225 rob boldly ascended the stairs, entered the workshop and closed and locked the door--_tailpiece_ 229 the demon sank into a chair nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy--_headpiece_ 230 a flash of white light half-stunned and blinded rob. when he recovered himself the demon had disappeared--_tailpiece_ 245 [illustration] who knows? these things are quite improbable, to be sure; but are they impossible? our big world rolls over as smoothly as it did centuries ago, without a squeak to show it needs oiling after all these years of revolution. but times change because men change, and because civilization, like john brown's soul, goes ever marching on. the impossibilities of yesterday become the accepted facts of to-day. here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of electricity and written for children of this generation. yet when my readers shall have become men and women my story may not seem to their children like a fairy tale at all. perhaps one, perhaps two--perhaps several of the demon's devices will be, by that time, in popular use. who knows? "_in wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it all ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance: the last is the parent of adoration._" --coleridge. [illustration] the master key _chapter one_ rob's workshop when rob became interested in electricity his clear-headed father considered the boy's fancy to be instructive as well as amusing; so he heartily encouraged his son, and rob never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort that his experiments might require. he fitted up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in rob's workshop. the gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; a bell rang whenever the postman dropped a letter into the box; there were bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. and there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed. his mother and sisters soon came to vote the boy's scientific craze a nuisance; but his father was delighted with these evidences of rob's skill as an electrician, and insisted that he be allowed perfect freedom in carrying out his ideas. "electricity," said the old gentleman, sagely, "is destined to become the motive power of the world. the future advance of civilization will be along electrical lines. our boy may become a great inventor and astonish the world with his wonderful creations." "and in the meantime," said the mother, despairingly, "we shall all be electrocuted, or the house burned down by crossed wires, or we shall be blown into eternity by an explosion of chemicals!" "nonsense!" ejaculated the proud father. "rob's storage batteries are not powerful enough to electrocute one or set the house on fire. do give the boy a chance, belinda." "and his pranks are so humiliating," continued the lady. "when the minister called yesterday and rang the bell a big card appeared on the front door on which was printed the words: 'busy; call again.' fortunately helen saw him and let him in, but when i reproved robert for the act he said he was just trying the sign to see if it would work." "exactly! the boy is an inventor already. i shall have one of those cards attached to the door of my private office at once. i tell you, belinda, our son will be a great man one of these days," said mr. joslyn, walking up and down with pompous strides and almost bursting with the pride he took in his young hopeful. mrs. joslyn sighed. she knew remonstrance was useless so long as her husband encouraged the boy, and that she would be wise to bear her cross with fortitude. rob also knew his mother's protests would be of no avail; so he continued to revel in electrical processes of all sorts, using the house as an experimental station to test the powers of his productions. it was in his own room, however,--his "workshop"--that he especially delighted. for not only was it the center of all his numerous "lines" throughout the house, but he had rigged up therein a wonderful array of devices for his own amusement. a trolley-car moved around a circular track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their trades in awkward but persevering fashion. the room was crossed and recrossed with wires. they crept up the walls, lined the floor, made a grille of the ceiling and would catch an unwary visitor under the chin or above the ankle just when he least expected it. yet visitors were forbidden in so crowded a room, and even his father declined to go farther than the doorway. as for rob, he thought he knew all about the wires, and what each one was for; but they puzzled even him, at times, and he was often perplexed to know how to utilize them all. one day when he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he planned the electrical illumination of a gorgeous pasteboard palace, he really became confused over the network of wires. he had a "switch-board," to be sure, where he could make and break connections as he chose; but the wires had somehow become mixed, and he could not tell what combinations to use to throw the power on to his miniature electric lights. so he experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination. then he thought the combination might be right and there was a lack of power; so he added other lines of wire to his connections, and still others, until he had employed almost every wire in the room. [illustration: a quick flash of light almost blinded rob] yet it would not work; and after pausing a moment to try to think what was wrong he went at it again, putting this and that line into connection, adding another here and another there, until suddenly, as he made a last change, a quick flash of light almost blinded him, and the switch-board crackled ominously, as if struggling to carry a powerful current. rob covered his face at the flash, but finding himself unhurt he took away his hands and with blinking eyes attempted to look at a wonderful radiance which seemed to fill the room, making it many times brighter than the brightest day. although at first completely dazzled, he peered before him until he discovered that the light was concentrated near one spot, from which all the glorious rays seemed to scintillate. he closed his eyes a moment to rest them; then re-opening them and shading them somewhat with his hands, he made out the form of a curious being standing with majesty and composure in the center of the magnificent radiance and looking down upon him! [illustration] [illustration] _chapter two_ the demon of electricity rob was a courageous boy, but a thrill of fear passed over him in spite of his bravest endeavor as he gazed upon the wondrous apparition that confronted him. for several moments he sat as if turned to stone, so motionless was he; but his eyes were nevertheless fastened upon the being and devouring every detail of his appearance. and how strange an appearance he presented! his jacket was a wavering mass of white light, edged with braid of red flames that shot little tongues in all directions. the buttons blazed in golden fire. his trousers had a bluish, incandescent color, with glowing stripes of crimson braid. his vest was gorgeous with all the colors of the rainbow blended into a flashing, resplendent mass. in feature he was most majestic, and his eyes held the soft but penetrating brilliance of electric lights. it was hard to meet the gaze of those searching eyes, but rob did it, and at once the splendid apparition bowed and said in a low, clear voice: "i am here." "i know that," answered the boy, trembling, "but _why_ are you here?" "because you have touched the master key of electricity, and i must obey the laws of nature that compel me to respond to your summons." "i--i didn't know i touched the master key," faltered the boy. "i understand that. you did it unconsciously. no one in the world has ever done it before, for nature has hitherto kept the secret safe locked within her bosom." rob took time to wonder at this statement. "then who are you?" he inquired, at length. "the demon of electricity," was the solemn answer. "good gracious!" exclaimed rob, "a demon!" "certainly. i am, in truth, the slave of the master key, and am forced to obey the commands of any one who is wise and brave enough--or, as in your own case, fortunate and fool-hardy enough--to touch it." "i--i've never guessed there was such a thing as a master key, or--or a demon of electricity, and--and i'm awfully sorry i--i called you up!" stammered the boy, abashed by the imposing appearance of his companion. the demon actually smiled at this speech,--a smile that was almost reassuring. "i am not sorry," he said, in kindlier tone, "for it is not much pleasure waiting century after century for some one to command my services. i have often thought my existence uncalled for, since you earth people are so stupid and ignorant that you seem unlikely ever to master the secret of electrical power." "oh, we have some great masters among us!" cried rob, rather nettled at this statement. "now, there's edison--" "edison!" exclaimed the demon, with a faint sneer; "what does he know?" "lots of things," declared the boy. "he's invented no end of wonderful electrical things." "you are wrong to call them wonderful," replied the demon, lightly. "he really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. his inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. why, i've stood for months by edison's elbow, hoping and longing for him to touch the master key; but i can see plainly he will never accomplish it." "then there's tesla," said the boy. the demon laughed. "there is tesla, to be sure," he said. "but what of him?" "why, he's discovered a powerful light," the demon gave an amused chuckle, "and he's in communication with the people in mars." "what people?" "why, the people who live there." "there are none." this quiet statement almost took rob's breath away, and caused him to stare hard at his visitor. "it's generally thought," he resumed, in an annoyed tone, "that mars has inhabitants who are far in advance of ourselves in civilization. many scientific men think the people of mars have been trying to signal us for years, only we don't understand their signals. and great novelists have written about the martians and their wonderful civilization, and--" "and they all know as much about that little planet as you do yourself," interrupted the demon, impatiently. "the trouble with you earth people is that you delight in guessing about what you can not know. now i happen to know all about mars, because i can traverse all space and have had ample leisure to investigate the different planets. mars is not peopled at all, nor is any other of the planets you recognize in the heavens. some contain low orders of beasts, to be sure, but earth alone has an intelligent, thinking, reasoning population, and your scientists and novelists would do better trying to comprehend their own planet than in groping through space to unravel the mysteries of barren and unimportant worlds." rob listened to this with surprise and disappointment; but he reflected that the demon ought to know what he was talking about, so he did not venture to contradict him. "it is really astonishing," continued the apparition, "how little you people have learned about electricity. it is an earth element that has existed since the earth itself was formed, and if you but understood its proper use humanity would be marvelously benefited in many ways." "we are, already," protested rob; "our discoveries in electricity have enabled us to live much more conveniently." "then imagine your condition were you able fully to control this great element," replied the other, gravely. "the weaknesses and privations of mankind would be converted into power and luxury." "that's true, mr.--mr.--demon," said the boy. "excuse me if i don't get your name right, but i understood you to say you are a demon." "certainly. the demon of electricity." "but electricity is a good thing, you know, and--and--" "well?" "i've always understood that demons were bad things," added rob, boldly. "not necessarily," returned his visitor. "if you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. i do not know why. should you read hesiod you will find he says: 'soon was a world of holy demons made, aerial spirits, by great jove designed to be on earth the guardians of mankind.'" "but jove was himself a myth," objected rob, who had been studying mythology. the demon shrugged his shoulders. "then take the words of mr. shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "do you not remember that he says: 'thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.'" "oh, if shakespeare says it, that's all right," answered the boy. "but it seems you're more like a genius, for you answer the summons of the master key of electricity in the same way aladdin's genius answered the rubbing of the lamp." "to be sure. a demon is also a genius; and a genius is a demon," said the being. "what matters a name? i am here to do your bidding." [illustration] [illustration] _chapter three_ the three gifts familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. the great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors. so rob, having conversed for a time with the glorious demon of electricity, began to regard him with more composure and less awe, as his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the splendor that at first had well-nigh blinded them. when the demon announced himself ready to do the boy's bidding, he frankly replied: "i am no skilled electrician, as you very well know. my calling you here was an accident. so i don't know how to command you, nor what to ask you to do." "but i must not take advantage of your ignorance," answered the demon. "also, i am quite anxious to utilize this opportunity to show the world what a powerful element electricity really is. so permit me to inform you that, having struck the master key, you are at liberty to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks. these gifts, provided they are within the scope of electricity, i will grant." rob shook his head regretfully. "if i were a great electrician i should know what to ask," he said. "but i am too ignorant to take advantage of your kind offer." "then," replied the demon, "i will myself suggest the gifts, and they will be of such a character that the earth people will learn the possibilities that lie before them and be encouraged to work more intelligently and to persevere in mastering those natural and simple laws which control electricity. for one of the greatest errors they now labor under is that electricity is complicated and hard to understand. it is really the simplest earth element, lying within easy reach of any one who stretches out his hand to grasp and control its powers." rob yawned, for he thought the demon's speeches were growing rather tiresome. perhaps the genius noticed this rudeness, for he continued: "i regret, of course, that you are a boy instead of a grown man, for it will appear singular to your friends that so thoughtless a youth should seemingly have mastered the secrets that have baffled your most learned scientists. but that can not be helped, and presently you will become, through my aid, the most powerful and wonderful personage in all the world." "thank you," said rob, meekly. "it'll be no end of fun." "fun!" echoed the demon, scornfully. "but never mind; i must use the material fate has provided for me, and make the best of it." "what will you give me first?" asked the boy, eagerly. "that requires some thought," returned the demon, and paused for several moments, while rob feasted his eyes upon the gorgeous rays of color that flashed and vibrated in every direction and surrounded the figure of his visitor with an intense glow that resembled a halo. then the demon raised his head and said: "the thing most necessary to man is food to nourish his body. he passes a considerable part of his life in the struggle to procure food, to prepare it properly, and in the act of eating. this is not right. your body can not be very valuable to you if all your time is required to feed it. i shall, therefore, present you, as my first gift, this box of tablets. within each tablet are stored certain elements of electricity which are capable of nourishing a human body for a full day. all you need do is to toss one into your mouth each day and swallow it. it will nourish you, satisfy your hunger and build up your health and strength. the ordinary food of mankind is more or less injurious; this is entirely beneficial. moreover, you may carry enough tablets in your pocket to last for months." here he presented rob the silver box of tablets, and the boy, somewhat nervously, thanked him for the gift. "the next requirement of man," continued the demon, "is defense from his enemies. i notice with sorrow that men frequently have wars and kill one another. also, even in civilized communities, man is in constant danger from highwaymen, cranks and policemen. to defend himself he uses heavy and dangerous guns, with which to destroy his enemies. this is wrong. he has no right to take away what he can not bestow; to destroy what he can not create. to kill a fellow-creature is a horrid crime, even if done in self-defense. therefore, my second gift to you is this little tube. you may carry it within your pocket. whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. an electric current will instantly be directed upon your foe, rendering him wholly unconscious for the period of one hour. during that time you will have opportunity to escape. as for your enemy, after regaining consciousness he will suffer no inconvenience from the encounter beyond a slight headache." "that's fine!" said rob, as he took the tube. it was scarcely six inches long, and hollow at one end. "the busy lives of men," proceeded the demon, "require them to move about and travel in all directions. yet to assist them there are only such crude and awkward machines as electric trolleys, cable cars, steam railways and automobiles. these crawl slowly over the uneven surface of the earth and frequently get out of order. it has grieved me that men have not yet discovered what even the birds know: that the atmosphere offers them swift and easy means of traveling from one part of the earth's surface to another." "some people have tried to build air-ships," remarked rob. "so they have; great, unwieldy machines which offer so much resistance to the air that they are quite useless. a big machine is not needed to carry one through the air. there are forces in nature which may be readily used for such purpose. tell me, what holds you to the earth, and makes a stone fall to the ground?" "attraction of gravitation," said rob, promptly. "exactly. that is one force i refer to," said the demon. "the force of repulsion, which is little known, but just as powerful, is another that mankind may direct. then there are the polar electric forces, attracting objects toward the north or south poles. you have guessed something of this by the use of the compass, or electric needle. opposed to these is centrifugal electric force, drawing objects from east to west, or in the opposite direction. this force is created by the whirl of the earth upon its axis, and is easily utilized, although your scientific men have as yet paid little attention to it. "these forces, operating in all directions, absolute and immutable, are at the disposal of mankind. they will carry you through the atmosphere wherever and whenever you choose. that is, if you know how to control them. now, here is a machine i have myself perfected." the demon drew from his pocket something that resembled an open-faced watch, having a narrow, flexible band attached to it. "when you wish to travel," said he, "attach this little machine to your left wrist by means of the band. it is very light and will not be in your way. on this dial are points marked 'up' and 'down' as well as a perfect compass. when you desire to rise into the air set the indicator to the word 'up,' using a finger of your right hand to turn it. when you have risen as high as you wish, set the indicator to the point of the compass you want to follow and you will be carried by the proper electric force in that direction. to descend, set the indicator to the word 'down.' do you understand?" "perfectly!" cried rob, taking the machine from the demon with unfeigned delight. "this is really wonderful, and i'm awfully obliged to you!" "don't mention it," returned the demon, dryly. "these three gifts you may amuse yourself with for the next week. it seems hard to entrust such great scientific discoveries to the discretion of a mere boy; but they are quite harmless, so if you exercise proper care you can not get into trouble through their possession. and who knows what benefits to humanity may result? one week from to-day, at this hour, i will again appear to you, at which time you shall receive the second series of electrical gifts." "i'm not sure," said rob, "that i shall be able again to make the connections that will strike the master key." "probably not," answered the demon. "could you accomplish that, you might command my services forever. but, having once succeeded, you are entitled to the nine gifts--three each week for three weeks--so you have no need to call me to do my duty. i shall appear of my own accord." "thank you," murmured the boy. the demon bowed and spread his hands in the form of a semi-circle. an instant later there was a blinding flash, and when rob recovered from it and opened his eyes the demon of electricity had disappeared. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter four_ testing the instruments there is little doubt that had this strange experience befallen a grown man he would have been stricken with a fit of trembling or a sense of apprehension, or even fear, at the thought of having faced the terrible demon of electricity, of having struck the master key of the world's greatest natural forces, and finding himself possessed of three such wonderful and useful gifts. but a boy takes everything as a matter of course. as the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. it takes a great deal to startle a boy. rob was full of delight at his unexpected good fortune; but he did not stop to consider that there was anything remarkably queer or uncanny in the manner in which it had come to him. his chief sensation was one of pride. he would now be able to surprise those who had made fun of his electrical craze and force them to respect his marvelous powers. he decided to say nothing about the demon or the accidental striking of the master key. in exhibiting to his friends the electrical devices he had acquired it would be "no end of fun" to mark their amazement and leave them to guess how he performed his feats. so he put his treasures into his pocket, locked his workshop and went downstairs to his room to prepare for dinner. while brushing his hair he remembered it was no longer necessary for him to eat ordinary food. he was feeling quite hungry at that moment, for he had a boy's ravenous appetite; but, taking the silver box from his pocket, he swallowed a tablet and at once felt his hunger as fully satisfied as if he had partaken of a hearty meal, while at the same time he experienced an exhilarating glow throughout his body and a clearness of brain and gaiety of spirits which filled him with intense gratification. still, he entered the dining-room when the bell rang and found his father and mother and sisters already assembled there. "where have you been all day, robert?" inquired his mother. "no need to ask," said mr. joslyn, with a laugh. "fussing over electricity, i'll bet a cookie!" "i do wish," said the mother, fretfully, "that he would get over that mania. it unfits him for anything else." "precisely," returned her husband, dishing the soup; "but it fits him for a great career when he becomes a man. why shouldn't he spend his summer vacation in pursuit of useful knowledge instead of romping around like ordinary boys?" "no soup, thank you," said rob. "what!" exclaimed his father, looking at him in surprise, "it's your favorite soup." "i know," said rob, quietly, "but i don't want any." "are you ill, robert?" asked his mother. "never felt better in my life," answered rob, truthfully. yet mrs. joslyn looked worried, and when rob refused the roast, she was really shocked. "let me feel your pulse, my poor boy!" she commanded, and wondered to find it so regular. in fact, rob's action surprised them all. he sat calmly throughout the meal, eating nothing, but apparently in good health and spirits, while even his sisters regarded him with troubled countenances. "he's worked too hard, i guess," said mr. joslyn, shaking his head sadly. "oh, no; i haven't," protested rob; "but i've decided not to eat anything, hereafter. it's a bad habit, and does more harm than good." "wait till breakfast," said sister helen, with a laugh; "you'll be hungry enough by that time." however, the boy had no desire for food at breakfast time, either, as the tablet sufficed for an entire day. so he renewed the anxiety of the family by refusing to join them at the table. "if this goes on," mr. joslyn said to his son, when breakfast was finished, "i shall be obliged to send you away for your health." "i think of making a trip this morning," said rob, carelessly. "where to?" "oh, i may go to boston, or take a run over to cuba or jamaica," replied the boy. "but you can not go so far by yourself," declared his father; "and there is no one to go with you, just now. nor can i spare the money at present for so expensive a trip." "oh, it won't cost anything," replied rob, with a smile. mr. joslyn looked upon him gravely and sighed. mrs. joslyn bent over her son with tears in her eyes and said: "this electrical nonsense has affected your mind, dear. you must promise me to keep away from that horrid workshop for a time." "i won't enter it for a week," he answered. "but you needn't worry about me. i haven't been experimenting with electricity all this time for nothing, i can tell you. as for my health, i'm as well and strong as any boy need be, and there's nothing wrong with my head, either. common folks always think great men are crazy, but edison and tesla and i don't pay any attention to that. we've got our discoveries to look after. now, as i said, i'm going for a little trip in the interests of science. i maybe back to-night, or i may be gone several days. anyhow, i'll be back in a week, and you mustn't worry about me a single minute." "how are you going?" inquired his father, in the gentle, soothing tone persons use in addressing maniacs. "through the air," said rob. his father groaned. "where's your balloon?" inquired sister mabel, sarcastically. "i don't need a balloon," returned the boy. "that's a clumsy way of traveling, at best. i shall go by electric propulsion." "good gracious!" cried mr. joslyn, and the mother murmured: "my poor boy! my poor boy!" "as you are my nearest relatives," continued rob, not noticing these exclamations, "i will allow you to come into the back yard and see me start. you will then understand something of my electrical powers." they followed him at once, although with unbelieving faces, and on the way rob clasped the little machine to his left wrist, so that his coat sleeve nearly hid it. when they reached the lawn at the back of the house rob kissed them all good-by, much to his sisters' amusement, and turned the indicator of the little instrument to the word "up." immediately he began to rise into the air. "don't worry about me!" he called down to them. "good-by!" mrs. joslyn, with a scream of terror, hid her face in her hands. "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father, tipping back his head to look after his departing son. [illustration: "he'll break his neck!" cried the astounded father] "come back! come back!" shouted the girls to the soaring adventurer. "i will--some day!" was the far-away answer. having risen high enough to pass over the tallest tree or steeple, rob put the indicator to the east of the compass-dial and at once began moving rapidly in that direction. the sensation was delightful. he rode as gently as a feather floats, without any exertion at all on his own part; yet he moved so swiftly that he easily distanced a railway train that was speeding in the same direction. "this is great!" reflected the youth. "here i am, traveling in fine style, without a penny to pay any one! and i've enough food to last me a month in my coat pocket. this electricity is the proper stuff, after all! and the demon's a trump, and no mistake. whee-ee! how small everything looks down below there. the people are bugs, and the houses are soap-boxes, and the trees are like clumps of grass. i seem to be passing over a town. guess i'll drop down a bit, and take in the sights." he pointed the indicator to the word "down," and at once began dropping through the air. he experienced the sensation one feels while descending in an elevator. when he reached a point just above the town he put the indicator to the zero mark and remained stationary, while he examined the place. but there was nothing to interest him, particularly; so after a brief survey he once more ascended and continued his journey toward the east. at about two o'clock in the afternoon he reached the city of boston, and alighting unobserved in a quiet street he walked around for several hours enjoying the sights and wondering what people would think of him if they but knew his remarkable powers. but as he looked just like any other boy no one noticed him in any way. it was nearly evening, and rob had wandered down by the wharves to look at the shipping, when his attention was called to an ugly looking bull dog, which ran toward him and began barking ferociously. "get out!" said the boy, carelessly, and made a kick at the brute. the dog uttered a fierce growl and sprang upon him with bared teeth and flashing red eyes. instantly rob drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the dog and pressed the button. almost at the same moment the dog gave a yelp, rolled over once or twice and lay still. "i guess that'll settle him," laughed the boy; but just then he heard an angry shout, and looking around saw a policeman running toward him. "kill me dog, will ye--eh?" yelled the officer; "well, i'll just run ye in for that same, an' ye'll spend the night in the lock-up!" and on he came, with drawn club in one hand and a big revolver in the other. "you'll have to catch me first," said rob, still laughing, and to the amazement of the policeman he began rising straight into the air. "come down here! come down, or i'll shoot!" shouted the fellow, flourishing his revolver. rob was afraid he would; so, to avoid accidents, he pointed the tube at him and pressed the button. the red-whiskered policeman keeled over quite gracefully and fell across the body of the dog, while rob continued to mount upward until he was out of sight of those in the streets. "that was a narrow escape," he thought, breathing more freely. "i hated to paralyze that policeman, but he might have sent a bullet after me. anyhow, he'll be all right again in an hour, so i needn't worry." it was beginning to grow dark, and he wondered what he should do next. had he possessed any money he would have descended to the town and taken a bed at a hotel, but he had left home without a single penny. fortunately the nights were warm at this season, so he determined to travel all night, that he might reach by morning some place he had never before visited. cuba had always interested him, and he judged it ought to lie in a southeasterly direction from boston. so he set the indicator to that point and began gliding swiftly toward the southeast. he now remembered that it was twenty-four hours since he had eaten the first electrical tablet. as he rode through the air he consumed another. all hunger at once left him, while he felt the same invigorating sensations as before. after a time the moon came out, and rob amused himself gazing at the countless stars in the sky and wondering if the demon was right when he said the world was the most important of all the planets. but presently he grew sleepy, and before he realized what was happening he had fallen into a sound and peaceful slumber, while the indicator still pointed to the southeast and he continued to move rapidly through the cool night air. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter five_ the cannibal island doubtless the adventures of the day had tired rob, for he slept throughout the night as comfortably as if he had been within his own room, lying upon his own bed. when, at last, he opened his eyes and gazed sleepily about him, he found himself over a great body of water, moving along with considerable speed. "it's the ocean, of course," he said to himself. "i haven't reached cuba yet." it is to be regretted that rob's knowledge of geography was so superficial; for, as he had intended to reach cuba, he should have taken a course almost southwest from boston, instead of southeast. the sad result of his ignorance you will presently learn, for during the entire day he continued to travel over a boundless waste of ocean, without the sight of even an island to cheer him. the sun shone so hot that he regretted he had not brought an umbrella. but he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, which protected him somewhat, and he finally discovered that by rising to a considerable distance above the ocean he avoided the reflection of the sun upon the water and also came within the current of good breeze. of course he dared not stop, for there was no place to land; so he calmly continued his journey. "it may be i've missed cuba," he thought; "but i can not change my course now, for if i did i might get lost, and never be able to find land again. if i keep on as i am i shall be sure to reach land of some sort, in time, and when i wish to return home i can set the indicator to the northwest and that will take me directly back to boston." this was good reasoning, but the rash youth had no idea he was speeding over the ocean, or that he was destined to arrive shortly at the barbarous island of brava, off the coast of africa. yet such was the case; just as the sun sank over the edge of the waves he saw, to his great relief, a large island directly in his path. he dropped to a lower position in the air, and when he judged himself to be over the center of the island he turned the indicator to zero and stopped short. the country was beautifully wooded, while pretty brooks sparkled through the rich green foliage of the trees. the island sloped upwards from the sea-coast in all directions, rising to a hill that was almost a mountain in the center. there were two open spaces, one on each side of the island, and rob saw that these spaces were occupied by queer-looking huts built from brushwood and branches of trees. this showed that the island was inhabited, but as rob had no idea what island it was he wisely determined not to meet the natives until he had discovered what they were like and whether they were disposed to be friendly. so he moved over the hill, the top of which proved to be a flat, grass-covered plateau about fifty feet in diameter. finding it could not be easily reached from below, on account of its steep sides, and contained neither men nor animals, he alighted on the hill-top and touched his feet to the earth for the first time in twenty-four hours. the ride through the air had not tired him in the least; in fact, he felt as fresh and vigorous as if he had been resting throughout the journey. as he walked upon the soft grass of the plateau he felt elated, and compared himself to the explorers of ancient days; for it was evident that civilization had not yet reached this delightful spot. there was scarcely any twilight in this tropical climate and it grew dark quickly. within a few minutes the entire island, save where he stood, became dim and indistinct. he ate his daily tablet, and after watching the red glow fade in the western sky and the gray shadows of night settle around him he stretched himself comfortably upon the grass and went to sleep. the events of the day must have deepened his slumber, for when he awoke the sun was shining almost directly over him, showing that the day was well advanced. he stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and decided he would like a drink of water. from where he stood he could see several little brooks following winding paths through the forest, so he settled upon one that seemed farthest from the brushwood villages, and turning his indicator in that direction soon floated through the air to a sheltered spot upon the bank. kneeling down, he enjoyed a long, refreshing drink of the clear water, but as he started to regain his feet a coil of rope was suddenly thrown about him, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him absolutely helpless. at the same time his ears were saluted with a wild chattering in an unknown tongue, and he found himself surrounded by a group of natives of hideous appearance. they were nearly naked, and bore spears and heavy clubs as their only weapons. their hair was long, curly, and thick as bushes, and through their noses and ears were stuck the teeth of sharks and curious metal ornaments. these creatures had stolen upon rob so quietly that he had not heard a sound, but now they jabbered loudly, as if much excited. finally one fat and somewhat aged native, who seemed to be a chief, came close to rob and said, in broken english: "how get here?" "i flew," said the boy, with a grin. the chief shook his head, saying: "no boat come. how white man come?" "through the air," replied rob, who was rather flattered at being called a "man." the chief looked into the air with a puzzled expression and shook his head again. "white man lie," he said calmly. then he held further conversation with his fellows, after which he turned to rob and announced: "me see white man many times. come in big boats. white men all bad. make kill with bang-sticks. we kill white man with club. then we eat white man. dead white man good. live white man bad!" this did not please rob at all. the idea of being eaten by savages had never occurred to him as a sequel to his adventures. so he said rather anxiously to the chief: "look here, old fellow; do you want to die?" "me no die. you die," was the reply. "you'll die, too, if you eat me," said rob. "i'm full of poison." "poison? don't know poison," returned the chief, much perplexed to understand him. "well, poison will make you sick--awful sick. then you'll die. i'm full of it; eat it every day for breakfast. it don't hurt white men, you see, but it kills black men quicker than the bang-stick." the chief listened to this statement carefully, but only understood it in part. after a moment's reflection he declared: "white man lie. lie all time. me eat plenty white man. never get sick; never die." then he added, with renewed cheerfulness: "me eat you, too!" before rob could think of a further protest, his captors caught up the end of the rope and led him away through the forest. he was tightly bound, and one strand of rope ran across the machine on his wrist and pressed it into his flesh until the pain was severe. but he resolved to be brave, whatever happened, so he stumbled along after the savages without a word. after a brief journey they came to a village, where rob was thrust into a brushwood hut and thrown upon the ground, still tightly bound. "we light fire," said the chief. "then kill little white man. then eat him." with this comforting promise he went away and left rob alone to think the matter over. "this is tough," reflected the boy, with a groan. "i never expected to feed cannibals. wish i was at home with mother and dad and the girls. wish i'd never seen the demon of electricity and his wonderful inventions. i was happy enough before i struck that awful master key. and now i'll be eaten--with salt and pepper, probably. wonder if there'll be any gravy. perhaps they'll boil me, with biscuits, as mother does chickens. oh-h-h-h-h! it's just awful!" in the midst of these depressing thoughts he became aware that something was hurting his back. after rolling over he found that he had been lying upon a sharp stone that stuck out of the earth. this gave him an idea. he rolled upon the stone again and began rubbing the rope that bound him against the sharp edge. outside he could hear the crackling of fagots and the roar of a newly-kindled fire, so he knew he had no time to spare. he wriggled and pushed his body right and left, right and left, sawing away at the rope, until the strain and exertion started the perspiration from every pore. at length the rope parted, and hastily uncoiling it from his body rob stood up and rubbed his benumbed muscles and tried to regain his lost breath. he had not freed himself a moment too soon, he found, for hearing a grunt of surprise behind him he turned around and saw a native standing in the door of the hut. rob laughed, for he was not a bit afraid of the blacks now. as the native made a rush toward him the boy drew the electric tube from his pocket, pointed it at the foe, and pressed the button. the fellow sank to the earth without even a groan, and lay still. then another black entered, followed by the fat chief. when they saw rob at liberty, and their comrade lying apparently dead, the chief cried out in surprise, using some expressive words in his own language. "if it's just the same to you, old chap," said rob, coolly, "i won't be eaten to-day. you can make a pie of that fellow on the ground." "no! we eat you," cried the chief, angrily. "you cut rope, but no get away; no boat!" "i don't need a boat, thank you," said the boy; and then, as the other native sprang forward, he pointed the tube and laid him out beside his first victim. at this act the chief stood an instant in amazed uncertainty. then he turned and rushed from the hut. laughing with amusement at the waddling, fat figure, rob followed the chief and found himself standing almost in the center of the native village. a big fire was blazing merrily and the blacks were busy making preparations for a grand feast. rob was quickly surrounded by a crowd of the villagers, who chattered fiercely and made threatening motions in his direction; but as the chief cried out to them a warning in the native tongue they kept a respectful distance and contented themselves with brandishing their spears and clubs. "if any of your fellows come nearer," rob said to the fat chief, "i'll knock 'em over." "what you make do?" asked the chief, nervously. "watch sharp, and you'll see," answered rob. then he made a mocking bow to the circle and continued: "i'm pleased to have met you fellows, and proud to think you like me well enough to want to eat me; but i'm in a bit of a hurry to-day, so i can't stop to be digested." after which, as the crowd broke into a hum of surprise, he added: "good-day, black folks!" and quickly turned the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up." slowly he rose into the air, until his heels were just above the gaping blacks; but there he stopped short. with a thrill of fear he glanced at the indicator. it was pointed properly, and he knew at once that something was wrong with the delicate mechanism that controlled it. probably the pressure of the rope across its face, when he was bound, had put it out of order. there he was, seven feet in the air, but without the power to rise an inch farther. this short flight, however, had greatly astonished the blacks, who, seeing his body suspended in mid-air, immediately hailed him as a god, and prostrated themselves upon the ground before him. the fat chief had seen something of white men in his youth, and had learned to mistrust them. so, while he remained as prostrate as the rest, he peeped at rob with one of his little black eyes and saw that the boy was ill at ease, and seemed both annoyed and frightened. so he muttered some orders to the man next him, who wriggled along the ground until he had reached a position behind rob, when he rose and pricked the suspended "god" with the point of his spear. "ouch!" yelled the boy; "stop that!" he twisted his head around, and seeing the black again make a movement with the spear, rob turned his electric tube upon him and keeled him over like a ten-pin. the natives, who had looked up at his cry of pain, again prostrated themselves, kicking their toes against the ground in a terrified tattoo at this new evidence of the god's powers. the situation was growing somewhat strained by this time, and rob did not know what the savages would decide to do next; so he thought it best to move away from them, since he was unable to rise to a greater height. he turned the indicator towards the south, where a level space appeared between the trees; but instead of taking that direction he moved towards the northeast, a proof that his machine had now become absolutely unreliable. moreover, he was slowly approaching the fire, which, although it had ceased blazing, was a mass of glowing red embers. in his excitement he turned the indicator this way and that, trying to change the direction of his flight, but the only result of his endeavor was to carry him directly over the fire, where he came to a full stop. "murder! help! fire and blazes!" he cried, as he felt the glow of the coals beneath him. "i'll be roasted, after all! here; help, fatty, help!" the fat chief sprang to his feet and came to the rescue. he reached up, caught rob by the heels, and pulled him down to the ground, away from the fire. but the next moment, as he clung to the boy's feet, they both soared into the air again, and, although now far enough from the fire to escape its heat, the savage, finding himself lifted from the earth, uttered a scream of horror and let go of rob, to fall head over heels upon the ground. the other blacks had by this time regained their feet, and now they crowded around their chief and set him upright again. rob continued to float in the air, just above their heads, and now abandoned all thoughts of escaping by means of his wrecked traveling machine. but he resolved to regain a foothold upon the earth and take his chances of escape by running rather than flying. so he turned the indicator to the word "down," and very slowly it obeyed, allowing him, to his great relief, to sink gently to the ground. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter six_ the buccaneers once more the blacks formed a circle around our adventurer, who coolly drew his tube and said to the chief: "tell your people i'm going to walk away through those trees, and if any one dares to interfere with me i'll paralyze him." the chief understood enough english to catch his meaning, and repeated the message to his men. having seen the terrible effect of the electric tube they wisely fell back and allowed the boy to pass. he marched through their lines with a fine air of dignity, although he was fearful lest some of the blacks should stick a spear into him or bump his head with a war-club. but they were awed by the wonders they had seen and were still inclined to believe him a god, so he was not molested. when he found himself outside the village he made for the high plateau in the center of the island, where he could be safe from the cannibals while he collected his thoughts. but when he reached the place he found the sides so steep he could not climb them, so he adjusted the indicator to the word "up" and found it had still enough power to support his body while he clambered up the rocks to the level, grass-covered space at the top. then, reclining upon his back, he gave himself up to thoughts of how he might escape from his unpleasant predicament. "here i am, on a cannibal island, hundreds of miles from civilization, with no way to get back," he reflected. "the family will look for me every day, and finally decide i've broken my neck. the demon will call upon me when the week is up and won't find me at home; so i'll miss the next three gifts. i don't mind that so much, for they might bring me into worse scrapes than this. but how am i to get away from this beastly island? i'll be eaten, after all, if i don't look out!" these and similar thoughts occupied him for some time, yet in spite of much planning and thinking he could find no practical means of escape. at the end of an hour he looked over the edge of the plateau and found it surrounded by a ring of the black cannibals, who had calmly seated themselves to watch his movements. "perhaps they intend to starve me into surrender," he thought; "but they won't succeed so long as my tablets hold out. and if, in time, they should starve me, i'll be too thin and tough to make good eating; so i'll get the best of them, anyhow." then he again lay down and began to examine his electrical traveling machine. he did not dare take it apart, fearing he might not be able to get it together again, for he knew nothing at all about its construction. but he discovered two little dents on the edge, one on each side, which had evidently been caused by the pressure of the rope. "if i could get those dents out," he thought, "the machine might work." he first tried to pry out the edges with his pocket knife, but the attempt resulted in failure. then, as the sides seemed a little bulged outward by the dents, he placed the machine between two flat stones and pressed them together until the little instrument was nearly round again. the dents remained, to be sure, but he hoped he had removed the pressure upon the works. there was just one way to discover how well he had succeeded, so he fastened the machine to his wrist and turned the indicator to the word "up." slowly he ascended, this time to a height of nearly twenty feet. then his progress became slower and finally ceased altogether. "that's a little better," he thought. "now let's see if it will go sidewise." he put the indicator to "north-west,"--the direction of home--and very slowly the machine obeyed and carried him away from the plateau and across the island. the natives saw him go, and springing to their feet began uttering excited shouts and throwing their spears at him. but he was already so high and so far away that they failed to reach him, and the boy continued his journey unharmed. once the branches of a tall tree caught him and nearly tipped him over; but he managed to escape others by drawing up his feet. at last he was free of the island and traveling over the ocean again. he was not at all sorry to bid good-by to the cannibal island, but he was worried about the machine, which clearly was not in good working order. the vast ocean was beneath him, and he moved no faster than an ordinary walk. "at this rate i'll get home some time next year," he grumbled. "however, i suppose i ought to be glad the machine works at all." and he really was glad. all the afternoon and all the long summer night he moved slowly over the water. it was annoying to go at "a reg'lar jog-trot," as rob called it, after his former swift flight; but there was no help for it. just as dawn was breaking he saw in the distance a small vessel, sailing in the direction he was following, yet scarcely moving for lack of wind. he soon caught up with it, but saw no one on deck, and the craft had a dingy and uncared-for appearance that was not reassuring. but after hovering over it for some time rob decided to board the ship and rest for a while. he alighted near the bow, where the deck was highest, and was about to explore the place when a man came out of the low cabin and espied him. this person had a most villainous countenance, and was dark-skinned, black-bearded and dressed in an outlandish, piratical costume. on seeing the boy he gave a loud shout and was immediately joined by four companions, each as disagreeable in appearance as the first. rob knew there would be trouble the moment he looked at this evil crew, and when they drew their daggers and pistols and began fiercely shouting in an unknown tongue, the boy sighed and took the electric tube from his coat pocket. the buccaneers did not notice the movement, but rushed upon him so quickly that he had to press the button at a lively rate. the tube made no noise at all, so it was a strange and remarkable sight to see the pirates suddenly drop to the deck and lie motionless. indeed, one was so nearly upon him when the electric current struck him that his head, in falling, bumped into rob's stomach and sent him reeling against the side of the vessel. [illustration: it was a strange sight to see the pirates drop to the deck and lie motionless] he quickly recovered himself, and seeing his enemies were rendered harmless, the boy entered the cabin and examined it curiously. it was dirty and ill-smelling enough, but the corners and spare berths were heaped with merchandise of all kinds which had been taken from those so unlucky as to have met these cruel and desperate men. after a short inspection of the place he returned to the deck and again seated himself in the bow. the crippled condition of his traveling machine was now his chief trouble, and although a good breeze had sprung up to fill the sails and the little bark was making fair headway, rob knew he could never expect to reach home unless he could discover a better mode of conveyance than this. he unstrapped the machine from his wrist to examine it better, and while holding it carelessly in his hand it slipped and fell with a bang to the deck, striking upon its round edge and rolling quickly past the cabin and out of sight. with a cry of alarm he ran after it, and after much search found it lying against the bulwark near the edge of a scupper hole, where the least jar of the ship would have sent it to the bottom of the ocean. rob hastily seized his treasure, and upon examining it found the fall had bulged the rim so that the old dents scarcely showed at all. but its original shape was more distorted than ever, and rob feared he had utterly ruined its delicate mechanism. should this prove to be true, he might now consider himself a prisoner of this piratical band, the members of which, although temporarily disabled, would soon regain consciousness. he sat in the bow, sadly thinking of his misfortunes, until he noticed that one of the men began to stir. the effect of the electric shock conveyed by the tube was beginning to wear away, and now the buccaneer sat up, rubbed his head in a bewildered fashion and looked around him. when he saw rob he gave a shout of rage and drew his knife, but one motion of the electric tube made him cringe and slip away to the cabin, where he remained out of danger. and now the other four sat up, groaning and muttering in their outlandish speech; but they had no notion of facing rob's tube a second time, so one by one they joined their leader in the cabin, leaving the boy undisturbed. by this time the ship had begun to pitch and toss in an uncomfortable fashion, and rob noticed that the breeze had increased to a gale. there being no one to look after the sails, the vessel was in grave danger of capsizing or breaking her masts. the waves were now running high, too, and rob began to be worried. presently the captain of the pirates stuck his head out of the cabin door, jabbered some unintelligible words and pointed to the sails. the boy nodded, for he understood they wanted to attend to the rigging. so the crew trooped forth, rather fearfully, and began to reef the sails and put the ship into condition to weather the storm. rob paid no further attention to them. he looked at his traveling machine rather doubtfully and wondered if he dared risk its power to carry him through the air. whether he remained in the ship or trusted to the machine, he stood a good chance of dropping into the sea at any moment. so, while he hesitated, he attached the machine to his wrist and leaned over the bulwarks to watch the progress of the storm. he might stay in the ship until it foundered, he thought, and then take his chances with the machine. he decided to wait until a climax arrived. the climax came the next moment, for while he leaned over the bulwarks the buccaneers stole up behind him and suddenly seized him in their grasp. while two of them held his arms the others searched his pockets, taking from him the electric tube and the silver box containing his tablets. these they carried to the cabin and threw upon the heap of other valuables they had stolen. they did not notice his traveling machine, however, but seeing him now unarmed they began jeering and laughing at him, while the brutal captain relieved his anger by giving the prisoner several malicious kicks. rob bore his misfortune meekly, although he was almost ready to cry with grief and disappointment. but when one of the pirates, to inflict further punishment on the boy, came towards him with a heavy strap, he resolved not to await the blow. turning the indicator to the word "up" he found, to his joy and relief, that it would yet obey the influence of the power of repulsion. seeing him rise into the air the fellow made a grab for his foot and held it firmly, while his companions ran to help him. weight seemed to make no difference in the machine; it lifted the pirate as well as rob; it lifted another who clung to the first man's leg, and another who clung to him. the other two also caught hold, hoping their united strength would pull him down, and the next minute rob was soaring through the air with the entire string of five buccaneers dangling from his left leg. at first the villains were too astounded to speak, but as they realized that they were being carried through the air and away from their ship they broke into loud shouts of dismay, and finally the one who grasped rob's leg lost his hold and the five plunged downward and splashed into the sea. finding the machine disposed to work accurately, rob left the buccaneers to swim to the ship in the best way they could, while he dropped down to the deck again and recovered from the cabin his box of tablets and the electric tube. the fellows were just scrambling on board when he again escaped, shooting into the air with considerable speed. indeed, the instrument now worked better than at any time since he had reached the cannibal island, and the boy was greatly delighted. the wind at first sent him spinning away to the south, but he continued to rise until he was above the air currents, and the storm raged far beneath him. then he set the indicator to the northwest and breathlessly waited to see if it would obey. hurrah! away he sped at a fair rate of speed, while all his anxiety changed to a feeling of sweet contentment. his success had greatly surprised him, but he concluded that the jar caused by dropping the instrument had relieved the pressure upon the works, and so helped rather than harmed the free action of the electric currents. while he moved through the air with an easy, gliding motion he watched with much interest the storm raging below. above his head the sun was peacefully shining and the contrast was strange and impressive. after an hour or so the storm abated, or else he passed away from it, for the deep blue of the ocean again greeted his eyes. he dropped downward until he was about a hundred feet above the water, when he continued his northwesterly course. but now he regretted having interfered for a moment with the action of the machine, for his progress, instead of being swift as a bird's flight, became slow and jerky, nor was he sure that the damaged machine might not break down altogether at any moment. yet so far his progress was in the right direction, and he resolved to experiment no further with the instrument, but to let it go as it would, so long as it supported him above the water. however irregular the motion might be, it was sure, if continued, to bring him to land in time, and that was all he cared about just then. when night fell his slumber was broken and uneasy, for he wakened more than once with a start of fear that the machine had broken and he was falling into the sea. sometimes he was carried along at a swift pace, and again the machine scarcely worked at all; so his anxiety was excusable. the following day was one of continued uneasiness for the boy, who began to be harrassed by doubts as to whether, after all, he was moving in the right direction. the machine had failed at one time in this respect and it might again. he had lost all confidence in its accuracy. in spite of these perplexities rob passed the second night of his uneven flight in profound slumber, being exhausted by the strain and excitement he had undergone. when he awoke at daybreak, he saw, to his profound delight, that he was approaching land. the rising sun found him passing over a big city, which he knew to be boston. he did not stop. the machine was so little to be depended upon that he dared make no halt. but he was obliged to alter the direction from northwest to west, and the result of this slight change was so great a reduction in speed that it was mid-day before he saw beneath him the familiar village in which he lived. carefully marking the location of his father's house, he came to a stop directly over it, and a few moments later he managed to land upon the exact spot in the back yard whence he had taken his first successful flight. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter seven_ the demon becomes angry when rob had been hugged and kissed by his mother and sisters, and even mr. joslyn had embraced him warmly, he gave them a brief account of his adventures. the story was received with many doubtful looks and much grave shaking of heads, as was quite natural under the circumstances. "i hope, my dear son," said his father, "that you have now passed through enough dangers to last you a lifetime, so that hereafter you will be contented to remain at home." "oh, robert!" cried his mother, with tears in her loving eyes, "you don't know how we've all worried about you for the past week!" "a week?" asked rob, with surprise. "yes; it's a week to-morrow morning since you flew into the air and disappeared." "then," said the boy, thoughtfully, "i've reached home just in time." "in time for what?" she asked. but he did not answer that question. he was thinking of the demon, and that on the afternoon of this very day he might expect the wise and splendid genius to visit him a second time. at luncheon, although he did not feel hungry, he joined the family at table and pleased his mother by eating as heartily as of old. he was surprised to find how good the food tasted, and to realize what a pleasure it is to gratify one's sense of taste. the tablets were all right for a journey, he thought, but if he always ate them he would be sure to miss a great deal of enjoyment, since there was no taste to them at all. at four o'clock he went to his workshop and unlocked the door. everything was exactly as he had left it, and he looked at his simple electrical devices with some amusement. they seemed tame beside the wonders now in his possession; yet he recollected that his numerous wires had enabled him to strike the master key, and therefore should not be despised. before long he noticed a quickening in the air, as if it were suddenly surcharged with electric fluid, and the next instant, in a dazzling flash of light, appeared the demon. "i am here!" he announced. "so am i," answered rob. "but at one time i really thought i should never see you again. i've been--" "spare me your history," said the demon, coldly. "i am aware of your adventures." "oh, you are!" said rob, amazed. "then you know--" "i know all about your foolish experiences," interrupted the demon, "for i have been with you constantly, although i remained invisible." "then you know what a jolly time i've had," returned the boy. "but why do you call them foolish experiences?" "because they were, abominably foolish!" retorted the demon, bitterly. "i entrusted to you gifts of rare scientific interest--electrical devices of such utility that their general adoption by mankind would create a new era in earth life. i hoped your use of these devices would convey such hints to electrical engineers that they would quickly comprehend their mechanism and be able to reproduce them in sufficient quantities to supply the world. and how do you treat these marvelous gifts? why, you carry them to a cannibal island, where even your crude civilization has not yet penetrated!" "i wanted to astonish the natives," said rob, grinning. the demon uttered an exclamation of anger, and stamped his foot so fiercely that thousands of electric sparks filled the air, to disappear quickly with a hissing, crinkling sound. "you might have astonished those ignorant natives as easily by showing them an ordinary electric light," he cried, mockingly. "the power of your gifts would have startled the most advanced electricians of the world. why did you waste them upon barbarians?" "really," faltered rob, who was frightened and awed by the demon's vehement anger, "i never intended to visit a cannibal island. i meant to go to cuba." "cuba! is that a center of advanced scientific thought? why did you not take your marvels to new york or chicago; or, if you wished to cross the ocean, to paris or vienna?" "i never thought of those places," acknowledged rob, meekly. "then you were foolish, as i said," declared the demon, in a calmer tone. "can you not realize that it is better to be considered great by the intelligent thinkers of the earth, than to be taken for a god by stupid cannibals?" "oh, yes, of course," said rob. "i wish now that i had gone to europe. but you're not the only one who has a kick coming," he continued. "your flimsy traveling machine was nearly the death of me." "ah, it is true," acknowledged the demon, frankly. "the case was made of too light material. when the rim was bent it pressed against the works and impeded the proper action of the currents. had you gone to a civilized country such an accident could not have happened; but to avoid possible trouble in the future i have prepared a new instrument, having a stronger case, which i will exchange for the one you now have." "that's very kind of you," said rob, eagerly handing his battered machine to the demon and receiving the new one in return. "are you sure this will work?" "it is impossible for you to injure it," answered the other. "and how about the next three gifts?" inquired the boy, anxiously. "before i grant them," replied the demon, "you must give me a promise to keep away from uncivilized places and to exhibit your acquirements only among people of intelligence." "all right," agreed the boy; "i'm not anxious to visit that island again, or any other uncivilized country." "then i will add to your possessions three gifts, each more precious and important than the three you have already received." at this announcement rob began to quiver with excitement, and sat staring eagerly at the demon, while the latter increased in stature and sparkled and glowed more brilliantly than ever. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eight_ rob acquires new powers "i have seen the folly of sending you into the world with an offensive instrument, yet with no method of defense," resumed the demon, presently. "you have knocked over a good many people with that tube during the past week." "i know," said rob; "but i couldn't help it. it was the only way i had to protect myself." "therefore my next gift shall be this garment of protection. you must wear it underneath your clothing. it has power to accumulate and exercise electrical repellent force. perhaps you do not know what that means, so i will explain more fully. when any missile, such as a bullet, sword or lance, approaches your person, its rush through the air will arouse the repellent force of which i speak, and this force, being more powerful than the projective force, will arrest the flight of the missile and throw it back again. therefore nothing can touch your person that comes with any degree of force or swiftness, and you will be safe from all ordinary weapons. when wearing this garment you will find it unnecessary to use the electric tube except on rare occasions. never allow revenge or animosity to influence your conduct. men may threaten, but they can not injure you, so you must remember that they do not possess your mighty advantages, and that, because of your strength, you should bear with them patiently." rob examined the garment with much curiosity. it glittered like silver, yet was soft and pliable as lamb's wool. evidently the demon had prepared it especially for his use, for it was just rob's size. "now," continued the demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even i am awed when i contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand even its possibilities." the being paused, and drew from an inner pocket something resembling a flat metal box. in size it was about four inches by six, and nearly an inch in thickness. "what is it?" asked rob, wonderingly. "it is an automatic record of events," answered the demon. "i don't understand," said rob, with hesitation. "i will explain to you its use," returned the demon, "although the electrical forces which operate it and the vibratory currents which are the true records must remain unknown to you until your brain has mastered the higher knowledge of electricity. at present the practical side of this invention will be more interesting to you than a review of its scientific construction. "suppose you wish to know the principal events that are occurring in germany at the present moment. you first turn this little wheel at the side until the word 'germany' appears in the slot at the small end. then open the top cover, which is hinged, and those passing events in which you are interested will appear before your eyes." the demon, as he spoke, opened the cover, and, looking within, the boy saw, as in a mirror, a moving picture before him. a regiment of soldiers was marching through the streets of berlin, and at its head rode a body of horsemen, in the midst of which was the emperor himself. the people who thronged the sidewalks cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs with enthusiasm, while a band of musicians played a german air, which rob could distinctly hear. while he gazed, spell-bound, the scene changed, and he looked upon a great warship entering a harbor with flying pennants. the rails were lined with officers and men straining their eyes for the first sight of their beloved "_vaterland_" after a long foreign cruise, and a ringing cheer, as from a thousand throats, came faintly to rob's ear. again the scene changed, and within a dingy, underground room, hemmed in by walls of stone, and dimly lighted by a flickering lamp, a body of wild-eyed, desperate men were plighting an oath to murder the emperor and overthrow his government. "anarchists?" asked rob, trembling with excitement. "anarchists!" answered the demon, with a faint sneer, and he shut the cover of the record with a sudden snap. "it's wonderful!" cried the boy, with a sigh that was followed by a slight shiver. "the record is, indeed, proof within itself of the marvelous possibilities of electricity. men are now obliged to depend upon newspapers for information; but these can only relate events long after they have occurred. and newspaper statements are often unreliable and sometimes wholly false, while many events of real importance are never printed in their columns. you may guess what an improvement is this automatic record of events, which is as reliable as truth itself. nothing can be altered or falsified, for the vibratory currents convey the actual events to your vision, even as they happen." "but suppose," said rob, "that something important should happen while i'm asleep, or not looking at the box?" "i have called this a record," replied the demon, "and such it really is, although i have shown you only such events as are in process of being recorded. by pressing this spring you may open the opposite cover of the box, where all events of importance that have occurred throughout the world during the previous twenty-four hours will appear before you in succession. you may thus study them at your leisure. the various scenes constitute a register of the world's history, and may be recalled to view as often as you desire." "it's--it's like knowing everything," murmured rob, deeply impressed for perhaps the first time in his life. "it _is_ knowing everything," returned the demon; "and this mighty gift i have decided to entrust to your care. be very careful as to whom you permit to gaze upon these pictures of passing events, for knowledge may often cause great misery to the human race." "i'll be careful," promised the boy, as he took the box reverently within his own hands. "the third and last gift of the present series," resumed the demon, "is one no less curious than the record of events, although it has an entirely different value. it is a character marker." "what's that?" inquired rob. "i will explain. perhaps you know that your fellow-creatures are more or less hypocritical. that is, they try to appear good when they are not, and wise when in reality they are foolish. they tell you they are friendly when they positively hate you, and try to make you believe they are kind when their natures are cruel. this hypocrisy seems to be a human failing. one of your writers has said, with truth, that among civilized people things are seldom what they seem." "i've heard that," remarked rob. "on the other hand," continued the demon, "some people with fierce countenances are kindly by nature, and many who appear to be evil are in reality honorable and trustworthy. therefore, that you may judge all your fellow-creatures truly, and know upon whom to depend, i give you the character marker. it consists of this pair of spectacles. while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. the good will bear the letter 'g', the evil the letter 'e'. the wise will be marked with a 'w' and the foolish with an 'f'. the kind will show a 'k' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'c'. thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter." "and are these, also, electrical in their construction?" asked the boy, as he took the spectacles. "certainly. goodness, wisdom and kindness are natural forces, creating character. for this reason men are not always to blame for bad character, as they acquire it unconsciously. all character sends out certain electrical vibrations, which these spectacles concentrate in their lenses and exhibit to the gaze of their wearer, as i have explained." "it's a fine idea," said the boy; "who discovered it?" "it is a fact that has always existed, but is now utilized for the first time." "oh!" said rob. "with these gifts, and the ones you acquired a week ago, you are now equipped to astound the world and awaken mankind to a realization of the wonders that may be accomplished by natural forces. see that you employ these powers wisely, in the interests of science, and do not forget your promise to exhibit your electrical marvels only to those who are most capable of comprehending them." "i'll remember," said rob. "then adieu until a week from to-day, when i will meet you here at this hour and bestow upon you the last three gifts which you are entitled to receive. good-by!" "good-by!" repeated rob, and in a gorgeous flash of color the demon disappeared, leaving the boy alone in the room with his new and wonderful possessions. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter nine_ the second journey by this time you will have gained a fair idea of rob's character. he is, in truth, a typical american boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. the mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. aside from the extraordinary accident which had forced the electrical demon into his life, rob may be considered one of those youngsters who might possibly develop into a brilliant manhood or enter upon an ordinary, humdrum existence, as fate should determine. just at present he had no thought beyond the passing hour, nor would he bother himself by attempting to look ahead or plan for the future. yet the importance of his electrical possessions and the stern injunction of the demon to use them wisely had rendered the boy more thoughtful than at any previous time during his brief life, and he became so preoccupied at the dinner table that his father and mother cast many anxious looks in his direction. of course rob was anxious to test his newly-acquired powers, and decided to lose no time in starting upon another journey. but he said nothing to any of the family about it, fearing to meet with opposition. he passed the evening in the sitting-room, in company with his father and mother and sisters, and even controlled his impatience to the extent of playing a game of carom with nell; but he grew so nervous and impatient at last that his sister gave up the game in disgust and left him to his own amusement. at one time he thought of putting on the electric spectacles and seeing what the real character of each member of his family might be; but a sudden fear took possession of him that he might regret the act forever afterward. they were his nearest and dearest friends on earth, and in his boyish heart he loved them all and believed in their goodness and sincerity. the possibility of finding a bad character mark on any of their familiar faces made him shudder, and he determined then and there never to use the spectacles to view the face of a friend or relative. had any one, at that moment, been gazing at rob through the lenses of the wonderful character marker, i am sure a big "w" would have been found upon the boy's forehead. when the family circle broke up, and all retired for the night, rob kissed his parents and sisters with real affection before going to his own room. but, on reaching his cozy little chamber, instead of preparing for bed rob clothed himself in the garment of repulsion. then he covered the glittering garment with his best summer suit of clothes, which effectually concealed it. he now looked around to see what else he should take, and thought of an umbrella, a rain-coat, a book or two to read during the journey, and several things besides; but he ended by leaving them all behind. "i can't be loaded down with so much truck," he decided; "and i'm going into civilized countries, this time, where i can get anything i need." however, to prevent a recurrence of the mistake he had previously made, he tore a map of the world and a map of europe from his geography, and, folding them up, placed them in his pocket. he also took a small compass that had once been a watch-charm, and, finally, the contents of a small iron bank that opened with a combination lock. this represented all his savings, amounting to two dollars and seventeen cents in dimes, nickles and pennies. "it isn't a fortune," he thought, as he counted it up, "but i didn't need any money the last trip, so perhaps i'll get along somehow. i don't like to tackle dad for more, for he might ask questions and try to keep me at home." by the time he had finished his preparations and stowed all his electrical belongings in his various pockets, it was nearly midnight and the house was quiet. so rob stole down stairs in his stocking feet and noiselessly opened the back door. it was a beautiful july night and, in addition to the light of the full moon, the sky was filled with the radiance of countless thousands of brilliant stars. after rob had put on his shoes he unfolded the map, which was plainly visible by the starlight, and marked the direction he must take to cross the atlantic and reach london, his first stopping place. then he consulted his compass, put the indicator of his traveling machine to the word "up," and shot swiftly into the air. when he had reached a sufficient height he placed the indicator to a point north of east and, with a steady and remarkably swift flight, began his journey. "here goes," he remarked, with a sense of exaltation, "for another week of adventure! i wonder what'll happen between now and next saturday." [illustration] [illustration] _chapter ten_ how rob served a mighty king the new traveling machine was a distinct improvement over the old one, for it carried rob with wonderful speed across the broad atlantic. he fell asleep soon after starting, and only wakened when the sun was high in the heavens. but he found himself whirling along at a good rate, with the greenish shimmer of the peaceful ocean waves spread beneath him far beyond his range of vision. being in the track of the ocean steamers it was not long before he found himself overtaking a magnificent vessel whose decks were crowded with passengers. he dropped down some distance, to enable him to see these people more plainly, and while he hovered near he could hear the excited exclamations of the passengers, who focused dozens of marine glasses upon his floating form. this inspection somewhat embarrassed him, and having no mind to be stared at he put on additional speed and soon left the steamer far behind him. about noon the sky clouded over, and rob feared a rainstorm was approaching. so he rose to a point considerably beyond the clouds, where the air was thin but remarkably pleasant to inhale and the rays of the sun were not so hot as when reflected by the surface of the water. he could see the dark clouds rolling beneath him like volumes of smoke from a factory chimney, and knew the earth was catching a severe shower of rain; yet he congratulated himself on his foresight in not being burdened with umbrella or rain-coat, since his elevated position rendered him secure from rain-clouds. but, having cut himself off from the earth, there remained nothing to see except the clear sky overhead and the tumbling clouds beneath; so he took from his pocket the automatic record of events, and watched with breathless interest the incidents occurring in different parts of the world. a big battle was being fought in the philippines, and so fiercely was it contested that rob watched its progress for hours, with rapt attention. finally a brave rally by the americans sent their foes to the cover of the woods, where they scattered in every direction, only to form again in a deep valley hidden by high hills. "if only i was there," thought rob, "i could show that captain where to find the rebels and capture them. but i guess the philippines are rather out of my way, so our soldiers will never know how near they are to a complete victory." the boy also found considerable amusement in watching the course of an insurrection in venezuela, where opposing armies of well-armed men preferred to bluster and threaten rather than come to blows. during the evening he found that an "important event" was madame bernhardt's production of a new play, and rob followed it from beginning to end with great enjoyment, although he felt a bit guilty at not having purchased a ticket. "but it's a crowded house, anyway," he reflected, "and i'm not taking up a reserved seat or keeping any one else from seeing the show. so where's the harm? yet it seems to me if these records get to be common, as the demon wishes, people will all stay at home and see the shows, and the poor actors 'll starve to death." the thought made him uneasy, and he began, for the first time, to entertain a doubt of the demon's wisdom in forcing such devices upon humanity. the clouds had now passed away and the moon sent her rays to turn the edges of the waves into glistening showers of jewels. rob closed the lid of the wonderful record of events and soon fell into a deep sleep that held him unconscious for many hours. when he awoke he gave a start of surprise, for beneath him was land. how long it was since he had left the ocean behind him he could not guess, but his first thought was to set the indicator of the traveling machine to zero and to hover over the country until he could determine where he was. this was no easy matter. he saw green fields, lakes, groves and villages; but these might exist in any country. being still at a great elevation he descended gradually until he was about twenty feet from the surface of the earth, where he paused near the edge of a small village. at once a crowd of excited people assembled, shouting to one another and pointing towards him in wonder. in order to be prepared for emergencies rob had taken the electric tube from his pocket, and now, as he examined the dress and features of the people below, the tube suddenly slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground, where one end stuck slantingly into the soft earth. a man rushed eagerly towards it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell upon his back, unconscious. others who ran to assist their fallen comrade quickly tumbled into a heap beside him. [illustration: a man rushed toward it, but the next moment he threw up his hands and fell unconscious] it was evident to rob that the tube had fallen in such a position that the button was being pressed continually and a current of electric fluid issued to shock whoever came near. not wishing to injure these people he dropped to the ground and drew the tube from the earth, thus releasing the pressure upon the button. but the villagers had now decided that the boy was their enemy, and no sooner had he touched the ground than a shower of stones and sticks rained about him. not one reached his body, however, for the garment of repulsion stopped their flight and returned them to rattle with more or less force against those who had thrown them--"like regular boomerangs," thought rob. to receive their own blows in this fashion seemed so like magic to the simple folk that with roars of fear and pain they ran away in all directions. "it's no use stopping here," remarked rob, regretfully, "for i've spoiled my welcome by this accident. i think these people are irish, by their looks and speech, so i must be somewhere in the emerald isle." he consulted his map and decided upon the general direction he should take to reach england, after which he again rose into the air and before long was passing over the channel towards the shores of england. either his map or compass or his calculations proved wrong, for it was high noon before, having changed his direction a half dozen times, he came to the great city of london. he saw at a glance that it would never do to drop into the crowded streets, unless he wanted to become an object of public curiosity; so he looked around for a suitable place to alight. near by was a monstrous church that sent a sharp steeple far into the air. rob examined this spire and saw a narrow opening in the masonry that led to a small room where a chime of bells hung. he crept through the opening and, finding a ladder that connected the belfry with a platform below, began to descend. there were three ladders, and then a winding flight of narrow, rickety stairs to be passed before rob finally reached a small room in the body of the church. this room proved to have two doors, one connecting with the auditorium and the other letting into a side street. both were locked, but rob pointed the electric tube at the outside door and broke the lock in an instant. then he walked into the street as composedly as if he had lived all his life in london. there were plenty of sights to see, you may be sure, and rob walked around until he was so tired that he was glad to rest upon one of the benches in a beautiful park. here, half hidden by the trees, he amused himself by looking at the record of events. "london's a great town, and no mistake," he said to himself; "but let's see what the british are doing in south africa to-day." he turned the cylinder to "south africa," and, opening the lid, at once became interested. an english column, commanded by a brave but stubborn officer, was surrounded by the boer forces and fighting desperately to avoid capture or annihilation. "this would be interesting to king edward," thought the boy. "guess i'll hunt him up and tell him about it." a few steps away stood a policeman. rob approached him and asked: "where's the king to-day?" the officer looked at him with mingled surprise and suspicion. "'is majesty is sojournin' at marlb'ro 'ouse, just now," was the reply. "per'aps you wants to make 'im a wissit," he continued, with lofty sarcasm. "that's it, exactly," said rob. "i'm an american, and thought while i was in london i'd drop in on his royal highness and say 'hello' to him." the officer chuckled, as if much amused. "hamericans is bloomin' green," he remarked, "so youse can stand for hamerican, right enough. no other wissitors is such blarsted fools. but yon's the palace, an' i s'pose 'is majesty'll give ye a 'ot reception." "thanks; i'll look him up," said the boy, and left the officer convulsed with laughter. he soon knew why. the palace was surrounded by a cordon of the king's own life guards, who admitted no one save those who presented proper credentials. "there's only one thing to do;" thought rob, "and that's to walk straight in, as i haven't any friends to give me a regular introduction." so he boldly advanced to the gate, where he found himself stopped by crossed carbines and a cry of "halt!" "excuse me," said rob; "i'm in a hurry." he pushed the carbines aside and marched on. the soldiers made thrusts at him with their weapons, and an officer jabbed at his breast with a glittering sword, but the garment of repulsion protected him from these dangers as well as from a hail of bullets that followed his advancing figure. he reached the entrance of the palace only to face another group of guardsmen and a second order to halt, and as these soldiers were over six feet tall and stood shoulder to shoulder rob saw that he could not hope to pass them without using his electric tube. [illustration: rob reached the entrance of the palace, only to face another group of guardsmen] "stand aside, you fellows!" he ordered. there was no response. he extended the tube and, as he pressed the button, described a semi-circle with the instrument. immediately the tall guardsmen toppled over like so many tenpins, and rob stepped across their bodies and penetrated to the reception room, where a brilliant assemblage awaited, in hushed and anxious groups, for opportunity to obtain audience with the king. "i hope his majesty isn't busy," said rob to a solemn-visaged official who confronted him. "i want to have a little talk with him." "i--i--ah--beg pardon!" exclaimed the astounded master of ceremonies. "what name, please?" "oh, never mind my name," replied rob, and pushing the gentleman aside he entered the audience chamber of the great king. king edward was engaged in earnest consultation with one of his ministers, and after a look of surprise in rob's direction and a grave bow he bestowed no further attention upon the intruder. but rob was not to be baffled now. "your majesty," he interrupted, "i've important news for you. a big fight is taking place in south africa and your soldiers will probably be cut into mince meat." the minister strode towards the boy angrily. "explain this intrusion!" he cried. "i have explained. the boers are having a regular killing-bee. here! take a look at it yourselves." he drew the record from his pocket, and at the movement the minister shrank back as if he suspected it was an infernal machine and might blow his head off; but the king stepped quietly to the boy's side and looked into the box when rob threw open the lid. as he comprehended the full wonder of the phenomenon he was observing edward uttered a low cry of amazement, but thereafter he silently gazed upon the fierce battle that still raged far away upon the african _veld_. before long his keen eye recognized the troops engaged and realized their imminent danger. "they'll be utterly annihilated!" he gasped. "what shall we do?" "oh, we can't do anything just now," answered rob. "but it's curious to watch how bravely the poor fellows fight for their lives." the minister, who by this time was also peering into the box, groaned aloud, and then all three forgot their surroundings in the tragedy they were beholding. hemmed in by vastly superior numbers, the english were calmly and stubbornly resisting every inch of advance and selling their lives as dearly as possible. their leader fell pierced by a hundred bullets, and the king, who had known him from boyhood, passed his hand across his eyes as if to shut out the awful sight. but the fascination of the battle forced him to look again, and the next moment he cried aloud: "look there! look there!" over the edge of a line of hills appeared the helmets of a file of english soldiers. they reached the summit, followed by rank after rank, until the hillside was alive with them. and then, with a ringing cheer that came like a faint echo to the ears of the three watchers, they broke into a run and dashed forward to the rescue of their brave comrades. the boers faltered, gave back, and the next moment fled precipitately, while the exhausted survivors of the courageous band fell sobbing into the arms of their rescuers. rob closed the lid of the record with a sudden snap that betrayed his deep feeling, and the king pretended to cough behind his handkerchief and stealthily wiped his eyes. "'twasn't so bad, after all," remarked the boy, with assumed cheerfulness; "but it looked mighty ticklish for your men at one time." king edward regarded the boy curiously, remembering his abrupt entrance and the marvelous device he had exhibited. "what do you call that?" he asked, pointing at the record with a finger that trembled slightly from excitement. "it is a new electrical invention," replied rob, replacing it in his pocket, "and so constructed that events are reproduced at the exact moment they occur." "where can i purchase one?" demanded the king, eagerly. "they're not for sale," said rob. "this one of mine is the first that ever happened." "oh!" "i really think," continued the boy, nodding sagely, "that it wouldn't be well to have these records scattered around. their use would give some folks unfair advantage over others, you know." "certainly." "i only showed you this battle because i happened to be in london at the time and thought you'd be interested." "it was very kind of you," said edward; "but how did you gain admittance?" "well, to tell the truth, i was obliged to knock over a few of your tall life-guards. they seem to think you're a good thing and need looking after, like jam in a cupboard." the king smiled. "i hope you haven't killed my guards," said he. "oh, no; they'll come around all right." "it is necessary," continued edward, "that public men be protected from intrusion, no matter how democratic they may be personally. you would probably find it as difficult to approach the president of the united states as the king of england." "oh, i'm not complaining," said rob. "it wasn't much trouble to break through." "you seem quite young to have mastered such wonderful secrets of nature," continued the king. "so i am," replied rob, modestly; "but these natural forces have really existed since the beginning of the world, and some one was sure to discover them in time." he was quoting the demon, although unconsciously. "you are an american, i suppose," said the minister, coming close to rob and staring him in the face. "guessed right the first time," answered the boy, and drawing his character marking spectacles from his pocket, he put them on and stared at the minister in turn. upon the man's forehead appeared the letter "e". "your majesty," said rob, "i have here another queer invention. will you please wear these spectacles for a few moments?" the king at once put them on. "they are called character markers," continued the boy, "because the lenses catch and concentrate the character vibrations radiating from every human individual and reflect the true character of the person upon his forehead. if a letter 'g' appears, you may be sure his disposition is good; if his forehead is marked with an 'e' his character is evil, and you must beware of treachery." the king saw the "e" plainly marked upon his minister's forehead, but he said nothing except "thank you," and returned the spectacles to rob. but the minister, who from the first had been ill at ease, now became positively angry. "do not believe him, your majesty!" he cried. "it is a trick, and meant to deceive you." "i did not accuse you," answered the king, sternly. then he added: "i wish to be alone with this young gentleman." the minister left the room with an anxious face and hanging head. "now," said rob, "let's look over the record of the past day and see if that fellow has been up to any mischief." he turned the cylinder of the record to "england," and slowly the events of the last twenty-four hours were reproduced, one after the other, upon the polished plate. before long the king uttered an exclamation. the record pictured a small room in which were seated three gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation. one of them was the accused minister. "those men," said the king in a low voice, while he pointed out the other two, "are my avowed enemies. this is proof that your wonderful spectacles indicated my minister's character with perfect truth. i am grateful to you for thus putting me upon my guard, for i have trusted the man fully." "oh, don't mention it," replied the boy, lightly; "i'm glad to have been of service to you. but it's time for me to go." "i hope you will favor me with another interview," said the king, "for i am much interested in your electrical inventions. i will instruct my guards to admit you at any time, so you will not be obliged to fight your way in." "all right. but it really doesn't matter," answered rob. "it's no trouble at all to knock 'em over." then he remembered his manners and bowed low before the king, who seemed to him "a fine fellow and not a bit stuck up." and then he walked calmly from the palace. the people in the outer room stared at him wonderingly and the officer of the guard saluted the boy respectfully. but rob only smiled in an amused way as he marched past them with his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets and his straw hat tipped jauntily upon the back of his head. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eleven_ the man of science rob passed the remainder of the day wandering about london and amusing himself by watching the peculiar ways of the people. when it became so dark that there was no danger of his being observed, he rose through the air to the narrow slit in the church tower and lay upon the floor of the little room, with the bells hanging all around him, to pass the night. he was just falling asleep when a tremendous din and clatter nearly deafened him, and set the whole tower trembling. it was the midnight chime. rob clutched his ears tightly, and when the vibrations had died away descended by the ladder to a lower platform. but even here the next hourly chime made his ears ring, and he kept descending from platform to platform until the last half of a restless night was passed in the little room at the bottom of the tower. when, at daylight, the boy sat up and rubbed his eyes, he said, wearily: "churches are all right as churches; but as hotels they are rank failures. i ought to have bunked in with my friend, king edward." he climbed up the stairs and the ladders again and looked out the little window in the belfry. then he examined his map of europe. "i believe i'll take a run over to paris," he thought. "i must be home again by saturday, to meet the demon, so i'll have to make every day count." without waiting for breakfast, since he had eaten a tablet the evening before, he crept through the window and mounted into the fresh morning air until the great city with its broad waterway lay spread out beneath him. then he sped away to the southeast and, crossing the channel, passed between amiens and rouen and reached paris before ten o'clock. near the outskirts of the city appeared a high tower, upon the flat roof of which a man was engaged in adjusting a telescope. upon seeing rob, who was passing at no great distance from this tower, the man cried out: "_approchez!--venez ici!_" then he waved his hands frantically in the air, and fairly danced with excitement. so the boy laughed and dropped down to the roof where, standing beside the frenchman, whose eyes were actually protruding from their sockets, he asked, coolly: "well, what do you want?" the other was for a moment speechless. he was a tall, lean man, having a bald head but a thick, iron-gray beard, and his black eyes sparkled brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. after attentively regarding the boy for a time he said, in broken english: "but, m'sieur, how can you fly wizout ze--ze machine? i have experiment myself wiz some air-ship; but you--zere is nossing to make go!" [illustration: the eyes of the frenchman were actually protruding from their sockets] rob guessed that here was his opportunity to do the demon a favor by explaining his electrical devices to this new acquaintance, who was evidently a man of science. "here is the secret, professor," he said, and holding out his wrist displayed the traveling machine and explained, as well as he could, the forces that operated it. the frenchman, as you may suppose, was greatly astonished, and to show how perfectly the machine worked rob turned the indicator and rose a short distance above the tower, circling around it before he rejoined the professor on the roof. then he showed his food tablets, explaining how each was stored with sufficient nourishment for an entire day. the scientist positively gasped for breath, so powerful was the excitement he experienced at witnessing these marvels. "eet is wonderful--grand--magnifique!" he exclaimed. "but here is something of still greater interest," continued rob, and taking the automatic record of events from his pocket he allowed the professor to view the remarkable scenes that were being enacted throughout the civilized world. the frenchman was now trembling violently, and he implored rob to tell him where he might obtain similar electrical machines. "i can't do that," replied the boy, decidedly; "but, having seen these, you may be able to discover their construction for yourself. now that you know such things to be possible and practical, the hint should be sufficient to enable a shrewd electrician to prepare duplicates of them." the scientist glared at him with evident disappointment, and rob continued: "these are not all the wonders i can exhibit. here is another electrical device that is, perhaps, the most remarkable of any i possess." he took the character marking spectacles from his pocket and fitted them to his eyes. then he gave a whistle of surprise and turned his back upon his new friend. he had seen upon the frenchman's forehead the letters "e" and "c." "guess i've struck the wrong sort of scientist, after all!" he muttered, in a disgusted tone. his companion was quick to prove the accuracy of the character marker. seeing the boy's back turned, he seized a long iron bar that was used to operate the telescope, and struck at rob so fiercely that had he not worn the garment of protection his skull would have been crushed by the blow. as it was, the bar rebounded with a force that sent the murderous frenchman sprawling upon the roof, and rob turned around and laughed at him. "it won't work, professor," he said. "i'm proof against assassins. perhaps you had an idea that when you had killed me you could rob me of my valuable possessions; but they wouldn't be a particle of use to a scoundrel like you, i assure you! good morning." before the surprised and baffled scientist could collect himself sufficiently to reply, the boy was soaring far above his head and searching for a convenient place to alight, that he might investigate the charms of this famed city of paris. it was indeed a beautiful place, with many stately buildings lining the shady boulevards. so thronged were the streets that rob well knew he would soon be the center of a curious crowd should he alight upon them. already a few sky-gazers had noted the boy moving high in the air, above their heads, and one or two groups stood pointing their fingers at him. pausing at length above the imposing structure of the hotel anglais, rob noticed at one of the upper floors an open window, before which was a small iron balcony. alighting upon this he proceeded to enter, without hesitation, the open window. he heard a shriek and a cry of "_au voleur!_" and caught sight of a woman's figure as she dashed into an adjoining room, slamming and locking the door behind her. "i don't know as i blame her," observed rob, with a smile at the panic he had created. "i s'pose she takes me for a burglar, and thinks i've climbed up the lightning rod." he soon found the door leading into the hallway and walked down several flights of stairs until he reached the office of the hotel. "how much do you charge a day?" he inquired, addressing a fat and pompous-looking gentleman behind the desk. the man looked at him in a surprised way, for he had not heard the boy enter the room. but he said something in french to a waiter who was passing, and the latter came to rob and made a low bow. "i speak ze eengliss ver' fine," he said. "what desire have you?" "what are your rates by the day?" asked the boy. "ten francs, m'sieur." "how many dollars is that?" "dollar americaine?" "yes; united states money." "ah, _oui_! eet is ze two dollar, m'sieur." "all right; i can stay about a day before i go bankrupt. give me a room." "_certainement_, m'sieur. have you ze luggage?" "no; but i'll pay in advance," said rob, and began counting out his dimes and nickles and pennies, to the unbounded amazement of the waiter, who looked as if he had never seen such coins before. he carried the money to the fat gentleman, who examined the pieces curiously, and there was a long conference between them before it was decided to accept them in payment for a room for a day. but at this season the hotel was almost empty, and when rob protested that he had no other money the fat gentleman put the coins into his cash box with a resigned sigh and the waiter showed the boy to a little room at the very top of the building. rob washed and brushed the dust from his clothes, after which he sat down and amused himself by viewing the pictures that constantly formed upon the polished plate of the record of events. [illustration] _chapter twelve_ how rob saved a republic while following the shifting scenes of the fascinating record rob noted an occurrence that caused him to give a low whistle of astonishment and devote several moments to serious thought. "i believe it's about time i interfered with the politics of this republic," he said, at last, as he closed the lid of the metal box and restored it to his pocket. "if i don't take a hand there probably won't be a republic of france very long and, as a good american, i prefer a republic to a monarchy." then he walked down-stairs and found his english-speaking waiter. "where's president loubet?" he asked. "ze president! ah, he is wiz his mansion. to be at his residence, m'sieur." "where is his residence?" the waiter began a series of voluble and explicit directions which so confused the boy that he exclaimed: "oh, much obliged!" and walked away in disgust. gaining the street he approached a gendarme and repeated his question, with no better result than before, for the fellow waved his arms wildly in all directions and roared a volley of incomprehensible french phrases that conveyed no meaning whatever. "if ever i travel in foreign countries again," said rob, "i'll learn their lingo in advance. why doesn't the demon get up a conversation machine that will speak all languages?" by dint of much inquiry, however, and after walking several miles following ambiguous directions, he managed to reach the residence of president loubet. but there he was politely informed that the president was busily engaged in his garden, and would see no one. "that's all right," said the boy, calmly. "if he's in the garden i'll have no trouble finding him." then, to the amazement of the frenchmen, rob shot into the air fifty feet or so, from which elevation he overlooked a pretty garden in the rear of the president's mansion. the place was protected from ordinary intrusion by high walls, but rob descended within the enclosure and walked up to a man who was writing at a small table placed under the spreading branches of a large tree. "is this president loubet?" he inquired, with a bow. the gentleman looked up. "my servants were instructed to allow no one to disturb me," he said, speaking in excellent english. "it isn't their fault; i flew over the wall," returned rob. "the fact is," he added, hastily, as he noted the president's frown, "i have come to save the republic; and i haven't much time to waste over a bundle of frenchmen, either." the president seemed surprised. "your name!" he demanded, sharply. "robert billings joslyn, united states of america!" "your business, monsieur joslyn!" rob drew the record from his pocket and placed it upon the table. "this, sir," said he, "is an electrical device that records all important events. i wish to call your attention to a scene enacted in paris last evening which may have an effect upon the future history of your country." he opened the lid, placed the record so that the president could see clearly, and then watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face; first indifference, then interest, the next moment eagerness and amazement. "_mon dieu!_" he gasped; "the orleanists!" rob nodded. "yes; they've worked up a rather pretty plot, haven't they?" the president did not reply. he was anxiously watching the record and scribbling notes on a paper beside him. his face was pale and his lips tightly compressed. finally he leaned back in his chair and asked: "can you reproduce this scene again?" "certainly, sir," answered the boy; "as often as you like." "will you remain here while i send for my minister of police? it will require but a short time." "call him up, then. i'm in something of a hurry myself, but now i've mixed up with this thing i'll see it through." [illustration: rob watched the changing expressions upon the great man's face] the president touched a bell and gave an order to his servant. then he turned to rob and said, wonderingly: "you are a boy!" "that's true, mr. president," was the answer; "but an american boy, you must remember. that makes a big difference, i assure you." the president bowed gravely. "this is your invention?" he asked. "no; i'm hardly equal to that. but the inventor has made me a present of the record, and it's the only one in the world." "it is a marvel," remarked the president, thoughtfully. "more! it is a real miracle. we are living in an age of wonders, my young friend." "no one knows that better than myself, sir," replied rob. "but, tell me, can you trust your chief of police?" "i think so," said the president, slowly; "yet since your invention has shown me that many men i have considered honest are criminally implicated in this royalist plot, i hardly know whom to depend upon." "then please wear these spectacles during your interview with the minister of police," said the boy. "you must say nothing, while he is with us, about certain marks that will appear upon his forehead; but when he has gone i will explain those marks so you will understand them." the president covered his eyes with the spectacles. "why," he exclaimed, "i see upon your own brow the letters--" "stop, sir!" interrupted rob, with a blush; "i don't care to know what the letters are, if it's just the same to you." the president seemed puzzled by this speech, but fortunately the minister of police arrived just then and, under rob's guidance, the pictured record of the orleanist plot was reproduced before the startled eyes of the official. "and now," said the boy, "let us see if any of this foolishness is going on just at present." he turned to the opposite side of the record and allowed the president and his minister of police to witness the quick succession of events even as they occurred. suddenly the minister cried, "ha!" and, pointing to the figure of a man disembarking from an english boat at calais, he said, excitedly: "that, your excellency, is the duke of orleans, in disguise! i must leave you for a time, that i may issue some necessary orders to my men; but this evening i shall call to confer with you regarding the best mode of suppressing this terrible plot." when the official had departed, the president removed the spectacles from his eyes and handed them to rob. "what did you see?" asked the boy. "the letters 'g' and 'w'." "then you may trust him fully," declared rob, and explained the construction of the character marker to the interested and amazed statesman. "and now i must go," he continued, "for my stay in your city will be a short one and i want to see all i can." the president scrawled something on a sheet of paper and signed his name to it, afterward presenting it, with a courteous bow, to his visitor. "this will enable you to go wherever you please, while in paris," he said. "i regret my inability to reward you properly for the great service you have rendered my country; but you have my sincerest gratitude, and may command me in any way." "oh, that's all right," answered rob. "i thought it was my duty to warn you, and if you look sharp you'll be able to break up this conspiracy. but i don't want any reward. good day, sir." he turned the indicator of his traveling machine and immediately rose into the air, followed by a startled exclamation from the president of france. moving leisurely over the city, he selected a deserted thoroughfare to alight in, from whence he wandered unobserved into the beautiful boulevards. these were now brilliantly lighted, and crowds of pleasure seekers thronged them everywhere. rob experienced a decided sense of relief as he mixed with the gay populace and enjoyed the sights of the splendid city, for it enabled him to forget, for a time, the responsibilities thrust upon him by the possession of the demon's marvelous electrical devices. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter thirteen_ rob loses his treasures our young adventurer had intended to pass the night in the little bed at his hotel, but the atmosphere of paris proved so hot and disagreeable that he decided it would be more enjoyable to sleep while journeying through the cooler air that lay far above the earth's surface. so just as the clocks were striking the midnight hour rob mounted skyward and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to the east, intending to make the city of vienna his next stop. he had risen to a considerable distance, where the air was remarkably fresh and exhilarating, and the relief he experienced from the close and muggy streets of paris was of such a soothing nature that he presently fell fast asleep. his day in the metropolis had been a busy one, for, like all boys, he had forgotten himself in the delight of sight-seeing and had tired his muscles and exhausted his strength to an unusual degree. it was about three o'clock in the morning when rob, moving restlessly in his sleep, accidently touched with his right hand the indicator of the machine which was fastened to his left wrist, setting it a couple of points to the south of east. he was, of course, unaware of the slight alteration in his course, which was destined to prove of serious importance in the near future. for the boy's fatigue induced him to sleep far beyond daybreak, and during this period of unconsciousness he was passing over the face of european countries and approaching the lawless and dangerous dominions of the orient. when, at last, he opened his eyes, he was puzzled to determine where he was. beneath him stretched a vast, sandy plain, and speeding across this he came to a land abounding in luxuriant vegetation. the centrifugal force which propelled him was evidently, for some reason, greatly accelerated, for the scenery of the country he was crossing glided by him at so rapid a rate of speed that it nearly took his breath away. "i wonder if i've passed vienna in the night," he thought. "it ought not to have taken me more than a few hours to reach there from paris." vienna was at that moment fifteen hundred miles behind him; but rob's geography had always been his stumbling block at school, and he had not learned to gage the speed of the traveling machine; so he was completely mystified as to his whereabouts. presently a village having many queer spires and minarets whisked by him like a flash. rob became worried, and resolved to slow up at the next sign of habitation. this was a good resolution, but turkestan is so thinly settled that before the boy could plan out a course of action he had passed the barren mountain range of thian-shan as nimbly as an acrobat leaps a jumping-bar. "this won't do at all!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "the traveling machine seems to be running away with me, and i'm missing no end of sights by scooting along up here in the clouds." he turned the indicator to zero, and was relieved to find it obey with customary quickness. in a few moments he had slowed up and stopped, when he found himself suspended above another stretch of sandy plain. being too high to see the surface of the plain distinctly he dropped down a few hundred feet to a lower level, where he discovered he was surrounded by billows of sand as far as his eye could reach. "it's a desert, all right," was his comment; "perhaps old sahara herself." he started the machine again towards the east, and at a more moderate rate of speed skimmed over the surface of the desert. before long he noticed a dark spot ahead of him which proved to be a large body of fierce looking men, riding upon dromedaries and slender, spirited horses and armed with long rifles and crookedly shaped simitars. "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble," remarked the boy, as he glided over them, "and it wouldn't be exactly healthy for an enemy to get in their way. but i haven't time to stop, so i'm not likely to get mixed up in any rumpus with them." [illustration: "those fellows seem to be looking for trouble"] however, the armed caravan was scarcely out of sight before rob discovered he was approaching a rich, wooded oasis of the desert, in the midst of which was built the walled city of yarkand. not that he had ever heard of the place, or knew its name; for few europeans and only one american traveler had ever visited it. but he guessed it was a city of some importance from its size and beauty, and resolved to make a stop there. above the high walls projected many slender, white minarets, indicating that the inhabitants were either turks or some race of mohammedans; so rob decided to make investigations before trusting himself to their company. a cluster of tall trees with leafy tops stood a short distance outside the walls, and here the boy landed and sat down to rest in the refreshing shade. the city seemed as hushed and still as if it were deserted, and before him stretched the vast plain of white, heated sands. he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the band of warriors he had passed, but they were moving slowly and had not yet appeared. the trees that sheltered rob were the only ones without the city, although many low bushes or shrubs grew scattering over the space between him and the walls. an arched gateway broke the enclosure at his left, but the gates were tightly shut. something in the stillness and the intense heat of the mid-day sun made the boy drowsy. he stretched himself upon the ground beneath the dense foliage of the biggest tree and abandoned himself to the languor that was creeping over him. "i'll wait until that army of the desert arrives," he thought, sleepily. "they either belong in this city or have come to capture it, so i can tell better what to dance when i find out what the band plays." the next moment he was sound asleep, sprawling upon his back in the shade and slumbering as peacefully as an infant. and while he lay motionless three men dropped in quick succession from the top of the city wall and hid among the low bushes, crawling noiselessly from one to another and so approaching, by degrees, the little group of trees. they were turks, and had been sent by those in authority within the city to climb the tallest tree of the group and discover if the enemy was near. for rob's conjecture had been correct, and the city of yarkand awaited, with more or less anxiety, a threatened assault from its hereditary enemies, the tatars. the three spies were not less forbidding in appearance than the horde of warriors rob had passed upon the desert. their features were coarse and swarthy, and their eyes had a most villainous glare. old fashioned pistols and double-edged daggers were stuck in their belts and their clothing, though of gorgeous colors, was soiled and neglected. with all the caution of the american savage these turks approached the tree, where, to their unbounded amazement, they saw the boy lying asleep. his dress and fairness of skin at once proclaimed him, in their shrewd eyes, a european, and their first thought was to glance around in search of his horse or dromedary. seeing nothing of the kind near they were much puzzled to account for his presence, and stood looking down at him with evident curiosity. the sun struck the polished surface of the traveling machine which was attached to rob's wrist and made the metal glitter like silver. this attracted the eyes of the tallest turk, who stooped down and stealthily unclasped the band of the machine from the boy's outstretched arm. then, after a hurried but puzzled examination of the little instrument, he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. rob stirred uneasily in his sleep, and one of the turks drew a slight but stout rope from his breast and with gentle but deft movement passed it around the boy's wrists and drew them together behind him. the action was not swift enough to arouse the power of repulsion in the garment of protection, but it awakened rob effectually, so that he sat up and stared hard at his captors. "what are you trying to do, anyhow?" he demanded. the turks laughed and said something in their own language. they had no knowledge of english. "you're only making fools of yourselves," continued the boy, wrathfully. "it's impossible for you to injure me." the three paid no attention to his words. one of them thrust his hand into rob's pocket and drew out the electric tube. his ignorance of modern appliances was so great that he did not know enough to push the button. rob saw him looking down the hollow end of the tube and murmured: "i wish it would blow your ugly head off!" but the fellow, thinking the shining metal might be of some value to him, put the tube in his own pocket and then took from the prisoner the silver box of tablets. rob writhed and groaned at losing his possessions in this way, and while his hands were fastened behind him tried to feel for and touch the indicator of the traveling machine. when he found that the machine also had been taken, his anger gave way to fear, for he realized he was in a dangerously helpless condition. the third turk now drew the record of events from the boy's inner pocket. he knew nothing of the springs that opened the lids, so, after a curious glance at it, he secreted the box in the folds of his sash and continued the search of the captive. the character marking spectacles were next abstracted, but the turk, seeing in them nothing but spectacles, scornfully thrust them back into rob's pocket, while his comrades laughed at him. the boy was now rifled of seventeen cents in pennies, a broken pocket knife and a lead-pencil, the last article seeming to be highly prized. after they had secured all the booty they could find, the tall turk, who seemed the leader of the three, violently kicked at the prisoner with his heavy boot. his surprise was great when the garment of repulsion arrested the blow and nearly overthrew the aggressor in turn. snatching a dagger from his sash, he bounded upon the boy so fiercely that the next instant the enraged turk found himself lying upon his back three yards away, while his dagger flew through the air and landed deep in the desert sands. "keep it up!" cried rob, bitterly. "i hope you'll enjoy yourself." the other turks raised their comrade to his feet, and the three stared at one another in surprise, being unable to understand how a bound prisoner could so effectually defend himself. but at a whispered word from the leader, they drew their long pistols and fired point blank into rob's face. the volley echoed sharply from the city walls, but as the smoke drifted slowly away the turks were horrified to see their intended victim laughing at them. uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three took to their heels and bounded towards the wall, where a gate quickly opened to receive them, the populace feeling sure the tatar horde was upon them. [illustration: uttering cries of terror and dismay, the three turks took to their heels] nor was this guess so very far wrong; for as rob, sitting disconsolate upon the sand, raised his eyes, he saw across the desert a dark line that marked the approach of the invaders. nearer and nearer they came, while rob watched them and bemoaned the foolish impulse that had led him to fall asleep in an unknown land where he could so easily be overpowered and robbed of his treasures. "i always suspected these electrical inventions would be my ruin some day," he reflected, sadly; "and now i'm side-tracked and left helpless in this outlandish country, without a single hope of ever getting home again. they probably won't be able to kill me, unless they find my garment of repulsion and strip that off; but i never could cross this terrible desert on foot and, having lost my food tablets, i'd soon starve if i attempted it." fortunately, he had eaten one of the tablets just before going to sleep, so there was no danger of immediate starvation. but he was miserable and unhappy, and remained brooding over his cruel fate until a sudden shout caused him to look up. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter fourteen_ turk and tatar the tatars had arrived, swiftly and noiselessly, and a dozen of the warriors, still mounted, were surrounding him. his helpless condition aroused their curiosity, and while some of them hastily cut away his bonds and raised him to his feet, others plied him with questions in their own language. rob shook his head to indicate that he could not understand; so they led him to the chief--an immense, bearded representative of the tribe of kara-khitai, the terrible and relentless black tatars of thibet. the huge frame of this fellow was clothed in flowing robes of cloth-of-gold, braided with jewels, and he sat majestically upon the back of a jet-black camel. under ordinary circumstances the stern features and flashing black eyes of this redoubtable warrior would have struck a chill of fear to the boy's heart; but now under the influence of the crushing misfortunes he had experienced, he was able to gaze with indifference upon the terrible visage of the desert chief. the tatar seemed not to consider rob an enemy. instead, he looked upon him as an ally, since the turks had bound and robbed him. finding it impossible to converse with the chief, rob took refuge in the sign language. he turned his pockets wrong side out, showed the red welts left upon his wrists by the tight cord, and then shook his fists angrily in the direction of the town. in return the tatar nodded gravely and issued an order to his men. by this time the warriors were busily pitching tents before the walls of yarkand and making preparations for a formal siege. in obedience to the chieftain's orders, rob was given a place within one of the tents nearest the wall and supplied with a brace of brass-mounted pistols and a dagger with a sharp, zigzag edge. these were evidently to assist the boy in fighting the turks, and he was well pleased to have them. his spirits rose considerably when he found he had fallen among friends, although most of his new comrades had such evil faces that it was unnecessary to put on the character markers to judge their natures with a fair degree of accuracy. "i can't be very particular about the company i keep," he thought, "and this gang hasn't tried to murder me, as the rascally turks did. so for the present i'll stand in with the scowling chief and try to get a shot at the thieves who robbed me. if our side wins i may get a chance to recover some of my property. it's a slim chance, of course, but it's the only hope i have left." that very evening an opportunity occurred for rob to win glory in the eyes of his new friends. just before sundown the gates of the city flew open and a swarm of turks, mounted upon fleet horses and camels, issued forth and fell upon their enemies. the tatars, who did not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. in such a battle, however, the turks were at a disadvantage, for the active tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and their riders to the earth. at the first onslaught rob shot his pistol at a turk and wounded him so severely that he fell from his horse. instantly the boy seized the bridle and sprang upon the steed's back, and the next moment he had dashed into the thickest part of the fray. bullets and blows rained upon him from all sides, but the garment of repulsion saved him from a single scratch. when his pistols had been discharged he caught up the broken handle of a spear, and used it as a club, galloping into the ranks of the turks and belaboring them as hard as he could. the tatars cheered and followed him, and the turks were so amazed at his miraculous escape from their bullets that they became terrified, thinking he bore a charmed life and was protected by unseen powers. this terror helped turn the tide of battle, and before long the enemy was pressed back to the walls and retreated through the gates, which were hastily fastened behind them. in order to prevent a repetition of this sally the tatars at once invested the gates, so that if the turks should open them they were as likely to let their foes in as to oppose them. while the tents were being moved up rob had an opportunity to search the battlefield for the bodies of the three turks who had robbed him, but they were not among the fallen. "those fellows were too cowardly to take part in a fair fight," declared the boy; but he was much disappointed, nevertheless, as he felt very helpless without the electric tube or the traveling machine. the tatar chief now called rob to his tent and presented him with a beautiful ring set with a glowing pigeon's-blood ruby, in acknowledgment of his services. this gift made the boy feel very proud, and he said to the chief: "you're all right, old man, even if you do look like a pirate. if you can manage to capture that city, so i can get my electrical devices back, i'll consider you a trump as long as i live." the chief thought this speech was intended to express rob's gratitude, so he bowed solemnly in return. during the night that followed upon the first engagement of the turks and tatars, the boy lay awake trying to devise some plan to capture the city. the walls seemed too high and thick to be either scaled or broken by the tatars, who had no artillery whatever; and within the walls lay all the fertile part of the oasis, giving the besieged a good supply of water and provisions, while the besiegers were obliged to subsist on what water and food they had brought with them. just before dawn rob left his tent and went out to look at the great wall. the stars gave plenty of light, but the boy was worried to find that, according to eastern custom, no sentries or guards whatever had been posted and all the tatars were slumbering soundly. the city was likewise wrapped in profound silence, but just as rob was turning away he saw a head project stealthily over the edge of the wall before him, and recognized in the features one of the turks who had robbed him. finding no one awake except the boy the fellow sat upon the edge of the wall, with his feet dangling downward, and grinned wickedly at his former victim. rob watched him with almost breathless eagerness. after making many motions that conveyed no meaning whatever, the turk drew the electric tube from his pocket and pointed his finger first at the boy and then at the instrument, as if inquiring what it was used for. rob shook his head. the turk turned the tube over several times and examined it carefully, after which he also shook his head, seeming greatly puzzled. by this time the boy was fairly trembling with excitement. he longed to recover this valuable weapon, and feared that at any moment the curious turk would discover its use. he held out his hand toward the tube, and tried to say, by motions, that he would show the fellow how to use it. the man seemed to understand, but he would not let the glittering instrument out of his possession. rob was almost in despair, when he happened to notice upon his hand the ruby ring given him by the chief. drawing the jewel from his finger he made offer, by signs, that he would exchange it for the tube. the turk was much pleased with the idea, and nodded his head repeatedly, holding out his hand for the ring. rob had little confidence in the man's honor, but he was so eager to regain the tube that he decided to trust him. so he threw the ring to the top of the wall, where the turk caught it skilfully; but when rob held out his hand for the tube the scoundrel only laughed at him and began to scramble to his feet in order to beat a retreat. chance, however, foiled this disgraceful treachery, for in his hurry the turk allowed the tube to slip from his grasp, and it rolled off the wall and fell upon the sand at rob's very feet. the robber turned to watch its fall and, filled with sudden anger, the boy grabbed the weapon, pointed it at his enemy, and pressed the button. down tumbled the turk, without a cry, and lay motionless at the foot of the wall. rob's first thought was to search the pockets of his captive, and to his delight he found and recovered his box of food tablets. the record of events and the traveling machine were doubtless in the possession of the other robbers, but rob did not despair of recovering them, now that he had the tube to aid him. day was now breaking, and several of the tatars appeared and examined the body of the turk with grunts of surprise, for there was no mark upon him to show how he had been slain. supposing him to be dead, they tossed him aside and forgot all about him. rob had secured his ruby ring again, and going to the chief's tent he showed the jewel to the guard and was at once admitted. the black-bearded chieftain was still reclining upon his pillows, but rob bowed before him, and by means of signs managed to ask for a band of warriors to assist him in assaulting the town. the chieftain appeared to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise, not being able to understand how the boy could expect to succeed; but he graciously issued the required order, and by the time rob reached the city gate he found a large group of tatars gathered to support him, while the entire camp, roused to interest in the proceedings, stood looking on. rob cared little for the quarrel between the turks and tatars, and under ordinary circumstances would have refused to side with one or the other; but he knew he could not hope to recover his electrical machines unless the city was taken by the band of warriors who had befriended him, so he determined to force an entrance for them. without hesitation he walked close to the great gate and shattered its fastenings with the force of the electric current directed upon them from the tube. then, shouting to his friends the tatars for assistance, they rushed in a body upon the gate and dashed it open. the turks had expected trouble when they heard the fastenings of the huge gate splinter and fall apart, so they had assembled in force before the opening. as the tatars poured through the gateway in a compact mass they were met by a hail of bullets, spears and arrows, which did fearful execution among them. many were killed outright, while others fell wounded to be trampled upon by those who pressed on from the rear. rob maintained his position in the front rank, but escaped all injury through the possession of the garment of repulsion. but he took an active part in the fight and pressed the button of the electric tube again and again, tumbling the enemy into heaps on every side, even the horses and camels falling helplessly before the resistless current of electricity. the tatars shouted joyfully as they witnessed this marvelous feat and rushed forward to assist in the slaughter; but the boy motioned them all back. he did not wish any more bloodshed than was necessary, and knew that the heaps of unconscious turks around him would soon recover. so he stood alone and faced the enemy, calmly knocking them over as fast as they came near. two of the turks managed to creep up behind the boy, and one of them, who wielded an immense simitar with a two-edged blade as sharp as a razor, swung the weapon fiercely to cut off rob's head. but the repulsive force aroused in the garment was so terrific that it sent the weapon flying backwards with redoubled swiftness, so that it caught the second turk at the waist and cut him fairly in two. thereafter they all avoided coming near the boy, and in a surprisingly short time the turkish forces were entirely conquered, all having been reduced to unconsciousness except a few cowards who had run away and hidden in the cellars or garrets of the houses. the tatars entered the city with shouts of triumph, and the chief was so delighted that he threw his arms around rob's neck and embraced him warmly. then began the sack of yarkand, the fierce tatars plundering the bazaars and houses, stripping them of everything of value they could find. rob searched anxiously among the bodies of the unconscious turks for the two men who had robbed him, but neither could be found. he was more successful later, for in running through the streets he came upon a band of tatars leading a man with a rope around his neck, whom rob quickly recognized as one of the thieves he was hunting for. the tatars willingly allowed him to search the fellow, and in one of his pockets rob found the record of events. he had now recovered all his property, except the traveling machine, the one thing that was absolutely necessary to enable him to escape from this barbarous country. he continued his search persistently, and an hour later found the dead body of the third robber lying in the square in the center of the city. but the traveling machine was not on his person, and for the first time the boy began to give way to despair. in the distance he heard loud shouts and sound of renewed strife, warning him that the turks were recovering consciousness and engaging the tatars with great fierceness. the latter had scattered throughout the town, thinking themselves perfectly secure, so that not only were they unprepared to fight, but they became panic-stricken at seeing their foes return, as it seemed, from death to life. their usual courage forsook them, and they ran, terrified, in every direction, only to be cut down by the revengeful turkish simitars. rob was sitting upon the edge of a marble fountain in the center of the square when a crowd of victorious turks appeared and quickly surrounded him. the boy paid no attention to their gestures and the turks feared to approach him nearly, so they stood a short distance away and fired volleys at him from their rifles and pistols. rob glared at them scornfully, and seeing they could not injure him the turks desisted; but they still surrounded him, and the crowd grew thicker every moment. women now came creeping from their hiding places and mingled with the ranks of the men, and rob guessed, from their joyous chattering, that the turks had regained the city and driven out or killed the tatar warriors. he reflected, gloomily, that this did not affect his own position in any way, since he could not escape from the oasis. suddenly, on glancing at the crowd, rob saw something that arrested his attention. a young girl was fastening some article to the wrist of a burly, villainous-looking turk. the boy saw a glitter that reminded him of the traveling machine, but immediately afterward the man and the girl bent their heads over the fellow's wrist in such a way that rob could see nothing more. while the couple were apparently examining the strange device, rob started to his feet and walked toward them. the crowd fell back at his approach, but the man and the girl were so interested that they did not notice him. he was still several paces away when the girl put out her finger and touched the indicator on the dial. to rob's horror and consternation the big turk began to rise slowly into the air, while a howl of fear burst from the crowd. but the boy made a mighty spring and caught the turk by his foot, clinging to it with desperate tenacity, while they both mounted steadily upward until they were far above the city of the desert. [illustration: the turk rose slowly into the air, with rob clinging to him with desperate tenacity] the big turk screamed pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of the turk's baggy trousers. then, slowly and carefully, he drew himself up and seized the leather belt that encircled the man's waist. this firm grip gave him new confidence, and he began to breathe more freely. he now clung to the body of the turk with both legs entwined, in the way he was accustomed to cling to a tree-trunk when he climbed after cherries at home. he had conquered his fear of falling, and took time to recover his wits and his strength. they had now reached such a tremendous height that the city looked like a speck on the desert beneath them. knowing he must act quickly, rob seized the dangling left arm of the unconscious turk and raised it until he could reach the dial of the traveling machine. he feared to unclasp the machine just then, for two reasons: if it slipped from his grasp they would both plunge downward to their death; and he was not sure the machine would work at all if in any other position than fastened to the left wrist. rob determined to take no chances, so he left the machine attached to the turk and turned the indicator to zero and then to "east," for he did not wish to rejoin either his enemies the turks or his equally undesirable friends the tatars. after traveling eastward a few minutes he lost sight of the city altogether; so, still clinging to the body of the turk, he again turned the indicator and began to descend. when, at last, they landed gently upon a rocky eminence of the kuen-lun mountains, the boy's strength was almost exhausted, and his limbs ached with the strain of clinging to the turk's body. his first act was to transfer the traveling machine to his own wrist and to see that his other electrical devices were safely bestowed in his pockets. then he sat upon the rock to rest until the turk recovered consciousness. presently the fellow moved uneasily, rolled over, and then sat up and stared at his surroundings. perhaps he thought he had been dreaming, for he rubbed his eyes and looked again with mingled surprise and alarm. then, seeing rob, he uttered a savage shout and drew his dagger. rob smiled and pointed the electric tube at the man, who doubtless recognized its power, for he fell back scowling and trembling. "this place seems like a good jog from civilization," remarked the boy, as coolly as if his companion could understand what he said; "but as your legs are long and strong you may be able to find your way. it's true you're liable to starve to death, but if you do it will be your own misfortune and not my fault." the turk glared at him sullenly, but did not attempt to reply. rob took out his box of tablets, ate one of them and offered another to his enemy. the fellow accepted it ungraciously enough, but seeing rob eat one he decided to follow his example, and consumed the tablet with a queer expression of distrust upon his face. "brave man!" cried rob, laughingly; "you've avoided the pangs of starvation for a time, anyhow, so i can leave you with a clear conscience." without more ado he turned the indicator of the traveling machine and mounted into the air, leaving the turk sitting upon the rocks and staring after him in comical bewilderment. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter fifteen_ a battle with monsters our young adventurer never experienced a more grateful feeling of relief and security than when he found himself once more high in the air, alone, and in undisputed possession of the electrical devices bestowed upon him by the demon. the dangers he had passed through since landing at the city of the desert and the desperate chance that alone had permitted him to regain the traveling machine made him shudder at the bare recollection and rendered him more sober and thoughtful than usual. we who stick closely to the earth's surface can scarcely realize how rob could travel through the air at such dizzy heights without any fear or concern whatsoever. but he had come to consider the air a veritable refuge. experience had given him implicit confidence in the powers of the electrical instrument whose unseen forces carried him so swiftly and surely, and while the tiny, watch-like machine was clasped to his wrist he felt himself to be absolutely safe. having slipped away from the turk and attained a fair altitude, he set the indicator at zero and paused long enough to consult his map and decide what direction it was best for him to take. the mischance that had swept him unwittingly over the countries of europe had also carried him more than half way around the world from his home. therefore the nearest way to reach america would be to continue traveling to the eastward. so much time had been consumed at the desert oasis that he felt he must now hasten if he wished to reach home by saturday afternoon; so, having quickly come to a decision, he turned the indicator and began a swift flight into the east. for several hours he traveled above the great desert of gobi, but by noon signs of a more fertile country began to appear, and, dropping to a point nearer the earth, he was able to observe closely the country of the chinese, with its crowded population and ancient but crude civilization. then he came to the great wall of china and to mighty peking, above which he hovered some time, examining it curiously. he really longed to make a stop there, but with his late experiences fresh in his mind he thought it much safer to view the wonderful city from a distance. resuming his flight he presently came to the gulf of laou tong, whose fair face was freckled with many ships of many nations, and so on to korea, which seemed to him a land fully a century behind the times. night overtook him while speeding across the sea of japan, and having a great desire to view the mikado's famous islands, he put the indicator at zero, and, coming to a full stop, composed himself to sleep until morning, that he might run no chances of being carried beyond his knowledge during the night. you might suppose it no easy task to sleep suspended in mid-air, yet the magnetic currents controlled by the traveling machine were so evenly balanced that rob was fully as comfortable as if reposing upon a bed of down. he had become somewhat accustomed to passing the night in the air and now slept remarkably well, having no fear of burglars or fire or other interruptions that dwellers in cities are subject to. one thing, however, he should have remembered: that he was in an ancient and little known part of the world and reposing above a sea famous in fable as the home of many fierce and terrible creatures; while not far away lay the land of the dragon, the simurg and other ferocious monsters. rob may have read of these things in fairy tales and books of travel, but if so they had entirely slipped his mind; so he slumbered peacefully and actually snored a little, i believe, towards morning. but even as the red sun peeped curiously over the horizon he was awakened by a most unusual disturbance--a succession of hoarse screams and a pounding of the air as from the quickly revolving blades of some huge windmill. he rubbed his eyes and looked around. coming towards him at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful than a tiger's claws. while, fascinated and horrified, he watched the approach of this feathered monster, a scream sounded just behind him and the next instant the stroke of a mighty wing sent him whirling over and over through the air. he soon came to a stop, however, and saw that another of the monsters had come upon him from the rear and was now, with its mate, circling closely around him, while both uttered continuously their hoarse, savage cries. rob wondered why the garment of repulsion had not protected him from the blow of the bird's wing; but, as a matter of fact, it had protected him. for it was not the wing itself but the force of the eddying currents of air that had sent him whirling away from the monster. with the indicator at zero the magnetic currents and the opposing powers of attraction and repulsion were so evenly balanced that any violent atmospheric disturbance affected him in the same way that thistledown is affected by a summer breeze. he had noticed something of this before, but whenever a strong wind was blowing he was accustomed to rise to a position above the air currents. this was the first time he had slept with the indicator at zero. the huge birds at once renewed their attack, but rob had now recovered his wits sufficiently to draw the electric tube from his pocket. the first one to dart towards him received the powerful electric current direct from the tube, and fell stunned and fluttering to the surface of the sea, where it floated motionless. its mate, perhaps warned by this sudden disaster, renewed its circling flight, moving so swiftly that rob could scarcely follow it, and drawing nearer and nearer every moment to its intended victim. the boy could not turn in the air very quickly, and he feared an attack in the back, mistrusting the saving power of the garment of repulsion under such circumstances; so in desperation he pressed his finger upon the button of the tube and whirled the instrument around his head in the opposite direction to that in which the monster was circling. presently the current and the bird met, and with one last scream the creature tumbled downwards to join its fellow upon the waves, where they lay like two floating islands. their presence had left a rank, sickening stench in the surrounding atmosphere, so rob made haste to resume his journey and was soon moving rapidly eastward. he could not control a shudder at the recollection of his recent combat, and realized the horror of a meeting with such creatures by one who had no protection from their sharp beaks and talons. "it's no wonder the japs draw ugly pictures of those monsters," he thought. "people who live in these parts must pass most of their lives in a tremble." the sun was now shining brilliantly, and when the beautiful islands of japan came in sight rob found that he had recovered his wonted cheerfulness. he moved along slowly, hovering with curious interest over the quaint and picturesque villages and watching the industrious japanese patiently toiling at their tasks. just before he reached tokio he came to a military fort, and for nearly an hour watched the skilful maneuvers of a regiment of soldiers at their morning drill. they were not very big people, compared with other nations, but they seemed alert and well trained, and the boy decided it would require a brave enemy to face them on a field of battle. having at length satisfied his curiosity as to japanese life and customs rob prepared for his long flight across the pacific ocean. by consulting his map he discovered that should he maintain his course due east, as before, he would arrive at a point in america very near to san francisco, which suited his plans excellently. having found that he moved more swiftly when farthest from the earth's surface, because the air was more rarefied and offered less resistance, rob mounted upwards until the islands of japan were mere specks visible through the clear, sunny atmosphere. then he began his eastward flight, the broad surface of the pacific seeming like a blue cloud far beneath him. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter sixteen_ shipwrecked mariners ample proof of rob's careless and restless nature having been frankly placed before the reader in these pages, you will doubtless be surprised when i relate that during the next few hours our young gentleman suffered from a severe attack of homesickness, becoming as gloomy and unhappy in its duration as ever a homesick boy could be. it may have been because he was just then cut off from all his fellow-creatures and even from the world itself; it may have been because he was satiated with marvels and with the almost absolute control over the powers which the demon had conferred upon him; or it may have been because he was born and reared a hearty, healthy american boy, with a disposition to battle openly with the world and take his chances equally with his fellows, rather than be placed in such an exclusive position that no one could hope successfully to oppose him. perhaps he himself did not know what gave him this horrible attack of "the blues," but the truth is he took out his handkerchief and cried like a baby from very loneliness and misery. there was no one to see him, thank goodness! and the tears gave him considerable relief. he dried his eyes, made an honest struggle to regain his cheerfulness, and then muttered to himself: "if i stay up here, like an air-bubble in the sky, i shall certainly go crazy. i suppose there's nothing but water to look at down below, but if i could only sight a ship, or even see a fish jump, it would do me no end of good." thereupon he descended until, as the ocean's surface came nearer and nearer, he discovered a tiny island lying almost directly underneath him. it was hardly big enough to make a dot on the biggest map, but a clump of trees grew in the central portion, while around the edges were jagged rocks protecting a sandy beach and a stretch of flower-strewn upland leading to the trees. it looked very beautiful from rob's elevated position, and his spirits brightened at once. "i'll drop down and pick a bouquet," he exclaimed, and a few moments later his feet touched the firm earth of the island. but before he could gather a dozen of the brilliant flowers a glad shout reached his ears, and, looking up, he saw two men running towards him from the trees. they were dressed in sailor fashion, but their clothing was reduced to rags and scarcely clung to their brown, skinny bodies. as they advanced they waved their arms wildly in the air and cried in joyful tones: "a boat! a boat!" rob stared at them wonderingly, and had much ado to prevent the poor fellows from hugging him outright, so great was their joy at his appearance. one of them rolled upon the ground, laughing and crying by turns, while the other danced and cut capers until he became so exhausted that he sank down breathless beside his comrade. "how came you here?" then inquired the boy, in pitying tones. "we're shipwrecked american sailors from the bark 'cynthia jane,' which went down near here over a month ago," answered the smallest and thinnest of the two. "we escaped by clinging to a bit of wreckage and floated to this island, where we have nearly starved to death. indeed, we now have eaten everything on the island that was eatable, and had your boat arrived a few days later you'd have found us lying dead upon the beach!" rob listened to this sad tale with real sympathy. "but i didn't come here in a boat," said he. the men sprang to their feet with white, scared faces. "no boat!" they cried; "are you, too, shipwrecked?" "no;" he answered. "i flew here through the air." and then he explained to them the wonderful electric traveling machine. but the sailors had no interest whatever in the relation. their disappointment was something awful to witness, and one of them laid his head upon his comrade's shoulder and wept with unrestrained grief, so weak and discouraged had they become through suffering. [illustration: the disappointment of the sailors was something awful to witness] suddenly rob remembered that he could assist them, and took the box of concentrated food tablets from his pocket. "eat these," he said, offering one to each of the sailors. at first they could not understand that these small tablets would be able to allay the pangs of hunger; but when rob explained their virtues the men ate them greedily. within a few moments they were so greatly restored to strength and courage that their eyes brightened, their sunken cheeks flushed, and they were able to converse with their benefactor with calmness and intelligence. then the boy sat beside them upon the grass and told them the story of his acquaintance with the demon and of all his adventures since he had come into possession of the wonderful electric contrivances. in his present mood he felt it would be a relief to confide in some one, and so these poor, lonely men were the first to hear his story. when he related the manner in which he had clung to the turk while both ascended into the air, the elder of the two sailors listened with rapt attention, and then, after some thought, asked: "why couldn't you carry one or both of us to america?" rob took time seriously to consider this idea, while the sailors eyed him with eager interest. finally he said: "i'm afraid i couldn't support your weight long enough to reach any other land. it's a long journey, and you'd pull my arms out of joint before we'd been up an hour." their faces fell at this, but one of them said: "why couldn't we swing ourselves over your shoulders with a rope? our two bodies would balance each other and we are so thin and emaciated that we do not weigh very much." while considering this suggestion rob remembered how at one time five pirates had clung to his left leg and been carried some distance through the air. "have you a rope?" he asked. "no," was the answer; "but there are plenty of long, tough vines growing on the island that are just as strong and pliable as ropes." "then, if you are willing to run the chances," decided the boy, "i will make the attempt to save you. but i must warn you that in case i find i can not support the weight of your bodies i shall drop one or both of you into the sea." they looked grave at this prospect, but the biggest one said: "we would soon meet death from starvation if you left us here on the island; so, as there is at least a chance of our being able to escape in your company i, for one, am willing to risk being drowned. it is easier and quicker than being starved. and, as i'm the heavier, i suppose you'll drop me first." "certainly," declared rob, promptly. this announcement seemed to be an encouragement to the little sailor, but he said, nervously: "i hope you'll keep near the water, for i haven't a good head for heights--they always make me dizzy." "oh, if you don't want to go," began rob, "i can easily----" "but i do! i do! i do!" cried the little man, interrupting him. "i shall die if you leave me behind!" "well, then, get your ropes, and we'll do the best we can," said the boy. they ran to the trees, around the trunks of which were clinging many tendrils of greenish-brown vine which possessed remarkable strength. with their knives they cut a long section of this vine, the ends of which were then tied into loops large enough to permit the sailors to sit in them comfortably. the connecting piece rob padded with seaweed gathered from the shore, to prevent its cutting into his shoulders. "now, then," he said, when all was ready, "take your places." the sailors squatted in the loops, and rob swung the vine over his shoulders and turned the indicator of the traveling machine to "up." as they slowly mounted into the sky the little sailor gave a squeal of terror and clung to the boy's arm; but the other, although seemingly anxious, sat quietly in his place and made no trouble. "d--d--don't g--g--go so high!" stammered the little one, tremblingly; "suppose we should f--f--fall!" "well, s'pose we should?" answered rob, gruffly. "you couldn't drown until you struck the water, so the higher we are the longer you'll live in case of accident." this phase of the question seemed to comfort the frightened fellow somewhat; but, as he said, he had not a good head for heights, and so continued to tremble in spite of his resolve to be brave. the weight on rob's shoulders was not so great as he had feared, the traveling machine seeming to give a certain lightness and buoyancy to everything that came into contact with its wearer. as soon as he had reached a sufficient elevation to admit of good speed he turned the indicator once more to the east and began moving rapidly through the air, the shipwrecked sailors dangling at either side. "this is aw--aw--awful!" gasped the little one. "say, you shut up!" commanded the boy, angrily. "if your friend was as big a coward as you are i'd drop you both this minute. let go my arm and keep quiet, if you want to reach land alive." the fellow whimpered a little, but managed to remain silent for several minutes. then he gave a sudden twitch and grabbed rob's arm again. "s'pose--s'pose the vine should break!" he moaned, a horrified look upon his face. "i've had about enough of this," said rob, savagely. "if you haven't any sense you don't deserve to live." he turned the indicator on the dial of the machine and they began to descend rapidly. the little fellow screamed with fear, but rob paid no attention to him until the feet of the two suspended sailors were actually dipping into the waves, when he brought their progress to an abrupt halt. "wh--wh--what are you g--g--going to do?" gurgled the cowardly sailor. "i'm going to feed you to the sharks--unless you promise to keep your mouth shut," retorted the boy. "now, then; decide at once! which will it be--sharks or silence?" "i won't say a word--'pon my honor, i won't!" said the sailor, shudderingly. "all right; remember your promise and we'll have no further trouble," remarked rob, who had hard work to keep from laughing at the man's abject terror. once more he ascended and continued the journey, and for several hours they rode along swiftly and silently. rob's shoulders were beginning to ache with the continued tugging of the vine upon them, but the thought that he was saving the lives of two unfortunate fellow-creatures gave him strength and courage to persevere. night was falling when they first sighted land; a wild and seemingly uninhabited stretch of the american coast. rob made no effort to select a landing place, for he was nearly worn out with the strain and anxiety of the journey. he dropped his burden upon the brow of a high bluff overlooking the sea and, casting the vine from his shoulders, fell to the earth exhausted and half fainting. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter seventeen_ the coast of oregon when he had somewhat recovered, rob sat up and looked around him. the elder sailor was kneeling in earnest prayer, offering grateful thanks for his escape from suffering and death. the younger one lay upon the ground sobbing and still violently agitated by recollections of the frightful experiences he had undergone. although he did not show his feelings as plainly as the men, the boy was none the less gratified at having been instrumental in saving the lives of two fellow-beings. the darkness was by this time rapidly enveloping them, so rob asked his companions to gather some brushwood and light a fire, which they quickly did. the evening was cool for the time of year, and the heat from the fire was cheering and grateful; so they all lay near the glowing embers and fell fast asleep. the sound of voices aroused rob next morning, and on opening his eyes and gazing around he saw several rudely dressed men approaching. the two shipwrecked sailors were still sound asleep. rob stood up and waited for the strangers to draw near. they seemed to be fishermen, and were much surprised at finding three people asleep upon the bluff. "whar 'n thunder'd ye come from?" asked the foremost fisherman, in a surprised voice. "from the sea," replied the boy. "my friends here are shipwrecked sailors from the 'cynthia jane.'" "but how'd ye make out to climb the bluff?" inquired a second fisherman; "no one ever did it afore, as we knows on." "oh, that is a long story," replied the boy, evasively. the two sailors had awakened and now saluted the new-comers. soon they were exchanging a running fire of questions and answers. "where are we?" rob heard the little sailor ask. "coast of oregon," was the reply. "we're about seven miles from port orford by land an' about ten miles by sea." "do you live at port orford?" inquired the sailor. "that's what we do, friend; an' if your party wants to join us we'll do our best to make you comf'table, bein' as you're shipwrecked an' need help." just then a loud laugh came from another group, where the elder sailor had been trying to explain rob's method of flying through the air. "laugh all you want to," said the sailor, sullenly; "it's true--ev'ry word of it!" "mebbe you think it, friend," answered a big, good-natured fisherman; "but it's well known that shipwrecked folks go crazy sometimes, an' imagine strange things. your mind seems clear enough in other ways, so i advise you to try and forget your dreams about flyin'." rob now stepped forward and shook hands with the sailors. "i see you have found friends," he said to them, "so i will leave you and continue my journey, as i'm in something of a hurry." both sailors began to thank him profusely for their rescue, but he cut them short. "that's all right. of course i couldn't leave you on that island to starve to death, and i'm glad i was able to bring you away with me." "but you threatened to drop me into the sea," remarked the little sailor, in a grieved voice. "so i did," said rob, laughing; "but i wouldn't have done it for the world--not even to have saved my own life. good-by!" he turned the indicator and mounted skyward, to the unbounded amazement of the fishermen, who stared after him with round eyes and wide open mouths. "this sight will prove to them that the sailors are not crazy," he thought, as he turned to the south and sped away from the bluff. "i suppose those simple fishermen will never forget this wonderful occurrence, and they'll probably make reg'lar heroes of the two men who have crossed the pacific through the air." he followed the coast line, keeping but a short distance above the earth, and after an hour's swift flight reached the city of san francisco. his shoulders were sore and stiff from the heavy strain upon them of the previous day, and he wished more than once that he had some of his mother's household liniment to rub them with. yet so great was his delight at reaching once more his native land that all discomforts were speedily forgotten. much as he would have enjoyed a day in the great metropolis of the pacific slope, rob dared not delay longer than to take a general view of the place, to note its handsome edifices and to wonder at the throng of chinese inhabiting one section of the town. these things were much more plainly and quickly viewed by rob from above than by threading a way through the streets on foot; for he looked down upon the city as a bird does, and covered miles with a single glance. having satisfied his curiosity without attempting to alight, he turned to the southeast and followed the peninsula as far as palo alto, where he viewed the magnificent buildings of the university. changing his course to the east, he soon reached mount hamilton, and, being attracted by the great tower of the lick observatory, he hovered over it until he found he had attracted the excited gaze of its inhabitants, who doubtless observed him very plainly through the big telescope. but so unreal and seemingly impossible was the sight witnessed by the learned astronomers that they have never ventured to make the incident public, although long after the boy had darted away into the east they argued together concerning the marvelous and incomprehensible vision. afterward they secretly engrossed the circumstance upon their records, but resolved never to mention it in public, lest their wisdom and veracity should be assailed by the skeptical. meantime rob rose to a higher altitude, and sped swiftly across the great continent. by noon he sighted chicago, and after a brief inspection of the place from the air determined to devote at least an hour to forming the acquaintance of this most wonderful and cosmopolitan city. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter eighteen_ a narrow escape the auditorium tower, where "the weather man" sits to flash his reports throughout the country, offered an inviting place for the boy to alight. he dropped quietly upon the roof of the great building and walked down the staircase until he reached the elevators, by means of which he descended to the ground floor without exciting special attention. the eager rush and hurry of the people crowding the sidewalks impressed rob with the idea that they were all behind time and were trying hard to catch up. he found it impossible to walk along comfortably without being elbowed and pushed from side to side; so a half hour's sight-seeing under such difficulties tired him greatly. it was a beautiful afternoon, and finding himself upon the lake front, rob hunted up a vacant bench and sat down to rest. presently an elderly gentleman with a reserved and dignified appearance and dressed in black took a seat next to the boy and drew a magazine from his pocket. rob saw that he opened it to an article on "the progress of modern science," in which he seemed greatly interested. after a time the boy remembered that he was hungry, not having eaten a tablet in more than twenty-four hours. so he took out the silver box and ate one of the small, round disks it contained. "what are those?" inquired the old gentleman in a soft voice. "you are too young to be taking patent medicines." "these are not medicines, exactly," answered the boy, with a smile. "they are concentrated food tablets, stored with nourishment by means of electricity. one of them furnishes a person with food for an entire day." the old gentleman stared at rob a moment and then laid down his magazine and took the box in his hands, examining the tablets curiously. "are these patented?" he asked. "no," said rob; "they are unknown to any one but myself." "i will give you a half million dollars for the recipe to make them," said the gentleman. "i fear i must refuse your offer," returned rob, with a laugh. "i'll make it a million," said the gentleman, coolly. rob shook his head. "money can't buy the recipe," he said; "for i don't know it myself." "couldn't the tablets be chemically analyzed, and the secret discovered?" inquired the other. "i don't know; but i'm not going to give any one the chance to try," declared the boy, firmly. the old gentleman picked up his magazine without another word, and resumed his reading. for amusement rob took the record of events from his pocket and began looking at the scenes reflected from its polished plate. presently he became aware that the old gentleman was peering over his shoulder with intense interest. general funston was just then engaged in capturing the rebel chief, aguinaldo, and for a few moments both man and boy observed the occurrence with rapt attention. as the scene was replaced by one showing a secret tunnel of the russian nihilists, with the conspirators carrying dynamite to a recess underneath the palace of the czar, the gentleman uttered a long sigh and asked: "will you sell that box?" "no," answered rob, shortly, and put it back into his pocket. "i'll give you a million dollars to control the sale in chicago alone," continued the gentleman, with an eager inflection in his smooth voice. "you seem quite anxious to get rid of money," remarked rob, carelessly. "how much are you worth?" "personally?" "yes." "nothing at all, young man. i am not offering you my own money. but with such inventions as you have exhibited i could easily secure millions of capital. suppose we form a trust, and place them upon the market. we'll capitalize it for a hundred millions, and you can have a quarter of the stock--twenty-five millions. that would keep you from worrying about grocery bills." "but i wouldn't need groceries if i had the tablets," said rob, laughing. "true enough! but you could take life easily and read your newspaper in comfort, without being in any hurry to get down town to business. twenty-five millions would bring you a cozy little income, if properly invested." "i don't see why one should read newspapers when the record of events shows all that is going on in the world," objected rob. "true, true! but what do you say to the proposition?" "i must decline, with thanks. these inventions are not for sale." the gentleman sighed and resumed his magazine, in which he became much absorbed. rob put on the character marking spectacles and looked at him. the letters "e", "w" and "c" were plainly visible upon the composed, respectable looking brow of his companion. "evil, wise and cruel," reflected rob, as he restored the spectacles to his pocket. "how easily such a man could impose upon people. to look at him one would think that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" he decided to part company with this chance acquaintance and, rising from his seat, strolled leisurely up the walk. a moment later, on looking back, he discovered that the old gentleman had disappeared. he walked down state street to the river and back again, amused by the activity displayed in this busy section of the city. but the time he had allowed himself in chicago had now expired, so he began looking around for some high building from the roof of which he could depart unnoticed. this was not at all difficult, and selecting one of many stores he ascended by an elevator to the top floor and from there mounted an iron stairway leading to the flat roof. as he climbed this stairway he found himself followed by a pleasant looking young man, who also seemed desirous of viewing the city from the roof. annoyed at the inopportune intrusion, rob's first thought was to go back to the street and try another building; but, upon reflecting that the young man was not likely to remain long and he would soon be alone, he decided to wait. so he walked to the edge of the roof and appeared to be interested in the scenery spread out below him. "fine view from here, ain't it?" said the young man, coming up to him and placing his hand carelessly upon the boy's shoulder. "it is, indeed," replied rob, leaning over the edge to look into the street. as he spoke he felt himself gently but firmly pushed from behind and, losing his balance, he plunged headforemost from the roof and whirled through the intervening space toward the sidewalk far below. terrified though he was by the sudden disaster, the boy had still wit enough remaining to reach out his right hand and move the indicator of the machine upon his left wrist to the zero mark. immediately he paused in his fearful flight and presently came to a stop at a distance of less than fifteen feet from the flagstones which had threatened to crush out his life. as he stared downward, trying to recover his self-possession, he saw the old gentleman he had met on the lake front standing just below and looking at him with a half frightened, half curious expression in his eyes. at once rob saw through the whole plot to kill him and thus secure possession of his electrical devices. the young man upon the roof who had attempted to push him to his death was a confederate of the innocent appearing old gentleman, it seemed, and the latter had calmly awaited his fall to the pavement to seize the coveted treasures from his dead body. it was an awful idea, and rob was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life--or ever has been since. but now the shouts of a vast concourse of amazed spectators reached the boy's ears. he remembered that he was suspended in mid-air over the crowded street of a great city, while thousands of wondering eyes were fixed upon him. so he quickly set the indicator to the word "up," and mounted sky-ward until the watchers below could scarcely see him. then he fled away into the east, even yet shuddering with the horror of his recent escape from death and filled with disgust at the knowledge that there were people who held human life so lightly that they were willing to destroy it to further their own selfish ends. "and the demon wants such people as these to possess his electrical devices, which are as powerful to accomplish evil when in wrong hands as they are good!" thought the boy, resentfully. "this would be a fine world if electric tubes and records of events and traveling machines could be acquired by selfish and unprincipled persons!" so unnerved was rob by his recent experiences that he determined to make no more stops. however, he alighted at nightfall in the country, and slept upon the sweet hay in a farmer's barn. but, early the next morning, before any one else was astir, he resumed his journey, and at precisely ten o'clock of this day, which was saturday, he completed his flying trip around the world by alighting unobserved upon the well-trimmed lawn of his own home. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter nineteen_ rob makes a resolution when rob opened the front door he came face to face with nell, who gave an exclamation of joy and threw herself into his arms. "oh, rob!" she cried, "i'm so glad you've come. we have all been dreadfully worried about you, and mother--" "well, what about mother?" inquired the boy, anxiously, as she paused. "she's been very ill, rob; and the doctor said to-day that unless we heard from you soon he would not be able to save her life. the uncertainty about you is killing her." rob stood stock still, all the eager joy of his return frozen into horror at the thought that he had caused his dear mother so much suffering. "where is she, nell?" he asked, brokenly. "in her room. come; i'll take you to her." rob followed with beating heart, and soon was clasped close to his mother's breast. "oh, my boy--my dear boy!" she murmured, and then for very joy and love she was unable to say more, but held him tight and stroked his hair gently and kissed him again and again. rob said little, except to promise that he would never again leave home without her full consent and knowledge. but in his mind he contrasted the love and comfort that now surrounded him with the lonely and unnatural life he had been leading and, boy though he was in years, a mighty resolution that would have been creditable to an experienced man took firm root in his heart. he was obliged to recount all his adventures to his mother and, although he made light of the dangers he had passed through, the story drew many sighs and shudders from her. when luncheon time arrived he met his father, and mr. joslyn took occasion to reprove his son in strong language for running away from home and leaving them filled with anxiety as to his fate. however, when he saw how happy and improved in health his dear wife was at her boy's return, and when he had listened to rob's manly confession of error and expressions of repentance, he speedily forgave the culprit and treated him as genially as ever. of course the whole story had to be repeated, his sisters listening this time with open eyes and ears and admiring their adventurous brother immensely. even mr. joslyn could not help becoming profoundly interested, but he took care not to show any pride he might feel in his son's achievements. when his father returned to his office rob went to his own bed-chamber and sat for a long time by the window in deep thought. when at last he aroused himself, he found it was nearly four o'clock. "the demon will be here presently," he said, with a thrill of aversion, "and i must be in the workshop to receive him." silently he stole to the foot of the attic stairs and then paused to listen. the house seemed very quiet, but he could hear his mother's voice softly humming a cradle-song that she had sung to him when he was a baby. he had been nervous and unsettled and a little fearful until then, but perhaps the sound of his mother's voice gave him courage, for he boldly ascended the stairs and entered the workshop, closing and locking the door behind him. [illustration] [illustration] _chapter twenty_ the unhappy fate of the demon again the atmosphere quickened and pulsed with accumulating vibrations. again the boy found himself aroused to eager expectancy. there was a whirl in the air; a crackling like distant musketry; a flash of dazzling light--and the demon stood before him for the third time. "i give you greetings!" said he, in a voice not unkindly. "good afternoon, mr. demon," answered the boy, bowing gravely. "i see you have returned safely from your trip," continued the apparition, cheerfully, "although at one time i thought you would be unable to escape. indeed, unless i had knocked that tube from the rascally turk's hand as he clambered to the top of the wall, i believe you would have been at the yarkand oasis yet--either dead or alive, as chance might determine." "were you there?" asked rob. "to be sure. and i recovered the tube for you, without which you would have been helpless. but that is the only time i saw fit to interfere in any way." "i'm afraid i did not get a chance to give many hints to inventors or scientists," said rob. "true, and i have deeply regretted it," replied the demon. "but your unusual powers caused more astonishment and consternation than you, perhaps, imagined; for many saw you whom you were too busy to notice. as a result several able electricians are now thinking new thoughts along new lines, and some of them may soon give these or similar inventions to the world." "you are satisfied, then?" asked rob. "as to that," returned the demon, composedly, "i am not. but i have hopes that with the addition of the three marvelous devices i shall present you with to-day you will succeed in arousing so much popular interest in electrical inventions as to render me wholly satisfied with the result of this experiment." rob regarded the brilliant apparition with a solemn face, but made no answer. "no living person," continued the demon, "has ever before been favored with such comforting devices for the preservation and extension of human life as yourself. you seem quite unappreciative, it is true; but since our connection i have come to realize that you are but an ordinary boy, with many boyish limitations; so i do not condemn your foolish actions too harshly." "that is kind of you," said rob. "to prove my friendliness," pursued the demon, "i have brought, as the first of to-day's offerings, this electro-magnetic restorer. you see it is shaped like a thin metal band, and is to be worn upon the brow, clasping at the back of the head. its virtues surpass those of either the fabulous 'fountain of youth,' or the 'elixir of life,' so vainly sought for in past ages. for its wearer will instantly become free from any bodily disease or pain and will enjoy perfect health and vigor. in truth, so great are its powers that even the dead may be restored to life, provided the blood has not yet chilled. in presenting you with this appliance, i feel i am bestowing upon you the greatest blessing and most longed-for boon ever bequeathed to suffering humanity." here he held the slender, dull-colored metallic band toward the boy. "keep it," said rob. the demon started, and gave him an odd look. "what did you say?" he asked. "i told you to keep it," answered rob. "i don't want it." the demon staggered back as if he had been struck. "don't want it!" he gasped. "no; i've had enough of your infernal inventions!" cried the boy, with sudden anger. he unclasped the traveling machine from his wrist and laid it on the table beside the demon. "there's the thing that's responsible for most of my troubles," said he, bitterly. "what right has one person to fly through the air while all his fellow-creatures crawl over the earth's surface? and why should i be cut off from all the rest of the world because you have given me this confounded traveling machine? i didn't ask for it, and i won't keep it a moment longer. give it to some one you hate more than you do me!" the demon stared aghast and turned his glittering eyes wonderingly from rob to the traveling machine and back again, as if to be sure he had heard and seen aright. "and here are your food tablets," continued the boy, placing the box upon the table. "i've only enjoyed one square meal since you gave them to me. they're all right to preserve life, of course, and answer the purpose for which they were made; but i don't believe nature ever intended us to exist upon such things, or we wouldn't have the sense of taste, which enables us to enjoy natural food. as long as i'm a human being i'm going to eat like a human being, so i've consumed my last electrical concentrated food tablet--and don't you forget it!" the demon sank into a chair, nerveless and limp, but still staring fearfully at the boy. "and there's another of your unnatural devices," said rob, putting the automatic record of events upon the table beside the other things. "what right have you to capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? this would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's affairs, wouldn't it? and here is your character marker. nice thing for a decent person to own, isn't it? any one who would take advantage of such a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! oh, i've used them, of course, and i ought to be spanked for having been so mean and underhanded; but i'll never be guilty of looking through them again." the demon's face was frowning and indignant. he made a motion to rise, but thought better of it and sank back in his chair. "as for the garment of protection," resumed the boy, after a pause, "i've worn it for the last time, and here it is, at your service. i'll put the electric tube with it. not that these are such very bad things in themselves, but i'll have none of your magical contrivances. i'll say this, however: if all armies were equipped with electrical tubes instead of guns and swords the world would be spared a lot of misery and unnecessary bloodshed. perhaps they will be, in time; but that time hasn't arrived yet." "you might have hastened it," said the demon, sternly, "if you had been wise enough to use your powers properly." "that's just it," answered rob. "i'm _not_ wise enough. nor is the majority of mankind wise enough to use such inventions as yours unselfishly and for the good of the world. if people were better, and every one had an equal show, it would be different." for some moments the demon sat quietly thinking. finally the frown left his face and he said, with animation: "i have other inventions, which you may use without any such qualms of conscience. the electro-magnetic restorer i offered you would be a great boon to your race, and could not possibly do harm. and, besides this, i have brought you what i call the illimitable communicator. it is a simple electric device which will enable you, wherever you may be, to converse with people in any part of the world, without the use of such crude connections as wires. in fact, you may"---"stop!" cried rob. "it is useless for you to describe it, because i'll have nothing more to do with you or your inventions. i have given them a fair trial, and they've got me into all sorts of trouble and made all my friends miserable. if i was some high-up scientist it would be different; but i'm just a common boy, and i don't want to be anything else." "but, your duty--" began the demon. "my duty i owe to myself and to my family," interrupted rob. "i have never cultivated science, more than to fool with some simple electrical experiments, so i owe nothing to either science or the demon of electricity, so far as i can see." "but consider," remonstrated the demon, rising to his feet and speaking in a pleading voice, "consider the years that must elapse before any one else is likely to strike the master key! and, in the meanwhile, consider my helpless position, cut off from all interest in the world while i have such wonderful inventions on my hands for the benefit of mankind. if you have no love for science or for the advancement of civilization, _do_ have some consideration for your fellow-creatures, and for me!" "if my fellow-creatures would have as much trouble with your electrical inventions as i had, i am doing them a service by depriving them of your devices," said the boy. "as for yourself, i've no fault to find with you, personally. you're a very decent sort of demon, and i've no doubt you mean well; but there's something wrong about our present combination, i'm sure. it isn't natural." the demon made a gesture of despair. "why, oh why did not some intelligent person strike the master key!" he moaned. "that's it!" exclaimed rob. "i believe that's the root of the whole evil." "what is?" inquired the demon, stupidly. "the fact that an intelligent person did not strike the master key. you don't seem to understand. well, i'll explain. you're the demon of electricity, aren't you?" "i am," said the other, drawing himself up proudly. "your mission is to obey the commands of whoever is able to strike the master key of electricity." "that is true." "i once read in a book that all things are regulated by exact laws of nature. if that is so you probably owe your existence to those laws." the demon nodded. "doubtless it was intended that when mankind became intelligent enough and advanced enough to strike the master key, you and all your devices would not only be necessary and acceptable to them, but the world would be prepared for their general use. that seems reasonable, doesn't it?" "perhaps so. yes; it seems reasonable," answered the demon, thoughtfully. "accidents are always liable to happen," continued the boy. "by accident the master key was struck long before the world of science was ready for it--or for you. instead of considering it an accident and paying no attention to it you immediately appeared to me--a mere boy--and offered your services." "i was very anxious to do something," returned the demon, evasively. "you've no idea how stupid it is for me to live invisible and unknown, while all the time i have in my possession secrets of untold benefit to the world." "well, you'll have to keep cool and bide your time," said rob. "the world wasn't made in a minute, and while civilization is going on at a pretty good pace, we're not up to the demon of electricity yet." "what shall i do!" groaned the apparition, wringing his hands miserably; "oh, what shall i do!" "go home and lie down," replied rob, sympathetically. "take it easy and don't get rattled. nothing was ever created without a use, they say; so your turn will come some day, sure! i'm sorry for you, old fellow, but it's all your own fault." "you are right!" exclaimed the demon, striding up and down the room, and causing thereby such a crackling of electricity in the air that rob's hair became rigid enough to stand on end. "you are right, and i must wait--wait--wait--patiently and silently--until my bonds are loosed by intelligence rather than chance! it is a dreary fate. but i must wait--i must wait--i must wait!" "i'm glad you've come to your senses," remarked rob, drily. "so, if you've nothing more to say--" "no! i have nothing more to say. there _is_ nothing more to say. you and i are two. we should never have met!" retorted the demon, showing great excitement. "oh, i didn't seek your acquaintance," said rob. "but i've tried to treat you decently, and i've no fault to find with you except that you forgot you were a slave and tried to be a master." the demon did not reply. he was busily forcing the various electrical devices that rob had relinquished into the pockets of his fiery jacket. finally he turned with an abrupt movement. "good-by!" he cried. "when mortal eyes next behold me they will be those of one fit to command my services! as for you, your days will be passed in obscurity and your name be unknown to fame. good-by,--forever!" the room filled with a flash of white light so like a sheet of lightning that the boy went reeling backwards, half stunned and blinded by its dazzling intensity. when he recovered himself the demon of electricity had disappeared. * * * * * rob's heart was very light as he left the workshop and made his way down the attic stairs. "some people might think i was a fool to give up those electrical inventions," he reflected; "but i'm one of those persons who know when they've had enough. it strikes me the fool is the fellow who can't learn a lesson. i've learned mine, all right. it's no fun being a century ahead of the times!" [illustration] transcriber's note: obvious printer errors have been corrected. otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact. transcriber's note: 1. small cap has been tagged with = sign. 2. when there were inconsistencies in hyphenation, the less frquent variant was replaced with the most frequent, e.g. "ship-board" was changed to "shipboard". [illustration] =in search of a son.= =by= =uncle lawrence,= =author of "young folks' whys and wherefores," etc.= [illustration] =philadelphia:= =j. b. lippincott company.= 1890. copyright, 1889, by j. b. lippincott company. table of contents. page chapter i. the despatch 9 chapter ii. two friends 18 chapter iii. monsieur roger 26 chapter iv. monsieur roger's story 32 chapter v. fire at sea 39 chapter vi. miss miette's fortune 46 chapter vii. vacation 53 chapter viii. a drawing lesson 59 chapter ix. the tower of heurtebize 66 chapter x. physical science 75 chapter xi. the smoke which falls 84 chapter xii. at the centre of the earth 92 chapter xiii. why lead is heavier than cork 99 chapter xiv. the air-pump 104 chapter xv. drops of rain and hammer of water 114 chapter xvi. amusing physics 119 chapter xvii. why the moon does not fall 127 chapter xviii. a mysterious resemblance 138 chapter xix. the fixed idea 146 chapter xx. fire 152 chapter xxi. saved 161 chapter xxii. george! george! 167 chapter xxiii. a proof? 178 chapter xxiv. the air and the lungs 184 chapter xxv. oxygen 190 chapter xxvi. why water puts out fire 200 chapter xxvii. paul or george? 214 chapter xxviii. my father 222 [illustration] in search of a son. chapter i. the despatch. in the great silence of the fields a far-off clock struck seven. the sun, an august sun, had been up for some time, lighting up and warming the left wing of the old french château. the tall old chestnut-trees of the park threw the greater part of the right wing into the shade, and in this pleasant shade was placed a bench of green wood, chairs, and a stone table. the door of the château opened, and a gentleman lightly descended the threshold. he was in his slippers and dressing-robe, and under the dressing-robe you could see his night-gown. after having thrown a satisfied look upon the beauty of nature, he approached the green seat, and seated himself before the stone table. an old servant came up and said,-"what will you take this morning, sir?" and as the gentleman, who did not seem to be hungry, was thinking what he wanted, the servant added,-"coffee, soup, tea?" "no," said the gentleman; "give me a little vermouth and seltzer water." the servant retired, and soon returned with a tray containing the order. the gentleman poured out a little vermouth and seltzer water, then rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and, leaning back upon the rounded seat of the green bench, looked with pleasure at the lovely scene around him. on the left, in a small lake framed in the green lawn, was reflected one wing of the old château, as in a mirror. the bricks, whose colors were lighted up by the sun, seemed to be burning in the midst of the water. the large lawn began at the end of a gravelled walk, and seemed to be without limit, for the park merged into cultivated ground, and verdant hills rose over hills. there was not a cloud in the sky. the gentleman, after gazing for some minutes around him, got up and opened the door of the château. he called out, "peter!" in a subdued voice, fearing, no doubt, to waken some sleeper. the servant ran out at once. "well, peter," said the gentleman, "have the papers come?" "no, sir; they have not yet come. that surprises me. if you wish, sir, i will go and meet the postman." and peter was soon lost to sight in a little shady alley which descended into the high-road. in a few moments he reappeared, followed by a man. "sir," said he, "i did not meet the letter-carrier; but here is a man with a telegraphic despatch." the man advanced, and, feeling in a bag suspended at his side, he said,-"monsieur dalize, i believe?" "yes, my friend." "well, here is a telegram for you which arrived at sens last night." "a telegram?" said monsieur dalize, knitting his brows, his eyes showing that he was slightly surprised, and almost displeased, as if he had learned that unexpected news was more often bad news than good. nevertheless, he took the paper, unfolded it, and looked at once at the signature. "ah, from roger," he said to himself. and then he began to read the few lines of the telegram. as he read, his face brightened, surprise followed uneasiness, and then a great joy took the place of discontent. he said to the man,-"you can carry back an answer, can you not?" "yes, sir." "well, peter, bring me pen and ink at once." peter brought pen, ink, and paper, and monsieur dalize wrote his telegram. he gave it to the man, and, feeling through his pockets, pulled out a louis. "here, my good fellow," said he: "that will pay for the telegram and will pay you for your trouble." the man looked at the coin in the hollow of his hand in an embarrassed way, fearing that he had not exactly understood. "come, now,--run," said monsieur dalize; "good news such as you have brought me cannot be paid for too dearly; only hurry." "ah, yes, sir, i will hurry," said the man; "and thank you very much, thank you very much." and, in leaving, he said to himself, as he squeezed the money in his hand,-"i should be very glad to carry to him every day good news at such a price as that." when he was alone, monsieur dalize reread the welcome despatch. then he turned around, and looked towards a window on the second floor of the château, whose blinds were not yet opened. from this window his looks travelled back to the telegram, which seemed to rejoice his heart and to give him cause for thought. he was disturbed in his reverie by the noise of two blinds opening against the wall. he rose hastily, and could not withhold the exclamation,-"at last!" "oh, my friend," said the voice of a lady, in good-natured tones. "are you reproaching me for waking up too late?" "it is no reproach at all, my dear wife," said monsieur dalize, "as you were not well yesterday evening." "ah, but this morning i am entirely well," said madame dalize, resting her elbows on the sill of the window. "so much the better," cried mr. dalize, joyfully, "and again so much the better." "what light-heartedness!" said madame dalize, smiling. "that is because i am happy, do you know, very happy." "and the cause of this joy?" "it all lies in this little bit of paper," answered monsieur dalize, pointing to the telegram towards the window. "and what does this paper say?" "it says,--now listen,--it says that my old friend, my best friend, has returned to france, and that in a few hours he will be here with us." madame dalize was silent for an instant, then, suddenly remembering, she said,-"roger,--are you speaking of roger?" "the same." "ah, my friend," said madame dalize, "now i understand the joy you expressed." then she added, as she closed the window, "i will dress myself and be down in a moment." hardly had the window of madame dalize's room closed than a little girl of some ten years, with a bright and pretty face surrounded by black curly hair, came in sight from behind the château. as she caught sight of monsieur dalize, she ran towards him. "good-morning, papa," she said, throwing herself into his open arms. "good-morning, my child," said monsieur dalize, taking the little girl upon his knees and kissing her over and over again. "ah, papa," said the child, "you seem very happy this morning." "and you have noticed that too, miette?" "why, of course, papa; any one can see that in your face." "well, i am very happy." miss mariette dalize, who was familiarly called miette, for short, looked at her father without saying anything, awaiting an explanation. monsieur dalize understood her silence. "you want to know what it is that makes me so happy?" "yes, papa." "well, then, it is because i am going to-day to see one of my friends,--my oldest friend, my most faithful friend,--whom i have not seen for ten long years." [illustration] monsieur dalize stopped for a moment. "indeed," he continued, "you cannot understand what i feel, my dear little miette." "and why not, papa?" "because you do not know the man of whom i speak." miette looked at her father, and said, in a serious tone,-"you say that i don't know your best friend. come! is it not monsieur roger?" it was now the father's turn to look at his child, and, with pleased surprise, he said,-"what? you know?" "why, papa, i have so often heard you talk to mamma of your friend roger that i could not be mistaken." "that is true; you are right." "then," continued miss miette, "it is mr. roger who is going to arrive here?" "it is he," said monsieur dalize, joyously. [illustration] but miss miette did not share her father's joy. she was silent for a moment, as if seeking to remember something very important, then she lowered her eyes, and murmured, sadly,-"the poor gentleman." [illustration] chapter ii. two friends. the château of sainte-gemme, which was some miles from the village of sens, had belonged to monsieur dalize for some years. it was in this old château, which had often been restored, but which still preserved its dignified appearance, that monsieur dalize and his family had come to pass the summer. monsieur dalize had become the owner of the property of sainte-gemme on his retirement from business. he came out at the beginning of every may, and did not return to paris until november. during august and september the family was complete, for then it included albert dalize, who was on vacation from college. with his wife and his children, albert and mariette, monsieur dalize was happy, but sometimes there was a cloud upon this happiness. the absence of a friend with whom monsieur dalize had been brought up, and the terrible sorrows which this friend had experienced, cast an occasional gloom over the heart of the owner of sainte-gemme. this friend was called roger la morlière. in the dalize family he was called simply roger. he was a distinguished chemist. at the beginning of his life he had been employed by a manufacturer of chemicals in saint-denis, and the close neighborhood to paris enabled him frequently to see his friend dalize, who had succeeded his father in a banking-house. later, some flattering offers had drawn him off to northern france, to the town of lille. in this city roger had found a charming young girl, whom he loved and whose hand he asked in marriage. monsieur dalize was one of the witnesses to this marriage, which seemed to begin most happily, although neither party was wealthy. monsieur dalize had already been married at this time, and husband and wife had gone to lille to be present at the union of their friend roger. then a terrible catastrophe had occurred. roger had left france and gone to america. ten years had now passed. the two friends wrote each other frequently. monsieur dalize's letters were full of kindly counsels, of encouragement, of consolation. roger's, though they were affectionate, showed that he was tired of life, that his heart was in despair. still, monsieur dalize, in receiving the telegram which announced the return of this well-beloved friend, had only thought of the joy of seeing him again. the idea that this friend, whom he had known once so happy, would return to him broken by grief had not at first presented itself to his mind. now he began to reflect. an overwhelming sorrow had fallen upon the man, and for ten years he had shrouded himself in the remembrance of this sorrow. what great changes must he have gone through! how different he would look from the roger he had known! monsieur dalize thought over these things, full of anxiety, his eyes fixed upon the shaded alley in front of him. miette had softly slipped down from her father's knees, and, seating herself by his side upon the bench, she remained silent, knowing that she had better say nothing at such a time. light steps crunched the gravel, and madame dalize approached. miss miette had seen her mother coming, but monsieur dalize had seen nothing and heard nothing. in great astonishment madame dalize asked, addressing herself rather to her daughter than to her husband,-"what is the matter?" miss miette made a slight motion, as if to say that she had better not answer; but this time monsieur dalize had heard. he lifted sad eyes to his wife's face. [illustration] "now, where has all the joy of the morning fled, my friend?" asked madame dalize. "and why this sudden sadness?" "because this child"--and monsieur dalize passed his hand through his daughter's thick curls--"has reminded me of the sorrows of roger." "miette?" demanded madame dalize. "what has she said to you?" "she simply said, when i spoke to her of roger, 'the poor gentleman.' and she was right,--the poor gentleman, poor roger." "undoubtedly," answered madame dalize; "but ten years have passed since that terrible day, and time heals many wounds." "that is true; but i know roger, and i know that he has forgotten nothing." "of course, forgetfulness would not be easy to him over there, in that long, solitary exile; but once he has returned here to us, near his family, his wounds will have a chance to heal; and, in any case," added madame dalize, taking her husband's hand, "he will have at hand two doctors who are profoundly devoted." "yes, my dear wife, you are right; and if he can be cured, we will know how to cure him." madame dalize took the telegram from her husband's hands, and read this: "=monsieur dalize=, château de sainte-gemme, at sens: "=friend=,--i am on my way home. learn at paris that you are at sainte-gemme. may i come there at once?" "=roger.=" "and you answered him?" "i answered, 'we are awaiting you with the utmost impatience. take the first train.'" "will that first train be the eleven-o'clock train?" "no; i think that roger will not be able to take the express. the man with the telegram will not have reached sens soon enough, even if he hurried, as he promised he would. then, the time taken to send the despatch, to receive it in paris, and to take it to roger's address would make it more than eleven. so our friend will have to take the next train; and you cannot count upon his being here before five o'clock." "oh!" cried miss miette, in a disappointed tone. "what is the matter, my child?" asked monsieur dalize. "why, i think----" "what do you think?" "well, papa," miss miette at last said, "i think that the railroads and the telegrams are far too slow." monsieur dalize could not suppress a smile at hearing this exclamation. he turned to his wife, and said,-"see, how hurried is this younger generation. they think that steam and electricity are too slow." and, turning around to his daughter, he continued,-"what would you like to have?" "why," answered the girl, "i would like to have monsieur roger here at once." her wish was to be fulfilled sooner than she herself could foresee. [illustration] [illustration] chapter iii. monsieur roger. monsieur and madame dalize went back into the château, and soon reappeared in walking-costumes. miette, who was playing in the shadows of the great chestnut-trees, looked up in surprise. "you are going out walking without me?" said she. "no, my child," answered madame dalize, "we are not going out to take a walk at all; but we have to go and make our excuses to monsieur and madame sylvestre at the farm, because we shall not be able to dine with them this evening, as we had agreed." "take me with you," said miette. "no; the road is too long and too fatiguing for your little legs." "are you going on foot?" "certainly," said monsieur dalize. "we must keep the horses fresh to send them down to meet roger at the station." miss miette could not help respecting so good a reason, and she resisted no longer. when left alone, she began seriously to wonder what she should do during the absence of her parents, which would certainly last over an hour. an idea came to her. she went into the château, passed into the drawing-room, took down a large album of photographs which was on the table, and carried it into her room. she did not have to search long. on the first page was the portrait of her mother, on the next was that of herself, miette, and that of her brother albert. the third page contained two portraits of men. one of these portraits was that of her father, the other was evidently the one that she was in search of, for she looked at it attentively. "it was a long time ago," she said to herself, "that this photograph was made,--ten years ago; but i am sure that i shall recognize monsieur roger all the same when he returns." at this very moment miette heard the sound of a carriage some distance off. surely the carriage was driving through the park. she listened with all her ears. soon the gravelled road leading up to the château was crunched under the wheels of the carriage. miette then saw an old-fashioned cab, which evidently had been hired at some hotel in sens. the cab stopped before the threshold. miette could not see so far from her window. she left the album upon her table, and ran down-stairs, full of curiosity. in the vestibule she met old peter, and asked him who it was. "it is a gentleman whom i don't know," said peter. "where is he?" "i asked him into the parlor." miette approached lightly on tiptoe to the door of the parlor, which was open, wishing to see without being seen. she expected she would find in this visitor some country neighbor. the gentleman was standing, looking out of the glass windows. from where she was miette could see his profile. she made a gesture, as if to say, "i don't know him;" and she was going to withdraw as slowly as possible, with her curiosity unsatisfied, when the gentleman turned around. miette now saw him directly in front of her in the full light. his beard and his hair were gray, his forehead was lightly wrinkled on the temples, a sombre expression saddened his features. his dress was elegant. he walked a few steps in the parlor, coming towards the door, but he had not yet seen miette. in her great surprise she had quickly drawn herself back, but she still followed the visitor with her eyes. at first she had doubted now she was sure; she could not be mistaken. when the gentleman had reached the middle of the parlor, miette could contain herself no longer. she showed herself in the doorway and advanced towards the visitor. he stopped, surprised at this pretty apparition. miette came up to him and looked him in the eyes. then, entirely convinced, holding out her arms towards the visitor, she said, softly,-"monsieur roger!" the gentleman in his turn looked with surprise at the pretty little girl who had saluted him by name. he cast a glance towards the door, and, seeing that she was alone, more surprised than ever, he looked at her long and silently. miette, abashed by this scrutiny, drew back a little, and said, with hesitation,-"tell me: you are surely monsieur roger?" "yes, i am indeed monsieur roger," said the visitor, at last, in a voice full of emotion. and, with a kindly smile, he added, "how did you come to recognize me, miss miette?" hearing her own name pronounced in this unexpected manner, miss miette was struck dumb with astonishment. at the end of a minute, she stammered,-"why, sir, you know me, then, also?" "yes, my child; i have known and loved you for a long time." and monsieur roger caught miette up in his arms and kissed her tenderly. "yes," he continued, "i know you, my dear child. your father has often spoken of you in his letters; and has he not sent me also several of your photographs when i asked for them?" "why, that is funny!" cried miette. but she suddenly felt that the word was not dignified enough. "that is very strange," she said: "for i, too, recognized you from your photograph; and it was only five minutes ago, at the very moment when you arrived, that i was looking at it, up-stairs in my room. shall i go up and find the album?" monsieur roger held her back. "no, my child," said he, "remain here by me, and tell me something about your father and your mother." miette looked up at the clock. "papa and mamma may return at any moment. they will talk to you themselves a great deal better than i can. all that i can tell you is that they are going to be very, very glad; but they did not expect you until the evening. how does it happen that you are here already?" "because i took the first train,--the 6.30." "but your telegram?" "yes, i sent a despatch last night on arriving at paris, but i did not have the patience to wait for an answer. i departed, hoping they would receive me anyway with pleasure; and i already see that i was not mistaken." "no, monsieur roger," answered miette, "you were not mistaken. you are going to be very happy here, very happy. there, now! i see papa and mamma returning." the door of the vestibule had just been opened. they could see peter exchanging some words with his master and mistress. then hurried steps were heard, and in a moment monsieur dalize was in the arms of his friend roger. miss miette, who had taken her mamma by the arm, obliged her to bend down, and said in her ear,-"i love him already, our friend roger." [illustration] [illustration] chapter iv. monsieur roger's story. the evening had come, the evening of that happy day when the two friends, after ten years of absence, had come together again. monsieur roger had known from the first that he would find loving and faithful hearts just as he had left them. they were all sitting, after dinner, in a large vestibule, whose windows, this beautiful evening in autumn, opened out upon the sleeping park. for some moments the conversation had fallen into an embarrassing silence. every one looked at monsieur roger. they thought that he might speak, that he might recount the terrible event which had broken his life; but they did not like to ask him anything about it. monsieur roger was looking at the star-sprinkled sky, and seemed to be dreaming, but in his deeper self he had guessed the thoughts of his friends and understood he ought to speak. he passed his hand over his forehead to chase away a painful impression, and with a resolute, but low and soft voice, he said,-"i see, my friends, my dear friends, i see that you expect from me the story of my sorrow." monsieur and madame dalize made a sight gesture of negation. "yes," continued monsieur roger, "i know very well that you do not wish it through idle curiosity, that you fear to reawaken my griefs; but to whom can i tell my story, if not to you? i owe it to you as a sacred debt, and, if i held my tongue, it seems to me a dark spot would come upon our friendship. you know what a lovely and charming wife i married. her only fault--a fault only in the eyes of the world--was that she was poor. i had the same fault. when my son george came into the world i suddenly was filled with new ambitions. i wished, both for his sake and for his mother's, to amass wealth, and i worked feverishly and continuously in my laboratory. i had a problem before me, and at last i succeeded in solving it. i had discovered a new process for treating silver ores. fear nothing: i am not going to enter into technical details; but it is necessary that i should explain to you the reason which made me"--here monsieur paused, and then continued, with profound sadness--"which made _us_ go to america. silver ores in most of the mines of north america offer very complex combinations in the sulphur, bromide, chloride of lime, and iodine, which i found mixed up with the precious metal,--that is to say, with the silver. it is necessary to free the silver from all these various substances. now, the known processes had not succeeded in freeing the silver in all its purity. there was always a certain quantity of the silver which remained alloyed with foreign matters, and that much silver was consequently lost. the processes which i had discovered made it possible to obtain the entire quantity of silver contained in the ore. not a fraction of the precious metal escaped. an english company owning some silver-mines in texas heard of my discovery, and made me an offer. i was to go to texas for ten years. the enterprise was to be at my own risk, but they would give me ten per cent on all the ore that i saved. i felt certain to succeed. my wife, full of faith in me, urged me to accept. what were we risking? a modest situation in a chemical laboratory, which i should always be able to obtain again. over there on the other side of the atlantic there were millions in prospect; and if i did not succeed from the beginning, my wife, who drew and painted better than an amateur,--as well as most painters, indeed,--and who had excellent letters of recommendation, would give drawing-lessons in new orleans, where the company had its head-quarters. we decided to go; but first we came to paris. i wished to say good-by to you and to show you my son, my poor little george, of whom i was so proud, and whom you did not know. he was then two and one-half years old. my decision had been taken so suddenly that i could not announce it to you. when we arrived in paris, we learned that you were in nice. i wrote to you,--don't you remember?" said monsieur roger, turning to monsieur dalize. [illustration] "yes, my friend; i have carefully kept that letter of farewell, full of hope and of enthusiasm." "we were going to embark from liverpool on the steamer which would go directly to new orleans. the steamer was called the britannic." monsieur roger stopped speaking, full of emotion at this recollection. at the end of a long silence he again took up the thread of his story. "the first days of the journey we had had bad weather. and i had passed them almost entirely in our state-room with my poor wife and my little boy, who were very sea-sick. on the tenth day (it was the 14th of december) the weather cleared up, and, notwithstanding a brisk wind from the north-east, we were on the deck after dinner. the night had come; the stars were already out, though every now and then hidden under clouds high up in the sky, which fled quickly out of sight. we were in the archipelago of bahama, not far from florida. "'one day more and we shall be in port,' i said to my wife and to george, pointing in the direction of new orleans. "my wife, full of hope,--too full, alas! poor girl,--said to me, with a smile, as she pointed to george,-"'and this fortune that we have come so far to find, but which we shall conquer without doubt, this fortune will all be for this little gentleman.' "george, whom i had just taken upon my knees, guessed that we were speaking of him, and he threw his little arms around my neck and touched my face with his lips." [illustration] [illustration] chapter v. fire at sea. "at this moment, a moment that i shall never forget, i heard a sudden crackling noise, strange and unexpected, coming from a point seemingly close to me. i turned around and saw nothing. nevertheless, i still heard that sound in my ears. it was a strange sound. one might have thought that an immense punch had been lighted in the interior of the ship, and that the liquid, stirred up by invisible hands, was tossed up and down, hissing and crackling. the quick movement of my head had arrested george in the midst of his caresses. now he looked up at me with astonished eyes. the uneasiness which i felt in spite of the absence of any cause must have appeared upon my face, for my wife, standing beside me, leaned over to ask, in a subdued voice,-"'what is the matter?' "i think i answered, 'nothing.' but my mind had dwelt upon an awful danger,--that danger of which the most hardened seamen speak with a beating heart,--fire at sea. alas! my fears were to be realized. from one of the hatches there suddenly leaped up a tongue of flame. at the same instant we heard the awful cry, 'fire!' to add to our distress, the wind had increased, and had become so violent that it fanned the flames with terrible rapidity, and had enveloped the state-rooms in the rear, whence the passengers were running, trembling and crying. in a few minutes the back of the ship was all on fire. my wife had snatched george from my arms, and held him closely against her breast, ready to save him or die with him. the captain, in the midst of the panic of the passengers, gave his orders. the boats were being lowered into the sea,--those at least which remained, for two had already been attacked by the fire. accident threw the captain between me and my wife at the very moment when he was crying out to his men to allow none but the women and children in the boats. he recognized me. i had been introduced to him by a common friend, and he said, in a voice choked with emotion, pointing to my wife and my son,-"'embrace them!' [illustration] "then he tore them both from my arms and pushed and carried them to the last boat, which was already too full. night had come. with the rise of the wind, clouds had collected, obscuring the sky. by the light of the fire i saw for the last time--yes, for the last time--my wife and my child in the boat, shaken by an angry sea. both were looking towards me. did they see me also for the last time? and in my agony i cried out, 'george! george!' with a voice so loud that my son must surely have heard that last cry. yes, he must have heard it. i stood rooted to the spot, looking without seeing anything, stupefied by this hopeless sorrow, not even feeling the intense heat of the flames, which were coming towards me. but the captain saw me. he ran towards me, drew me violently back, and threw me in the midst of the men, who were beginning a determined struggle against the fire which threatened to devour them. the instinct of life, the hope to see again my loved ones, gave me courage. i did as the others. some of the passengers applied themselves to the chain; the pumps set in motion threw masses of water into the fire; but it seemed impossible to combat it, for it was alcohol which was burning. they had been obliged to repack part of the hold, where there were a number of demijohns of alcohol which the bad weather the first days had displaced. during the work one of these vast stone bottles had fallen and broken. as ill luck would have it, the alcohol descended in a rain upon a lamp in the story below, and the alcohol had taken fire. so i had not been mistaken when the first sound had made me think of the crackling of a punch. we worked with an energy which can only be found in moments of this sort. the captain inspired us with confidence. at one time we had hope. the flames had slackened, or at least we supposed so; but in fact they had only gone another way, and reached the powder-magazine. a violent explosion succeeded, and one of the masts was hurled into the sea. were we lost? no; for the engineer had had a sudden inspiration. he had cut the pipes, and immediately directed upon the flames torrents of steam from the engine. a curtain of vapor lifted itself up between us and the fire, a curtain which the flames could not penetrate. then the pumps worked still more effectually. we were saved." [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] chapter vi. miss miette's fortune. "the rudder no longer guided us. what a night we passed! we made a roll-call: how many were wanting? and the boats which contained our wives, our children,--had those boats found a refuge? had they reached land anywhere? the ocean was still rough, and, notwithstanding the captain's words of hope, i was in despair,--anticipating the sorrow that was to overwhelm me. every one remained on deck. at daybreak a new feeling of sadness seized us at the sight of our steamer, deformed and blackened by the fire. the deck for more than forty yards was nothing but a vast hole, at the bottom of which were lying, pell-mell, half-consumed planks and beams, windlasses blackened by fire, bits of wood, and formless masses of metal over which the tongues of flame had passed. notwithstanding all this the steamer was slowly put in motion. we were able to reach havana. there we hoped we might hear some news. and we did hear news,--but what news! a sailing-vessel had found on the morrow of the catastrophe a capsized boat on the coast of the island of andros, where the boat had evidently been directed. a sailor who had tied himself to the boat, and whom they at first thought dead, was recalled to life, and told his story of the fire. from havana, where the sailing-vessel had stopped, a rescuing-party was at once sent out. they found and brought back with them the débris of boats broken against the rocks and also many dead bodies. these were all laid out in a large room, where the remaining passengers of the britannic were invited. we had to count the dead; we had to identify them. with what agony, with what cruel heart-beats i entered the room. i closed my eyes. i tried to persuade myself that i would not find there the beings that were so dear to me. i wished to believe that they had been saved, my dear ones, while my other companions in misfortune were all crying and sobbing. at last i opened my eyes, and, the strength of my vision being suddenly increased to a wonderful degree, i saw that in this long line of bodies there was no child. that was my first thought. may my poor wife forgive me! she also was not there; but it was not long before she came. that very evening a rescuing-party brought back her corpse with the latest found." monsieur roger ceased speaking. he looked at his friends, monsieur and madame dalize, who were silently weeping; then his eyes travelled to miette. she was not crying; her look, sad but astonished, interested, questioned monsieur roger. he thought, "she cannot understand sorrow, this little girl, who has not had any trials." and the eyes of miette seemed to answer, "but george? george? did they not find him?" at last monsieur roger understood this thought in the mind of miette without any necessity on her part to express it by her lips, and, as if he were answering to a verbal question, he said, shaking his head,-"no, they never found him." miette expected this answer; then she too began to weep. monsieur dalize repeated the last words of monsieur roger. "they did not find him! i do not dare to ask you, my dear friend, if you preserve any hope." "yes, i hope. i forced myself to hope for a long time. but the ocean kept my child in the same way that it buried in its depths many other victims of this catastrophe, for it was that very hope that made me remain in america. i might have returned to france and given up my engagements; but there i was closer to news, if there were any; and, besides, in work, in hard labor to which i intended to submit my body, i expected to find, if not forgetfulness, at least that weariness which dampens the spirit. i remained ten years in texas, and i returned to-day without ever having forgotten that terrible night." [illustration] there was a silence. then monsieur dalize, wishing to create a diversion, asked,-"how does it happen that you did not announce to me beforehand your return. it was not until i received your telegram this morning that we learned this news which made us so happy. i had no reason to expect that your arrival would be so sudden. did you not say that you were to remain another six months, and perhaps a year, in texas?" "yes; and i did then think that i should be forced to prolong my stay for some months. my contract was ended, my work was done. i was free, but the mining-company wished to retain me. they wanted me to sign a new contract, and to this end they invented all sorts of pretexts to keep me where i was. as i did not wish to go to law against the people through whom i had made my fortune, i determined to wait, hoping that my patience would tire them out; and that, in fact, is what happened. the company bowed before my decision. this good news reached me on the eve of the departure of a steamer. i did not hesitate for a moment; i at once took ship. i might indeed have given you notice on the way, but i wished to reserve to myself the happiness of surprising you. it was not until i reached paris that i decided to send you a despatch; and even then i did not have the strength to await your reply." "dear roger!" said monsieur dalize. "and then your process, your discovery, succeeded entirely?" "yes, i have made a fortune,--a large fortune. i have told you that the enterprise was at my risk, but that the company would give me ten per cent. on all the ore that i would succeed in saving. now, the mines of texas used to produce four million dollars' worth a year. thanks to my process, they produce nearly a million more. in ten years you can well see what was my portion." "splendid!" said monsieur dalize; "it represents a sum of----" madame dalize interrupted her husband. "miette," said she, "cannot you do that little sum for us, my child?" miette wiped her eyes and ceased crying. her mother's desire had been reached. the little girl took a pencil, and, after making her mother repeat the question to her, put down some figures upon a sheet of paper. after a moment she said, not without hesitation, for the sum appeared to her enormous,-"why! it is a million dollars that monsieur roger has made!" "exactly," said monsieur roger; "and, my dear child, you have, without knowing it, calculated pretty closely the fortune which you will receive from me as your wedding portion." monsieur and madame dalize looked up with astonishment. miette gazed at monsieur roger without understanding. "my dear friends," said roger, turning to monsieur and madame dalize, "you will not refuse me the pleasure of giving my fortune to miss miette. i have no one else in the world; and does not mariette represent both of you? where would my money be better placed?" and turning towards miss miette, he said to her,-"yes, my child, that million will be yours on your marriage." miette looked from her mother to her father, not knowing whether she ought to accept, and seriously embarrassed. with a sweet smile, monsieur roger added,-"and so, you see, you will be able to choose a husband that you like." then, quietly and without hesitation, miss miette said,-"it will be paul solange." [illustration] [illustration] chapter vii. vacation. monsieur and madame dalize could not help smiling in listening to this frank declaration of their daughter: "it will be paul solange." monsieur roger smiled in his turn, and said,-"what! has miss miette already made her choice?" "it is an amusing bit of childishness," answered madame dalize, "as you see. but, really, miss miette, although she teases him often, has a very kindly feeling for our friend paul solange." "and who is this happy little mortal?" asked monsieur roger. "a friend of albert's," said monsieur dalize. "albert, your son?" said monsieur roger, to whom this name and this word were always painful. then he added,-"i should like very much to see him, your son." "you shall soon see him, my dear roger," answered monsieur dalize. "vacation begins to-morrow morning, and to-morrow evening albert will be at sainte-gemme." "with paul?" asked miss miette. "why, certainly," said madame dalize, laughing; "with your friend paul solange." monsieur roger asked,-"how old is albert at present?" "in his thirteenth year," said monsieur dalize. monsieur roger remained silent. he was thinking that his little george, if he had lived, would also be big now, and, like the son of monsieur dalize, would be in his thirteenth year. next day the horses were harnessed, and all four went down to the station to meet the five-o'clock train. when albert and paul jumped out from the train, and had kissed monsieur and madame dalize and miss miette, they looked with some surprise at monsieur roger, whom they did not know. "albert," said monsieur dalize, showing monsieur roger to his son, "why don't you salute our friend roger?" "is this monsieur roger?" cried albert, and the tone of his voice showed that his father had taught him to know and to love the man who now, with his eyes full of tears, was pressing him to his heart. "and you too, paul, don't you want to embrace our friend?" said monsieur dalize. [illustration] "yes, sir," answered paul solange, with a sad and respectful gravity, which struck monsieur roger and at once called up his affection. on the way, monsieur roger, who was looking with emotion upon the two young people, but whose eyes were particularly fixed upon paul, said, in a low voice, to monsieur dalize,-"they are charming children." "and it is especially paul whom you think charming; acknowledge it," answered monsieur dalize, in the same tone. "why should paul please me more than albert?" asked monsieur roger. "ah, my poor friend," replied monsieur dalize, "because the father of albert is here and the father of paul is far away." monsieur dalize was right. monsieur roger, without wishing it, had felt his sympathies attracted more strongly to this child, who was, for the time being, fatherless. he bent over to monsieur dalize, and asked,-"where is paul's father?" "in martinique, where he does a big business in sugar-cane and coffee. monsieur solange was born in france, and he decided that his son should come here to study." "i can understand that," replied monsieur roger; "but what a sorrow this exile must cause the mother of this child!" "paul has no mother: she died several years ago." "poor boy!" murmured monsieur roger, and his growing friendship became all the stronger. that evening, after dinner, when coffee was being served, miss miette, who was in a very good humor, was seized with the desire to tease her little friend paul. "say, paul," she asked, from one end of the table to the other, "how many prizes did you take this year?" paul, knowing that an attack was coming, began to smile, and answered, good-naturedly,-"you know very well, you naughty girl. you have already asked me, and i have told you." "ah, that is true," said miette, with affected disdain: "you took one prize,--one poor little prize,--bah!" then, after a moment, she continued,-"that is not like my brother: he took several prizes, _he_ did,--a prize for latin, a prize for history, a prize for mathematics, a prize for physical science, and a prize for chemistry. well, well! and you,--you only took one prize; and that is the same one you took last year!" "yes," said paul, without minding his friend's teasing; "but last year i took only the second prize, and this year i took the first." "you have made some progress," said miss miette, sententiously. monsieur roger had been interested in the dialogue. "may i ask what prize master paul solange has obtained?" "a poor little first prize for drawing only," answered miette. "ah, you love drawing?" said monsieur roger, looking at paul. but it was miette who answered: "he loves nothing else." monsieur dalize now, in his turn, took up the conversation, and said,-"the truth is that our friend paul has a passion for drawing. history and latin please him a little, but for chemistry and the physical sciences he has no taste at all." monsieur roger smiled. "you are wrong," replied monsieur dalize, "to excuse by your smile paul's indifference to the sciences.--and as to you, paul, you would do well to take as your example monsieur roger, who would not have his fortune if he had not known chemistry and the physical sciences. in our day the sciences are indispensable." miss miette, who had shoved herself a little away from the table, pouting slightly, heard these words, and came to the defence of the one whom she had begun by attacking. she opened a book full of pictures, and advanced with it to her father. "now, papa," she said, with a look of malice in her eyes, "did the gentleman who made that drawing have to know anything about chemistry or the physical sciences?" [illustration] [illustration] chapter viii. a drawing lesson. for a moment monsieur dalize was disconcerted, and knew not what to say in answer. happily, monsieur roger came to his aid. he took the book from miette's hands, looked at the engraving, and said, quietly,-"why, certainly, my dear young friend, the gentleman who made that drawing ought to know something about chemistry and physical science." "how so?" said miette, astonished. "why, if he did not know the laws of physical science and of chemistry, he has, none the less, and perhaps even without knowing it himself, availed himself of the results of chemistry and physical science." miette took the book back again, looked at the drawing with care, and said,-"still, there are not in this drawing instruments or apparatus, or machines such as i have seen in my brother's books." "but," answered monsieur roger, smiling, "it is not necessary that you should see instruments and apparatus and machines, as you say, to be in the presence of physical phenomena; and i assure you, my dear child, that this drawing which is under our eyes is connected with chemistry and physical science." miette now looked up at monsieur roger to see if he was not making fun of her. monsieur roger translated this dumb interrogation, and said,-"come, now! what does this drawing represent? tell me yourself." "why, it represents two peasants,--a man and a woman,--who have returned home wet in the storm, and who are warming and drying themselves before the fire." "it is, in fact, exactly that." "very well, sir?" asked miette. and in this concise answer she meant to say, "in all that, what do you see that is connected with chemistry or physical science?" "very well," continued monsieur roger; "do you see this light mist, this vapor, which is rising from the cloak that the peasant is drying before the fire?" "yes." "well, that is physical science," said monsieur roger. [illustration] "how do you mean?" asked miette. "i will explain in a moment. let us continue to examine the picture. do you see that a portion of the wood is reduced to ashes?" "yes." "do you also remark the flame and the smoke which are rising up the chimney?" "yes." "that is chemistry." "ah!" said miss miette, at a loss for words. every one was listening to monsieur roger, some of them interested, the others amused. miette glanced over at her friend paul. "what do you think of that?" she asked. paul did not care to reply. albert wished to speak, but he stopped at a gesture from his father. monsieur dalize knew that the real interest of this scene lay with monsieur roger, the scientist, who was already loved by all this little world. miette, as nobody else answered, returned to monsieur roger. "but why," she asked, "is that physical science? why is it chemistry?" "because it is physical science and chemistry," said monsieur roger, simply. "oh, but you have other reasons to give us!" said madame dalize, who understood what monsieur roger was thinking of. "yes," added miette. and even paul, with unusual curiosity, nodded his head affirmatively. "the reasons will be very long to explain, and would bore you," said monsieur dalize, certain that he would in this way provoke a protest. the protest, in fact, came. monsieur roger was obliged to speak. "well," said he, still addressing himself to miss miette, "this drawing is concerned with physical science, because the peasant, in placing his cloak before the heat of the fire, causes the phenomenon of evaporation to take place. the vapor which escapes from the damp cloth is water, is nothing but water, and will always be water under a different form. it is water modified, and modified for a moment, because this vapor, coming against the cold wall or other cold objects, will condense. that is to say, it will become again liquid water,--water similar to that which it was a moment ago; and that is a physical phenomenon,--for physical science aims to study the modifications which alter the form, the color, the appearance of bodies, but only their temporary modifications, which leave intact all the properties of bodies. our drawing is concerned with chemistry, because the piece of wood which burns disappears, leaving in its place cinders in the hearth and gases which escape through the chimney. here there is a complete modification, an absolute change of the piece of wood. do what you will, you would be unable, by collecting together the cinders and gases, to put together again the log of wood which has been burned; and that is a chemical phenomenon,--for the aim of chemistry is to study the durable and permanent modifications, after which bodies retain none of their original properties. another example may make more easy this distinction between physical science and chemistry. suppose that you put into the fire a bar of iron. that bar will expand and become red. its color, its form, its dimensions will be modified, but it will always remain a bar of iron. that is a physical phenomenon. instead of this bar of iron, put in the fire a bit of sulphur. it will flame up and burn in disengaging a gas of a peculiar odor, which is called sulphuric acid. this sulphuric-acid gas can be condensed and become a liquid, but it no longer contains the properties of sulphur. it is no longer a piece of sulphur, and can never again become a piece of sulphur. the modification of this body is therefore durable, and therefore permanent. now, that is a chemical phenomenon." monsieur roger stopped for a moment; then, paying no apparent attention to paul, who, however, was listening far more attentively than one could imagine he would, he looked at miette, and said,-"i don't know, my child, if i have explained myself clearly enough; but you must certainly understand that in their case the artist has represented, whether he wished to or not, the physical phenomenon and the chemical phenomenon." "yes, sir," answered miette, "i have understood quite well." "well," said monsieur dalize, "since you are so good a teacher, don't you think that you could, during vacation, cause a little chemistry and a little physical science to enter into that little head?" and he pointed to paul solange. the latter, notwithstanding the sentiment of respectful sympathy which he felt for monsieur roger, and although he had listened with interest to his explanations, could not prevent a gesture of fear, so pronounced that everybody began to laugh. miette, who wished to console her good friend paul and obtain his pardon for her teasing, came up to him, and said,-"come, console yourself, paul; i will let you take my portrait a dozen times, as you did last year,--although it is very tiresome to pose for a portrait." [illustration] [illustration] chapter ix. the tower of heurtebize. next morning at six o'clock paul solange opened the door of the château and stepped out on to the lawn. he held a sketch-book in his hand. he directed his steps along a narrow pathway, shaded by young elms, towards one of the gates of the park. at a turning in the alley he found himself face to face with monsieur roger, who was walking slowly and thoughtfully. paul stopped, and in his surprise could not help saying,-"monsieur roger, already up?" monsieur answered, smiling,-"but you also, master paul, you are, like me, already up. are you displeased to meet me?" "oh, no, sir," paul hastened to say, blushing a little. "why should i be displeased at meeting you?" "then, may i ask you where you are going so early in the morning?" "over there," said paul, stretching his hand towards a high wooded hill: "over there to heurtebize." "and what are you going to do over there?" paul answered by showing his sketch-book. "ah, you are going to draw?" "yes, sir; i am going to draw, to take a sketch of the tower; that old tower which you see on the right side of the hill." "well, master paul, will you be so kind," asked monsieur roger, "as to allow me to go with you and explore this old tower?" paul, on hearing this proposal, which he could not refuse, made an involuntary movement of dismay, exactly similar to that he had made the night before. "oh, fear nothing," said monsieur roger, good-naturedly. "i will not bore you either with physical science nor chemistry. i hope you will accept me, therefore, as your companion on the way, without any apprehensions of that kind of annoyance." "then, let us go, sir," answered paul, a little ashamed to have had his thoughts so easily guessed. they took a short cut across the fields, passing wide expanses of blossoming clover; they crossed a road, they skirted fields of wheat and of potatoes. at last they arrived upon the wooded hill of heurtebize, at the foot of the old tower, which still proudly raised its head above the valleys. "what a lovely landscape!" said monsieur roger, when he had got his breath. "the view is beautiful," said paul, softly; "but it is nothing like the view you get up above there." "up above?" said monsieur roger, without understanding. "yes, from the summit of the tower." "you have climbed up the tower?" "several times." "but it is falling into ruins, this poor tower; it has only one fault, that of having existed for two or three hundred years." "it is indeed very old," answered paul; "it is the last vestige of the old château of sainte-gemme, which, it is said, was built in the sixteenth century, or possibly even a century or two earlier; nobody is quite certain as to the date; at all events, the former proprietors several years ago determined to preserve it, and they even commenced some repairs upon it. the interior stairway has been put in part into sufficiently good condition to enable you to use it, if you at the same time call a little bit of gymnastics to your aid, as you will have to do at a few places. and i have used it in this way very often; but please now be good enough to----" [illustration] paul stopped, hesitating. "good enough to what? tell me." then paul solange added,-"to say nothing of this to madame dalize. that would make her uneasy." "not only will i say nothing, my dear young friend, but i will join you in the ascent,--for i have the greatest desire to do what you are going to do, and to ascend the tower with you." paul looked at monsieur roger, and said, quickly,-"but, sir, there is danger." "bah! as there is none for you, why should there be danger for me?" somewhat embarrassed, paul replied,-"i am young, sir; more active than you, perhaps, and----" "if that is your only reason, my friend, do not disturb yourself. let us try the ascent." "on one condition, sir." "what is that?" "that i go up first." "yes, my dear friend, i consent. you shall go first," said monsieur roger, who would have himself suggested this if the idea had not come to paul. both of them, monsieur roger and paul, had at this moment the same idea of self-sacrifice. paul said to himself, "if any accident happens, it will happen to me, and not to monsieur roger." and monsieur roger, sure of his own strength, thought, "if paul should happen to fall, very likely i may be able to catch him and save him." luckily, the ascent, though somewhat difficult, was accomplished victoriously, and monsieur roger was enabled to recognize that the modified admiration which paul solange felt for the landscape, as seen from below, was entirely justified. paul asked,-"how high is this tower? a hundred feet?" "less than that, i think," answered monsieur roger. "still, it will be easy to find out exactly in a moment." "in a moment?" asked paul. "yes, in a moment." "without descending?" "no; we will remain where we are." paul made a gesture which clearly indicated, "i would like to see that." monsieur roger understood. "there is no lack of pieces of stone in this tower; take one," said he to paul. paul obeyed. "you will let this stone fall to the earth at the very moment that i tell you to do so." monsieur roger drew out his watch and looked carefully at the second-hand. "now, let go," he said. paul opened his hand; the stone fell. it could be heard striking the soil at the foot of the tower. monsieur roger, who during the fall of the stone had had his eyes fixed upon his watch, said,-"the tower is not very high." then he added, after a moment of reflection, "the tower is sixty-two and a half feet in height." paul looked at monsieur roger, thinking that he was laughing at him. monsieur roger lifted his eyes to paul; he looked quite serious. then paul said, softly,-"the tower is sixty feet high?" "sixty-two and a half feet,--for the odd two and a half feet must not be forgotten in our computation." paul was silent. then, seeing that monsieur roger was ready to smile, and mistaking the cause of this smile, he said,-"you are joking, are you not? you cannot know that the tower is really sixty feet high?" "sixty-two feet and six inches," repeated monsieur roger again. "that is exact. do you want to have it proved to you?" "oh, yes, sir," said paul solange, with real curiosity. "very well. go back to the château, and bring me a ball of twine and a yard-measure." "i run," said paul. "take care!" cried monsieur roger, seeing how quickly paul was hurrying down the tower. when paul had safely reached the ground, monsieur roger said to himself, with an air of satisfaction,-"come, come! we will make something out of that boy yet!" [illustration] [illustration] chapter x. physical science. paul returned to the tower more quickly than monsieur roger had expected. instead of returning to the château, he had taken the shortest cut, had reached the village, and had procured there the two things wanted. he climbed up the tower and arrived beside monsieur roger, holding out the ball of twine and the yard-stick. "you are going to see, you little doubter, that i was not wrong," said monsieur roger. he tied a stone to the twine, and let it down outside the tower to the ground. "this length of twine," he said, "represents exactly the height of the tower, does it not?" "yes, sir," answered paul. monsieur roger made a knot in the twine at the place where it rested on the top of the tower. then he asked paul to take the yard-stick which he had brought, and to hold it extended between his two hands. then, drawing up the twine which hung outside the tower, he measured it yard by yard. paul counted. when he had reached the number sixty, he could not help bending over to see how much remained of the twine. "ah, sir," he cried, "i think you have won." "let us finish our count," said monsieur roger, quietly. and paul counted,-"sixty-one, sixty-two,--sixty-two feet----" "and?" "and six inches!" cried paul. "i have won, as you said, my young friend," cried monsieur roger, who enjoyed paul's surprise. "now let us cautiously descend and return to the château, where the breakfast-bell will soon ring." the descent was made in safety, and they directed their steps towards sainte-gemme. paul walked beside monsieur roger without saying anything. he was deep in thought. [illustration] monsieur roger, understanding what was going on in the brain of his friend, took care not to disturb him. he waited, hoping for an answer. his hope was soon realized. as they reached the park, paul, who, after thinking a great deal, had failed to solve the difficulty, said, all of a sudden,-"monsieur roger!" "what, my friend?" "how did you measure the tower?" monsieur roger looked at paul, and, affecting a serious air, he said,-"it is impossible, entirely impossible for me to answer." "impossible?" cried paul, in surprise. "yes, impossible." "why, please?" "because in answering i will break the promise that i have made you,--the promise to say nothing about chemistry or physical science." "ah!" said paul, becoming silent again. monsieur roger glanced at his companion from the corner of his eye, knowing that his curiosity would soon awake again. at the end of the narrow, shady pathway they soon saw the red bricks of the château shining in the sun; but paul had not yet renewed his question, and monsieur roger began to be a little uneasy,--for, if paul held his tongue, it would show that his curiosity had vanished, and another occasion to revive it would be difficult to find. luckily, paul decided to speak at the very moment when they reached the château. "then," said he, expressing the idea which was uppermost,--"then it is physical science?" monsieur roger asked, in an indifferent tone,-"what is physical science?" "your method of measuring the tower." "yes, it is physical science, as you say. consequently, you see very well that i cannot answer you." "ah, monsieur roger," said paul, embarrassed, "you are laughing at me." "not at all, my friend. i made a promise; i must hold to it. i have a great deal of liking for you, and i don't want you to dislike me." "oh, sir!" suddenly they heard the voice of monsieur dalize, who cried, cheerfully,-"see, they are already quarrelling!" for some moments monsieur dalize, at the door of the vestibule, surrounded by his wife and his children, had been gazing at the two companions. monsieur roger and paul approached. "what is the matter?" asked monsieur dalize, shaking hands with his friend. "a very strange thing has happened," answered monsieur roger. "and what is that?" "simply that master paul wants me to speak to him of physical science." an astonished silence, soon followed by a general laugh, greeted these words. miss miette took a step forward, looked at paul with an uneasy air, and said,-"are you sick, my little paul?" paul, confused, kept silent, but he answered by a reproachful look the ironical question of his friend miette. "but whence could such a change have come?" asked madame dalize, addressing monsieur roger. "explain to us what has happened." "here are the facts," answered monsieur roger. "we had climbed up the tower of heurtebize----" madame dalize started, and turned a look of uneasiness towards paul. "paul was not at fault," monsieur roger hastened to add. "i was the guilty one. well, we were up there, when master paul got the idea of estimating the height of the tower. i answered that nothing was more simple than to know it at once. i asked him to let fall a stone. i looked at my watch while the stone was falling, and i said, 'the tower is sixty-two feet and six inches high.' master paul seemed to be astonished. he went after a yard-stick and some twine. we measured the tower, and master paul has recognized that the tower is in fact sixty-two feet and six inches high. now he wants me to tell him how i have been able so simply, with so little trouble, to learn the height. that is a portion of physical science; and, as i made master paul a promise this very morning not to speak to him of physical science nor of chemistry, you see it is impossible for me to answer." monsieur dalize understood at once what his friend roger had in view, and, assuming the same air, he answered,-"certainly, it is impossible; you are perfectly right. you promised; you must keep your promise." "unless," said miss miette, taking sides with her friend paul,--"unless paul releases monsieur roger from his promise." "you are entirely right, my child," said monsieur roger; "should paul release me sufficiently to ask me to answer him. but, as i remarked to you a moment ago, i fear that he will repent too quickly, and take a dislike to me. that i should be very sorry for." "no, sir, i will not repent. i promise you that." "very well," said miette; "there is another promise. you know that you will have to keep it." "but," answered monsieur roger, turning to paul, "it will be necessary for me to speak to you of weight, of the fall of bodies, of gravitation; and i am very much afraid that that will weary you." "no, sir," answered paul, very seriously, "that will not weary me. on the contrary, that will interest me, if it teaches me how you managed to calculate the height of the tower." "it will certainly teach you that." "then i am content," said paul. "and i also," said monsieur roger to himself, happy to have attained his object so soon. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xi. the smoke which falls. in the evening, after dinner, monsieur roger, to whom paul recalled his promise, asked miette to go and find him a pebble in the pathway before the château. when he had the bit of stone in his hand, monsieur roger let it fall from the height of about three feet. "as you have just heard and seen," said he, addressing paul, "this stone in falling from a small height produces only a feeble shock, but if it falls from the height of the house upon the flagstones of the pavement, the shock would be violent enough to break it." monsieur roger interrupted himself, and put this question to paul: "possibly you may have asked yourself why this stone should fall. why do bodies fall?" "goodness knows," said the small voice of miss miette in the midst of the silence that followed. "miette," said madame dalize, "be serious, and don't answer for others." "but, mamma, i am sure that paul would have answered the same as i did:--would you not, paul?" paul bent his head slightly as a sign that miette was not mistaken. "well," continued monsieur roger, "another one before you did ask himself this question. it was a young man of twenty-three years, named newton. he found himself one fine evening in a garden, sitting under an apple-tree, when an apple fell at his feet. this common fact, whose cause had never awakened the attention of anybody, filled all his thoughts; and, as the moon was shining in the heavens, newton asked himself why the moon did not fall like the apple." "that is true," said miette; "why does not the moon fall?" "listen, and you will hear," said monsieur dalize. monsieur roger continued: "by much reflection, by hard work and calculation, newton made an admirable discovery,--that of universal attraction. yes, he discovered that all bodies, different though they may be, attract each other: they draw towards each other; the bodies which occupy the celestial spaces,--planets and suns,--as well as the bodies which are found upon our earth. the force which attracts bodies towards the earth, which made this stone fall, as newton's apple fell, has received the name of weight. weight, therefore, is the attraction of the earth for articles which are on its surface. why does this table, around which we find ourselves, remain in the same place? why does it not slide or fly away? simply because it is retained by the attraction of the earth. i have told you that all bodies attract each other. it is therefore quite true that in the same way as the earth attracts the table, so does the table attract the earth." "like a loadstone," said albert dalize. "well, you may compare the earth in this instance to a loadstone. the loadstone draws the iron, and iron draws the loadstone, exactly as the earth and the table draw each other; but you can understand that the earth attracts the table with far more force than the table attracts the earth." "yes," said miette; "because the earth is bigger than the table." "exactly so. it has been discovered that bodies attract each other in proportion to their size,--that is to say, the quantity of matter that they contain. on the other hand, the farther bodies are from each other the less they attract each other. i should translate in this fashion the scientific formula which tells us that bodies attract each other in an inverse ratio to the square of the distance. i would remind you that the square of a number is the product obtained by multiplying that number by itself. so all bodies are subject to that force which we call weight; all substances, all matter abandoned to itself, falls to the earth." [illustration] just here miss miette shifted uneasily on her chair, wishing to make an observation, but not daring. "come, miss miette," said monsieur roger, who saw this manoeuvre, "you have something to tell us. your little tongue is itching to say something. well, speak; we should all like to hear you." "monsieur roger," said miette, "is not smoke a substance?" "certainly; the word substance signifies something that exists. smoke exists. therefore it is a substance." "then," replied miette, with an air of contentment with herself, "as smoke is a substance, there is one substance which does not fall to the earth. indeed, it does just the opposite." "ah! miss miette wants to catch me," said monsieur roger. miette made a gesture of modest denial, but at heart she was very proud of the effect which she had produced, for every one looked at her with interest. "to the smoke of which you speak," continued monsieur roger, "you might add balloons, and even clouds." "certainly, that is true," answered miette, näively. "very well; although smoke and balloons rise in the air instead of falling, although clouds remain suspended above our heads, smoke and balloons and clouds are none the less bodies with weight. what prevents their fall is the fact that they find themselves in the midst of the air, which is heavier than they are. take away the air and they would fall." "take away the air?" cried miette, with an air of doubt, thinking that she was facing an impossibility. "yes, take away the air," continued monsieur roger; "for that can be done. there even exists for this purpose a machine, which is called an air-pump. you place under a glass globe a lighted candle. then you make a vacuum,--that is to say, by the aid of the air-pump you exhaust the air in the globe; soon the candle is extinguished for want of air, but the wick of the candle continues for some instants to produce smoke. now, you think, i suppose, that that smoke rises in the globe?" "certainly," said miette. "no, no, not at all; it falls." "ah! i should like to see that!" cried miette. "and, in order to give you the pleasure of seeing this, i suppose you would like an air-pump?" "well, papa will buy me one.--say, papa, won't you do it, so we may see the smoke fall?" "no, indeed!" said monsieur dalize; "how can we introduce here instruments of physical science during vacation? what would paul say?" "paul would say nothing. i am sure that he is just as anxious as i am to see smoke fall.--are you not, paul?" and paul solange, already half-conquered, made a sign from the corner of his eye to his little friend that her demand was not at all entirely disagreeable to him. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xii. at the centre of the earth. monsieur roger, hiding his satisfaction, seemed to attach no importance to this request of miette under the assent given by paul. wishing to profit by the awakened curiosity of his little friend, he hastened to continue, and said,-"who wants to bring me a bit of cork and a glass of water?" "i! i!" cried miette, running. when miette had returned with the articles, monsieur roger continued: "i told you a moment ago that if balloons and smoke and clouds do not fall, it is because they find themselves in the midst of air which is heavier than they are. i am going to try an experiment which will make you understand what i have said." monsieur roger took the cork, raised his hand above his head, and opened his fingers: the cork fell. "is it a heavy body?" said he. "did it fall to the ground?" "yes," cried paul and miette together. then monsieur roger placed the glass of water in front of him, took the cork, which miette had picked up, and forced it with his finger to the bottom of the glass; then he withdrew his finger, and the cork mounted up to the surface again. "did you see?" asked monsieur roger. "yes," said miss miette. "you remarked something?" "certainly: the cork would not fall, and you were obliged to force it into the water with your finger." "and not only," continued monsieur roger, "it would not fall, as you say, but it even hastened to rise again as soon as it was freed from the pressure of my finger. we were wrong, then, when we said that this same cork is a heavy body?" "ah, i don't know," said miette, a little confused. "still, we must know. did this cork fall just now upon the ground?" "yes." "then it was a heavy body?" "yes." "and now that it remains on the surface of the water, that it no longer precipitates itself towards the earth, it is no longer a heavy body?" this time miette knew not what to answer. "well, be very sure," continued monsieur roger, "that it is heavy. if it does not fall to the bottom of the water, it is because the water is heavier than it. the water is an obstacle to it. nevertheless, it is attracted, like all bodies, towards the earth, or, more precisely, towards the centre of the earth." "towards the centre of the earth?" repeated miette. "yes, towards the centre of the earth. can miss miette procure for me two pieces of string and two heavy bodies,--for example, small pieces of lead?" "string, yes; but where can i get lead?" asked miette. "look in the box where i keep my fishing-tackle," said monsieur dalize to his daughter, "and find two sinkers there." miette disappeared, and came back in a moment with the articles desired. monsieur roger tied the little pieces of lead to the two separate strings. then he told miette to hold the end of one of these strings in her fingers. he himself did the same with the other string. the two strings from which the sinkers were suspended swayed to and fro for some seconds, and then stopped in a fixed position. [illustration] "is it not evident," said monsieur roger, "that the direction of our strings is the same as the direction in which the force which we call weight attracts the bodies of lead? in fact, if you cut the string, the lead would go in that direction. the string which miss miette is holding and that which i hold myself seem to us to be parallel,--that is to say, that it seems impossible they should ever meet, however long the distance which they travel. well, that is an error. for these two strings, if left to themselves, would meet exactly at the centre of the earth." "then," said miette, "if we detach the sinkers, they would fall, and would join each other exactly at the centre of the earth?" "yes, if they encountered no obstacle; but they would be stopped by the resistance of the ground. they would attempt to force themselves through, and would not succeed." "why?" "why, if the ground which supports us did not resist, we would not be at this moment chatting quietly here on the surface of the earth; drawn by gravity, we would all be----" "at the centre of the earth!" cried miette. "exactly. and it might very well happen that i would not then be in a mood to explain to you the attraction of gravity." "yes, that is very probable," said miss miette, philosophically. then she added, "if, instead of letting these bits of lead fall upon the ground, we let them fall in water?" "well, they would approach the centre of the earth for the entire depth of the water." miette had mechanically placed the sinker above the glass of water. she let it fall into it; the cork still swam above. "why does the lead fall to the bottom of the water, and why does the cork not fall?" "why," said albert, "because lead is heavier than cork." miette looked at her brother, and then turned her eyes towards monsieur roger, as if the explanation given by albert explained nothing, and finally she said,-"of course lead is heavier than cork; but why is it heavier?" "my child, you want to know a great deal," said madame dalize. "ah, mamma, it is not my fault,--it is paul's, who wants to know, and does not like to ask. i am obliged to ask questions in his stead." that was true. paul asked no questions, but he listened with attention, and his eyes seemed to approve the questions asked by his friend miette. monsieur roger had observed with pleasure the conduct of his young friend, and it was for him, while he was looking at miette, the latter continued: "tell us, monsieur roger, why is lead heavier than cork?" "because its density is greater," answered monsieur roger, seriously. "ah!" murmured miette, disappointed; and, as monsieur roger kept silent, she added, "what is density?" "it would take a long time to explain." "tell me all the same." monsieur roger saw at this moment that paul was beckoning to miette to insist. "goodness!" said he, smiling at paul; "miss miette was right just now. it is you that wish me to continue the questions!" [illustration] [illustration] chapter xiii. why lead is heavier than cork. monsieur roger continued in these words: "we say that a body has density when it is thick and packed close. we give the name of density to the quantity of matter contained in a body of a certain size. "let us suppose that this bit of lead has the same bulk--that is to say, that it is exactly as big--as the cork. suppose, also, that we have a piece of gold and a piece of stone, also of the same bulk as the cork, and that we weigh each different piece in a pair of scales. we would find that cork weighs less than stone, that stone weighs less than lead, and that lead weighs less than gold. but, in order to compare these differences with each other, it has been necessary to adopt a standard of weight. "i now return to miss miette's question,--'why is lead heavier than cork?'--a question to which i had solemnly answered, 'because its density is greater.' miss miette must now understand that cork, weighing four times less than water, cannot sink in water, although that process is very easy to lead, which weighs eleven times more than water. and yet," said monsieur roger, "the problem is not perfectly solved, and i am quite sure that miss miette is not entirely satisfied." miss miette remained silent. "i was not mistaken. miss miette is not satisfied," said monsieur roger; "and she is right,--for i have not really explained to her why lead is heavier than cork." miss miette made a gesture, which seemed to say, "that is what i was expecting." "i said just now," continued monsieur roger, "that the density of a body was the quantity of matter contained in this body in a certain bulk. now does miss miette know what matter is?" "no." "no! now, there is the important thing: because, in explaining to her what matter is, i will make her understand why lead is heavier than cork." "well, i am listening," said miette. and master paul respectfully added, in an undertone, "we are listening." monsieur roger continued: "the name of 'bodies' has been given to all objects which, in infinite variety, surround us and reveal themselves to us by the touch, taste, sight, and smell. all these bodies present distinct properties; but there are certain numbers of properties which are common to all. those all occupy a certain space; all are expanded by heat, are contracted by cold, and can even pass from the solid to the liquid state, and from the liquid to the gaseous state. they all possess a certain amount of elasticity, a certain amount of compressibility,--in a word, there exist in all bodies common characteristics: so they have given a common name to those possessing these common properties, and called that which constitutes bodies 'matter.' bodies are not compact, as you may imagine. they are, on the contrary, formed by the union of infinitely small particles, all equal to each other and maintained at distances that are relatively considerable by the force of attraction. "these infinitely small particles have received the names of atoms or molecules. imagine a pile of bullets, and remark the empty spaces left between them, and you will have a picture of the formation of bodies. i must acknowledge to you that no one has yet seen the molecules of a body. their size is so small that no microscope can ever be made keen enough to see them. a wise man has reached this conclusion: that if you were to look at a drop of water through a magnifying instrument which made it appear as large as the whole earth, the molecules which compose this drop of water would seem hardly bigger than bits of bird-shot. still, this conception of the formation of bodies is proved by certain properties which matter enjoys. among these properties i must especially single out divisibility. matter can be divided into parts so small that it is difficult to conceive of them. gold-beaters, for instance, succeed in making gold-leaf so thin that it is necessary to place sixty thousand one on top of the other to arrive at the thickness of an inch. i will give you two other examples of 'divisibility' that are still more striking. for years, hardly losing any of its weight, a grain of musk spreads a strong odor. in a tubful of water one single drop of indigo communicates its color. the smallness of these particles of musk which strike the sense of smell and of these particles of indigo which color several quarts of water is beyond our imagination to conceive of. and these examples prove that bodies are nothing but a conglomeration of molecules. now, if lead is heavier than cork, it is because in an equal volume it contains a far more considerable quantity of molecules, and because these molecules are themselves heavier than the molecules of cork. and now i shall stop," said monsieur roger, "after this long but necessary explanation. i will continue on the day when miss miette will present to me the famous air-pump." "that will not be very long from now," said miss miette to herself. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xiv. the air-pump. monsieur roger had deferred his explanations for three days. he was awaiting the air-pump which monsieur dalize, at miette's desire, had decided to purchase in paris. monsieur roger judged that this interruption and this rest were necessary. in this way his hearers would not be tired too soon, and their curiosity, remaining unsatisfied for the moment, would become more eager. he was not mistaken; and when a large box containing the air-pump and other objects ordered by monsieur roger arrived, a series of cries of astonishment came from the pretty mouth of miss miette. paul solange, however, remained calm; but monsieur roger knew that his interest had been really awakened. they spent the afternoon in unpacking the air-pump, and monsieur roger was called upon at once to explain the instrument. "the machine," he said, "is called an air-pump because it is intended to exhaust air contained in a vase or other receptacle. to exhaust the air in a vase is to make a vacuum in that vase. you will see that this machine is composed of two cylinders, or pump-barrels, out of which there comes a tube, which opens in the centre of this disk of glass. upon this disk we carefully place this globe of glass; and now we are going to exhaust the air contained in the globe." "we are going to make a vacuum," said miette. "exactly." and monsieur roger commenced to work the lever. "you will take notice," he said, "that when the lever is lowered at the left the round piece of leather placed in the cylinder on the left side is lowered, and that the bit of leather in the right-hand cylinder is raised. in the same way, when the lever is lowered at the right, it is the right-hand piece of leather which is lowered, while the piece of leather at the left is raised in its turn. these round bits of leather, whose importance is considerable, are called pistons. each piston is hollow and opens into the air on top, while at the bottom, which communicates with that portion of the cylinder situated below the piston, there is a little hole, which is stopped by a valve. this valve is composed of a little round bit of metal, bearing on top a vertical stem, around which is rolled a spring somewhat in the shape of a coil or ringlet. the ends of this spring rest on one side on a little bit of metal, on the other on a fixed rest, pierced by a hole in which the stem of the valve can freely go up and down. when i work the lever, as i am doing now, you see that on the left side the piston lowers itself in the cylinder, and that the piston on the right is raised. now, what is going on in the interior of each cylinder? the piston of the left, in lowering, disturbs the air contained in the cylinder,--it forces it down, it compresses it. under this compression the coiled spring gives way, the round bit of metal is raised, and opens the little hole which puts the under part of the piston in communication with the atmosphere. the air contained in the cylinder passes in this way across the piston and disperses itself in the air which surrounds us. but the spring makes the bit of metal fall back again and closes the communication in the right-hand cylinder as soon as the piston commences to rise and the pressure of the air in the cylinder is not greater than the pressure of the atmosphere outside. lastly, the tube which unites the cylinders to the glass globe opens at the end of each cylinder, but a little on the side. it is closed by a little cork, carried by a metal stem which traverses the whole piston. when i cause one of the pistons to lower, the piston brings the stem down with it. the cork at once comes in contact with the hole, which closes; the stem is then stopped, but the piston continues to descend by sliding over it. in the other cylinder, in which the piston is raised, it commences by raising the stem, which re-establishes communication with the glass globe; but as soon as the top of the stem comes in contact with the upper part of the cylinder, it stops and the piston glides over it and continues to rise." [illustration] "in this fashion the movements of the cork are very small, and it opens and shuts the orifice as soon as one of the pistons begins to descend and the other begins to ascend. consequently, by working the lever for a certain space of time, i will finish by exhausting the globe of all the air which it contains." "may i try to exhaust it?" asked miette, timidly. "try your hand, miss miette," answered monsieur roger. miette began to work the lever of the air-pump, which she did at first very easily, but soon she stopped. "i cannot do it any more," said she. "why?" "because it is too heavy." "in fact, it is too heavy," said monsieur roger; "but tell me, what is it that is too heavy?" miette sought an answer. "oh, i do not know. it is the lever or the pistons which have become all of a sudden too heavy." "not at all; that is not it. neither the lever nor the pistons can change their weight." "then, what is it that is so heavy?" "come, now! try once more, with all your strength." miette endeavored to lower the right-hand side of the lever: she could not succeed. "why," said she, "it is, of course, the piston on the left which has become too heavy, as i cannot make it rise again." "you are right, miss miette. it is the piston in the left cylinder which cannot rise; but it has not changed its weight, as i said,--only it has now to support a very considerable weight; and it is that weight which you cannot combat." "what weight is it?" said miette, who did not understand. "the weight of the air." "the weight of the air? but what air?" "the air which is above it,--the exterior air; the air which weighs down this piston, as it weighs us down." "does air weigh much?" "if you are very anxious to know, i will tell you that a wine gallon of air weighs about seventy-two grains; and as in the atmosphere--that is to say, in the mass of air which surrounds us--there is a very great number of gallons, you can imagine that it must represent a respectable number of pounds. it has been calculated, in fact, that each square inch of the surface of the soil supports a weight of air of a little more than sixteen pounds." "but how is that?" cried miette. "a while ago there was also a considerable quantity of air above the piston, and yet i could make it go up very easily." "certainly, there was above the piston the same quantity of air as now, but there was air also in the globe. air, like gas, possesses an elastic force,--that is to say, that it constantly endeavors to distend its molecules, and presses without ceasing upon the sides of the vase which contained it, or upon the surrounding air. now, when you began to work the lever there was still enough air in the globe to balance, through its elastic force, the air outside; and, as the piston receives an almost equal pressure of air from the atmosphere above and from the globe below, it is easily raised and lowered. but while you were working the lever you took air out of the globe, so that at last there arrived a time when so little air remained in this globe that its elastic force acted with little power upon the piston. so the piston was submitted to only one pressure,--that of the atmosphere; and, as i have just told you, the atmosphere weighs heavy enough to withstand your little strength. still, all the air in the globe is not yet exhausted, and a stronger person, like master paul, for example, could still be able to conquer the resistance of the atmosphere and raise the piston." paul solange could not refuse this direct invitation, and he approached the air-pump and succeeded in working the lever, though with a certain difficulty. meanwhile, monsieur roger was seeking among the physical instruments which had just arrived. he soon found a glass cylinder, whose upper opening was closed by a bit of bladder stretched taut and carefully tied upon the edges. "stop, master paul," said he: "we are going to exchange the globe for this cylinder, and you will see very readily that the air is heavy. now take away the globe." but, though paul tried his best, he could not succeed in obeying this order. the globe remained firm in its place. "that is still another proof of the weight of the air," said monsieur roger. "the globe is empty of air; and as there is no longer any pressure upon it except from outside,--the pressure of the atmosphere,--master paul is unable to raise it." "he would be able to raise the glass," said miss miette, in a questioning tone, "but he cannot lift the air above it?" "you are exactly right. but you are going to see an experiment which will prove it. first, however, it will be necessary to take away the globe. i am going to ask miss miette to turn this button, which is called the key of the air-pump." miette turned the key, and then they heard a whistling sound. "it is the air which is entering the globe," said monsieur roger. "now master paul can take the globe away." that was true. when paul took away the globe, monsieur roger put in its place the cylinder closed by the bit of bladder. then he worked the handle of the machine again. as the air was withdrawn from the interior of the cylinder, the membrane was heard to crackle. suddenly it burst, with a sort of explosion, to the great surprise of miette and the amusement of everybody. "what is the matter?" said miette, eagerly. "the matter is," answered monsieur roger, "that the exterior air weighed so heavily upon the membrane that it split it; and that is what i want to show you. the moment arrived when the pressure of the atmosphere was no longer counterbalanced by the elastic force of the air contained in the cylinder. then that exhausted all the air, and the atmosphere came down with all its weight upon the membrane, which, after resisting for a little while, was torn." "is it true, monsieur roger," said miette, "that it is with this machine that you can make smoke fall?" "certainly." "well, then, won't you show that to us?" [illustration] [illustration] chapter xv. drops of rain and hammer of water. "i am very willing to show you that," answered monsieur roger; "but i must have a candle." miette ran to the kitchen and succeeded in obtaining that article which was once so common, and which is now so rare, known as a candle. monsieur roger lit the candle and placed it under the glass globe of the air-pump. then he asked paul to make a vacuum. at the end of a few minutes the candle went out. monsieur roger then told paul to stop. "why has the candle gone out?" asked miette. "because it needs air. master paul has just exhausted the air necessary to the combustion of the candle; but the wick still smokes, and we are going to see if the smoke which it produces will rise or fall." everybody approached the globe, full of curiosity. "it falls," cried miette, "the smoke falls." and in fact, instead of rising in the globe, the smoke lowered slowly and heavily, and fell upon the glass disk of the air-pump. "well," said monsieur roger, "you see that i was right. in a vacuum smoke falls: it falls because it no longer finds itself in the midst of air which is heavier than it and forms an obstacle to its fall. in the same way the cloud in the sky above the château would fall if we could exhaust the air which is between it and us." "i am very glad that we cannot," cried miette. "and why are you very glad?" asked madame dalize. "because, mamma, i don't wish any rain to fall." "does miss miette think, then," said monsieur roger, "that if the cloud fell rain would fall?" "certainly," answered miss miette, with a certain amount of logic. "when the clouds fall they fall in the form of rain." "yes; but supposing that i should exhaust the air which is between the cloud and us, the cloud would not fall in a rain, but in a single and large mass of water." "why?" "clouds, you doubtless know, are masses of vapor from water. now, when these vapors are sufficiently condensed to acquire a certain weight, they can no longer float in the atmosphere, and they fall in the form of rain. but they fall in rain because they have to traverse the air in order to fall to the ground. now, the air offers such a resistance to this water that it is obliged to separate, to divide itself into small drops. if there were no air between the water and the ground, the water would not fall in drops of rain, but in a mass, like a solid body; and i am going to prove that to you, so as to convince miss miette." among the various instruments unpacked from the box, monsieur roger chose a round tube of glass, closed at one end, tapering, and open at the other end. he introduced into this tube a certain quantity of water so as to half fill it. then he placed the tube above a little alcohol lamp, and made the water boil. "remark," said he, "how fully and completely the vapors from the water, which are formed by the influence of heat, force out the air which this tube encloses in escaping by the open end of the tube." when monsieur roger judged that there no longer remained any air in the tube, he begged monsieur dalize to hand him the blowpipe. monsieur dalize then handed to his friend a little instrument of brass, which was composed of three parts,--a conical tube, furnished with a mouth, a hollow cylinder succeeding to the first tube, and a second tube, equally conical, but narrower, and placed at right angles with the hollow cylinder. this second tube ended in a very little opening. monsieur roger placed his lips to the opening of the first tube, and blew, placing the little opening of the second tube in front of the flame of a candle, which monsieur dalize had just lit. a long and pointed tongue of fire extended itself from the flame of the candle. monsieur roger placed close to this tongue of fire the tapering and open end of the tube in which the water had finished boiling. the air, forced out of the blowpipe and thrust upon the flame of the candle, bore to this flame a considerable quantity of oxygen, which increased the combustion and produced a temperature high enough to soften and melt the open extremity of the tube, and so seal it hermetically. "i have," said monsieur roger, "by the means which you have seen, expelled the air which was contained in this tube, and there remains in it only water. in a few moments we will make use of it. but it is good to have a comparison under your eyes. i therefore ask miss miette to take another tube similar to that which i hold." "here it is," cried miette. "now i ask her to put water into it." "i have done so." "lastly, i ask her to turn it over quickly, with her little hand placed against its lower side in order to prevent the water from falling upon the floor." miss miette did as she was commanded. the water fell in the tube, dividing itself into drops of more or less size. it was like rain in miniature. "the water, as you have just seen," said monsieur roger, "has fallen in miss miette's tube, dividing itself against the resistance of the air. in the tube which i hold, and in which there is no longer any air, you will see how water falls." monsieur roger turned the tube over, but the water this time encountered no resistance from the air. it fell in one mass, and struck the bottom of the tube with a dry and metallic sound. "it made a noise almost like the noise of a hammer," said paul solange. "exactly," answered monsieur roger. "scientists have given this apparatus the name of the water-hammer." and looking at miette, who in her astonishment was examining the tube without saying anything, monsieur roger added, smiling, "and this hammer has struck miss miette with surprise." [illustration] [illustration] chapter xvi. amusing physics. hearing monsieur roger's jest, miette raised her head, and said,-"yes, it is very curious to see water fall like that, in a single mass; and, besides, it fell quicker than the water in my tube." "of course: because it did not encounter the resistance of the air. this resistance is very easy to prove; and if miss miette will give me a sheet of any kind of paper----" miss miette looked at monsieur roger, seeming to be slightly nettled,--not by the errand, but by something else. then she went in search of a sheet of letter-paper, which she brought back to monsieur roger. he raised his hand and dropped the paper. instead of falling directly towards the earth, as a piece of lead or stone would do, it floated downward from the right to the left, gently balanced, and impeded in its fall by the evident resistance of the air. when this bit of paper had at last reached the ground, monsieur roger picked it up, saying,-"i am going to squeeze this bit of paper in such a way as to make it a paper ball; and i am going to let this paper ball fall from the same height as i did the leaf." the paper ball fell directly in a straight line upon the floor. "and yet it was the same sheet," said he, "which has fallen so fast. the matter submitted to the action of gravity remains the same; there can be no doubt on that point. therefore, if the sheet of paper falls more quickly when it is rolled up into a ball, it is certainly because it meets with less resistance from the air; and if it meets with less resistance, it is because under this form of a ball it presents only a small surface, which allows it easily to displace the air in order to pass." "that is so," said miss miette, with a certainty which made every one smile. miette, astonished at the effect which she had thus produced, looked at her friend paul, who remained silent, but very attentive. "well, paul," said she, "is not that certain?" "yes," answered paul. "hold," returned monsieur roger. "i am going to show you an example still more convincing of the resistance of the air,--only i must have a pair of scissors; and if miss miette will have the kindness to----" miss miette looked again at monsieur roger with a singular air. none the less, she ran off in search of the scissors. then monsieur roger pulled from his pocket a coin, and with the aid of the scissors cut a round bit of paper, a little smaller than the coin. that done, he placed the circular bit of paper flat upon the coin, in such a manner that it did not overlap, and asked miss miette to take the coin between her thumb and her finger. "now," said he, "let it all fall." miette opened her fingers, and the coin upon which he had placed the bit of paper fell. coin and paper reached the ground at the same time. "why," asked monsieur roger, "does the paper reach the ground as soon as the coin?" and as miette hesitated to answer, monsieur roger continued: "because the fall of the bit of paper was not interfered with by the resistance of the air." "of course," cried miette, "it is the coin which opened the way. the paper was preserved by the coin from the resistance of the air." "exactly so," said monsieur roger; "and these simple experiments have led scientists to ask if in doing away entirely with the resistance of the air it would not be possible to abolish the differences which may be observed between the falling of various bodies,--for instance, the paper and the coin, a hair and a bit of lead. and they have decided that in a vacuum--that is to say, when the resistance of the air is abolished--the paper and the coin, the hair and the lead would fall with exactly the same swiftness; all of them would traverse the same space in the same time." [illustration] "the hair falls as fast as lead," said miette, in a tone which seemed to imply, "i would like to see that." monsieur roger understood the thought of miette, and answered by saying,-"well, i am going to show you that." he chose a long tube of glass, closed by bits of metal, one of which had a stop-cock. he put in this tube the coin, the round bit of paper, a bit of lead, and a strand of hair from miss miette's head. then he fastened the tube by one of its ends upon the disk of the air-pump and worked the pistons. as soon as he thought that the vacuum had been made, he closed the stop-cock of the tube, to prevent the exterior air from entering. he withdrew the tube from the machine, held it vertically, then turned it briskly upsidedown. everybody saw that the paper, the coin, the hair, and the lead all arrived at the same time at the bottom of the tube. the experiment was conclusive. then monsieur roger opened the stop-cock and allowed the air to enter into the tube. again he turned the tube upsidedown: the coin and the bit of lead arrived almost together at the bottom of the tube, but the paper, and especially the strand of hair, found much difficulty on the way and arrived at the bottom much later. "why, how amusing that is!" cried miette; "as amusing as anything i know. i don't understand why paul wishes to have nothing to do with physical science." but miette was mistaken this time, for paul was now very anxious to learn more. "very well," said monsieur roger, "as all this has not wearied you, i am, in order to end to-day, going to make another experiment which will not be a bit tiresome, and which, without any scientific apparatus, without any air-pump, will demonstrate to you for the last time the existence of the pressure, of the weight of the atmosphere." monsieur roger stopped and looked at miette, whose good temper he was again going to put to the test. then he said,-"i need a carafe and a hard egg; and if miss miette will only be kind enough to----" this time miette seemed still more uneasy than ever, more embarrassed, more uncomfortable; still, she fled rapidly towards the kitchen. during her absence, monsieur roger said to madame dalize,-"miette seems to think that i trouble her a little too often." "that is not what is annoying her, i am certain," replied madame dalize; "but i do not understand the true cause. let us wait." at this moment miette returned, with the carafe in one hand, the hard-boiled egg (it was not boiled very hard, however) in the other. monsieur roger took the shell off the egg and placed the egg thus deprived of its shell upon the empty carafe, somewhat after the manner of a stopper or cork. [illustration] "what i want to do," said he, "is to make this egg enter the carafe." "very well," said miette; "all you have to do is to push from above: you will force the egg down." "oh, but nobody must touch it. it must not be a hand that forces it down, but by weight from above. no, the atmosphere must do this." monsieur roger took off the egg, and lit a bit of paper, which he threw into the empty carafe. "in order to burn," said he, "this paper is obliged to absorb the oxygen of the air in the carafe,--that is to say, it makes a partial vacuum." when the paper had burned for some moments, monsieur roger replaced the egg upon the carafe's neck, very much in the manner you would place a close-fitting ground-glass stopper in the neck of a bottle, and immediately they saw the egg lengthen, penetrate into the neck of the carafe, and at last fall to the bottom. "there," said he, "is atmospheric pressure clearly demonstrated. when a partial vacuum had been made in the carafe,--that is to say, when there was not enough air in it to counterbalance or resist the pressure of the exterior air,--this exterior air pressed with all its weight upon the egg and forced it down in very much the same way as miss miette wished me to do just now with my hand." in saying these last words, monsieur roger looked towards miette. "by the way," he said, "i must apologize to you, miss miette, for having sent you on so many errands. i thought i saw that it annoyed you a little bit." miss miette raised her eyes with much surprise to monsieur roger. "but that was not it at all," said she. "well, what was it?" asked monsieur roger. and miette replied timidly, yet sweetly,-"why, i only thought that you might stop calling me miss. if you please, i would like to be one of your very good friends." "oh, yes; with very great pleasure, my dear little miette," cried monsieur roger, much moved by this touching and kindly delicacy of feeling, and opening his arms to the pretty and obliging little child of his friends. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xvii. why the moon does not fall. next evening monsieur roger, as well as his friend monsieur dalize, seemed to have forgotten completely that there was such a thing as physical science. he sat in a corner and chatted about this thing and that with monsieur and madame dalize. still, the air-pump was there, and the children touched it, looked at it, and examined the different portions of it. at last there was a conversation in a low tone between paul and miette, and in the midst of the whispering were heard these words, clearly pronounced by the lips of miette,-"ask him yourself." then monsieur roger heard paul answer,-"no, i don't dare to." miette then came forward towards her friend roger, and said to him, without any hesitation,-"paul asks that you will explain to him about the tower?" monsieur roger remained a moment without understanding, then a light struck him, and he said,-"ah! master paul wants me to explain to him how i learned the height of the tower heurtebize?" "that is it," said miette. paul solange made an affirmative sign by a respectful movement of the head. "but," said monsieur roger, responding to this sign, "it is physical science, my dear master paul,--physical science, you know; and, goodness, i was so much afraid of boring you that both i and monsieur dalize had resolved never to approach this subject." "still, sir," said paul, "all that you have said and shown to us was on account of the tower of heurtebize, and you promised me----" "that is true," said monsieur dalize; "and if you promised, you must keep your word. so explain to paul how you have been able, without moving, to learn the exact height of that famous tower." "come, then, i obey," answered monsieur roger. and, addressing himself to paul, he said,-"you will remember that at the beginning of this conversation on gravity i took a little stone and let it fall from my full height. it produced a very feeble shock; but i made you remark that if it were to fall from a greater height the shock would be violent enough to break it." "yes," said paul, "i remember." "then, of course, you understand that the violence of the shock of a body against a fixed obstacle depends upon the rate of speed this body possessed at the moment when it encountered the obstacle. the higher the distance from which the body falls, the more violent is the shock,--for its swiftness is greater. now, the speed of a falling body becomes greater and greater the longer it continues to fall; and, consequently, in falling faster and faster it will traverse a greater and greater space in a given interval of time. in studying the fall of a body we find that in one second it traverses a space of sixteen feet and one inch. in falling for two seconds it traverses----" "twice the number of feet," said miette, with a self-satisfied air. "why, no," said paul; "because it falls faster during the second second, and in consequence travels a greater distance." "master paul is right," replied monsieur roger. "it has been found that in falling for two seconds a body falls sixteen feet and one inch multiplied by twice two,--that is to say, sixty-four feet and four inches. in falling three seconds a body traverses sixteen feet and one inch multiplied by three times three,--that is to say, by nine. in falling four seconds it traverses sixteen feet and one inch multiplied by four times four,--that is to say, by sixteen; and so on. this law of falling bodies which learned men have discovered teaches us that in order to calculate the space traversed by a body in a certain number of seconds it is necessary to multiply sixteen feet and one inch by the arithmetical square of that number of seconds. and master paul must know, besides, that the square of a number is the product obtained by multiplying this number by itself." paul bent his head. "and now you must also know," continued monsieur roger, "how i could calculate the height of the tower of heurtebize. the stone which you let fall, according to my watch, took two seconds before it reached the soil. the calculation which i had to make was easy, was it not?" "yes, sir: it was necessary to multiply sixteen feet and one inch by two times two,--which gives about sixty-four feet and four inches as the height of the tower." "you are right, and, as you may judge, it was not a very difficult problem." "yes," added monsieur dalize; "but it was interesting to know why the apple fell, and you have taught us." "that is true," cried miette; "only you have forgotten to tell us why the moon does not fall." "i have not forgotten," said monsieur roger; "but i wished to avoid speaking of the attraction of the universe. however, as miette obliges me, i shall speak. you see that all earthly bodies are subject to a force which has been called gravity, or weight. now, gravity can also be called attraction. by the word attraction is meant, in fact, the force which makes all bodies come mutually together and adhere together, unless they are separated by some other force. this gravity or attraction which the terrestrial mass exerts upon the objects placed on its surface is felt above the soil to a height that cannot be measured. learned men have, therefore, been led to suppose that this gravity or attraction extended beyond the limits which we can reach; that it acted upon the stars themselves, only decreasing as they are farther off. this supposition allows it to be believed that all the stars are of similar phenomena, that there is a gravity or attraction on their surface, and that this gravity or attraction acts upon all other celestial bodies. with this frame of thought in his mind, newton at last came to believe that all bodies attract each other by the force of gravity, that their movements are determined by the force which they exert mutually upon one another, and that the system of the universe is regulated by a single force,--gravity, or attraction." "but that does not explain to us why the moon does not fall," said monsieur dalize. monsieur roger looked at his friend. "so you also," said he, smiling,--"you also are trying to puzzle me?" "of course i am; but i am only repeating the question whose answer miette is still awaiting." "yes," said miette, "i am waiting. why does not the moon fall?" "well, the moon does not fall because it is launched into space with so great a force that it traverses nearly four-fifths of a mile a second." miette ran to open the door of the vestibule. the park was bathed in the mild light of a splendid moon. "is it of that moon that you are speaking,--the moon which turns around us?" "certainly, as we have no other moon." "and it turns as swiftly as you say?" "why, yes. and do you know why it turns around us, a prisoner of that earth from which it seeks continually to fly in a straight line? it is because----" monsieur roger stopped suddenly, with an embarrassed air. "what is the matter?" asked miette. "why, i am afraid i have put myself in a very difficult position." "why?" [illustration] "i have just undertaken to tell you why the moon does not fall. is not that true?" "yes." "well, i am obliged to tell you that it does fall." "ah, that is another matter!" cried miette. "yes, it is another matter, as you say; and it is necessary that i should speak to you of that other matter. without that how can i make you believe that the moon does not fall and that it does fall?" "that would not be easy," said miss miette. "well, then, imagine a ball shot by a cannon. this ball would go forever in a straight line and with the same swiftness if it were not subject to gravity, to the attraction of the earth. this attraction forces the ball to lower itself little by little below the straight line to approach the earth. at last the time comes when the force of attraction conquers the force which shot the ball, and the latter falls to the earth. this example of the ball may be applied to the moon, which would go forever in a straight line if it were not subject to the attraction of the earth. it shoots in a straight line, ready to flee away from us; but suddenly the attraction of the earth makes itself felt. then the moon bends downward to approach us, and the straight line which it had been ready to traverse is changed to the arc of a circle. again the moon endeavors to depart in a straight line, but the attraction is felt again, and brings near to us our unfaithful satellite. the same phenomenon goes on forever, and the straight path which the moon intended to follow becomes a circular one. it falls in every instance towards us, but it falls with exactly the same swiftness as that with which it seeks to get away from us. consequently it remains always at the same distance. the attraction which prevents the moon from running away may be likened to a string tied to the claws of a cockchafer. the cockchafer flies, seeking to free itself; the string pulls it back towards the child's finger; and very often the circular flight which the insect takes around the finger which holds it represents exactly the circular flight of the moon around the earth." "but," said miette, "is there no danger that the moon may fall some time?" "if the moon had been closer to the earth it would have fallen long ago; but it is more than two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles away, and, as i have told you, if attraction or gravity acts upon the planets, it loses its power in proportion to the distance at which they are. the same attraction which forces the moon to turn around the earth obliges the earth and the planets to turn around the sun; and the sun itself is not immovable. it flies through space like all the other stars, bearing us in its train, subject also to universal attraction." monsieur roger stopped a moment, then he said,-"and it is this great law of universal attraction, this law which governs the universe, that newton discovered when he asked himself, 'why does the apple fall?'" "still, as for me," said miette, "i should not have had that idea at all; i should have said quietly to myself, 'the apple fell because it was ripe.'" [illustration] [illustration] chapter xviii. a mysterious resemblance. the days passed by at the château of sainte-gemme quietly and happily. monsieur roger, having fulfilled his promise to give the explanation of gravity and of attraction, was careful to make no allusions to scientific matters. he thought it useful and right to let his little hearers find their own pleasures wherever they could. one afternoon he saw miette and paul leave the house together. paul had two camp-stools, while miette held her friend's album. "where are you going?" asked monsieur roger. "we are going to sketch," answered paul: "at the end of the park." miette put on the air of a martyr, and said to monsieur roger,-"i think he is going to sketch me." "not at all; come along," replied paul. and miette ran gayly after paul. an hour later, monsieur roger, in his walk, saw at the turning of a pathway lined by young chestnut-trees a scene which brought a smile to his lips. two camp-stools were placed in front of each other, some distance apart; upon one of these camp-stools paul was seated, his album and his pencil between his hands; on the other camp-stool was miss miette, posing for a portrait. monsieur roger approached. when miette saw him, she sat up, and, crossing her little arms, cried, with pretended anger,-"i told you so: he is going to sketch me." "oh, miette," said paul, softly, "you have spoiled the pose." miette turned towards paul, and, seeing that she had made him angry, returned to her former attitude without saying a word. monsieur roger looked at miette, so pretty, so restless by disposition, now forcing herself to sit quietly, with an expression of determination upon her face that was half serious and half laughing. then he cast his eyes upon paul's album, but at that moment paul was scratching over with his pencil the sketch which he had begun. "never," said he, discouraged, "never shall i be able to catch her likeness." "that is not astonishing," replied monsieur roger. "i was struck at once with the change in her face. miette in posing does not resemble herself any longer." "that is true, sir; but why is it?" "why, because it is possible that it does not amuse her very much." miette began to laugh. monsieur roger had guessed aright. "oh, stay like that!" cried paul, seeing miette's face lighten up with gayety. "i will remain like this on one condition." "and what is that?" "that our friend roger will remain also with us. i shall have some one to whom i can talk, and you, paul, will make your sketch at your ease." "that is understood," said monsieur roger, seating himself upon a bank of stones beside the children. at first he lent a rather listless ear to miette's words, for he was thinking of something else, and he only uttered a word or two in answer, which, however, allowed the little girl to think that she was being listened to. his eyes had travelled from the model to the artist. since his arrival at sainte-gemme paul's face had slightly changed: his hair, which had been cut short at school, had lengthened, and now fell over his forehead, shading the top of his face and giving him an expression that was slightly feminine; his large eyes, with long, black lashes, went from miette to the sketch-book with a grave attention which the presence of a third party did not trouble at all. roger's looks had rested upon paul, full of that sympathy which the boy had inspired in him the first time he had seen him; but, instead of looking elsewhere at the end of a few minutes, his eyes were riveted upon paul's face. he eagerly examined every feature of that face, which had suddenly been revealed to him under a new aspect. he had become very pale, and his hands trembled slightly. miette perceived this sudden change, and, full of uneasiness, cried out,-"why, what is the matter?" recalled to himself by this exclamation, monsieur roger shook his head, passed his hand over his eyes, and answered, striving to smile,-"why, there is nothing the matter with me, my dear, except a slight dizziness, caused by the sun no doubt. don't be uneasy about me. i am going back home." and monsieur roger left them at a rapid pace, cutting across the pathway to get out of sight of the children. he walked like a crazy man; his eyes were wild, his brain full of a strange and impossible idea. when he had reached the other end of the park, sure of being alone, sure of not being seen, he stopped; but then he felt weak, and he allowed himself to fall upon the grass. for a long time he remained motionless, plunged in thought. at last he got up, murmuring,-"why, that is impossible. i was a fool." he was himself again. he had thought over everything, he had weighed everything, and he persuaded himself that he had been the plaything of a singular hallucination. still reasoning, still talking to himself, he took no notice of where he was going. suddenly he perceived that he was returning to the spot which he had left. he stopped, and heard the voice of miette in the distance; then he approached as softly as was possible, walking on tiptoe and avoiding the gravel and the falling leaves. one wish filled his heart,--to see paul again without being seen. he walked through the woods towards the side whence the voice had made itself heard. the voice of miette, now very close, said,-"let's see, paul. is it finished?" "yes," answered paul; "only two minutes more. and this time, thanks to monsieur roger, it will be something like you." monsieur roger, hidden behind branches and leaves, came nearer, redoubling his precautions. at last, through an opening in the foliage he perceived paul solange. he looked at him with profound attention until the lad, having started off with miette, was some distance away. when the two children had disappeared, monsieur roger took the shaded path he had been following and went towards the château. he walked slowly, his head bent down, his mind a prey to mysterious thoughts. he had seen paul again, and had studied his face, this time appealing to all his coolness, to all his reasoning power. and now a violent, unconquerable emotion bound him. in vain he tried in his sincerity to believe in a too happy and weak illusion, in a too ardent desire, realized only in his imagination. no, he was forced to admit that what he had just beheld had been seen with the eyes of a reasoning and thinking man whose brain was clear and whose mind was not disordered. however, this thought which had taken possession of him, this overwhelming idea of happiness, was it even admissible? and monsieur roger, striving to return to the reality, murmured,-[illustration] "it is folly! it is folly!" was it not in fact folly which had led him suddenly to recognize in the features of paul solange those of madame roger la morlière? was it not folly to have noticed a mysterious, surprising, and extraordinary resemblance between the face of paul solange and the sweet one of her who had been the mother of george? yes, it was madness, it was impossible. yet, in spite of all, monsieur roger said to himself, deep down in his heart,-"if it were my son?" [illustration] [illustration] chapter xix. the fixed idea. for some days monsieur roger made no allusion to the secret which now filled his soul, nor to that strange idea which filled his whole brain. he retired into himself, thinking that this folly which had suddenly come to him would go away as suddenly, and again feeling, in spite of all, the certain loss of a dream which had made him so happy. and still, the more he looked at paul, which he did only on the sly, not daring to look him in the face, as formerly, for fear of betraying himself, the more and more evident and real did the mysterious resemblance appear to him. the dalize family had remarked the absence of mind and the wandering look of monsieur roger. still, they thought that that was simply because something had reminded him of his sorrows. even paul could not help taking notice of the new attitude which monsieur roger had taken up with regard to him. the kindness and sympathy which monsieur roger had shown him in the first few days of his acquaintance had greatly touched the motherless boy, whose father was far away on the other side of the ocean. now, for some days, it had seemed to paul that monsieur roger sought to avoid his presence,--he neither spoke to him nor looked at him. once only paul had surprised a look which monsieur roger had given him, and in this sad look he had discovered an affection so profound that it felt to him almost like a paternal caress. yet, paul was forced to acknowledge that his father had never looked at him in that way. one evening, after dinner, monsieur dalize led his friend roger into the garden in front of the house, and said to him,-"roger, my dear friend, you have made us uneasy for some days. now we are alone. what is the matter with you?" "why, nothing is the matter with me," said monsieur roger, surprised at the question. "why, certainly, something is the matter. what has happened to you?" "i don't understand what you mean?" "roger, you oblige me to tread on delicate ground,--to ask you a painful question." "speak." "well, my dear friend, the change which we have noticed in you for some time is not my fault, is it? or does it come from the surroundings in which you find yourself placed?" "i don't understand." "i ask if your grief--without your knowing it, perhaps--may not have been revived by the happiness which reigns around you? perhaps the presence of these children, who nevertheless love you already almost as much as they do me, awakes in your heart a terrible remembrance and cruel regrets?" "no, no," cried monsieur roger; "that is not true. but why do you ask me such questions?" "because, my dear friend, you are mentally ill, and i wish to cure you." "why, no, i am not. i am not ill either mentally or physically, i swear." "don't swear," said monsieur dalize; "and do me the kindness to hide yourself for some moments behind this clump of trees. i have witnesses who will convince you that i still have good eyes." monsieur dalize got up, opened the door of the vestibule, and called miette. she ran out gayly. "what do you wish, papa?" she said. "i want to see our friend roger. is he not in the parlor with you?" "no; he always goes his own way. he does not talk to us any longer; and he has had a very funny, sad look for some time. he is not the same at all." [illustration] "very well, my child," said monsieur dalize, interrupting the little girl. "go back to the parlor and send me your brother." albert soon arrived. "you wanted me, father?" said he. "yes; i want you to repeat to me what you told your mother this morning." albert thought for a moment; then he said,-"about monsieur roger?" "yes." "well, i told mamma that for some time back i have heard monsieur roger walking all night in his room; only this evening i heard him crying." "that is all that i wish to know, my child. you can go back again." when monsieur dalize was alone, he walked around the clump of trees to rejoin roger. "well," said he, softly, "you have heard. everybody has noticed your grief. won't you tell me now what it is that you are suffering, or what secret is torturing you?" "yes, i will confide this secret to you," said monsieur roger, "because you will understand me, and you will not laugh at your unhappy friend." and monsieur roger told the whole truth to his friend dalize. he told him what a singular fixed idea had possessed his brain; he told him of the strange resemblance which he thought he had discovered between the features of his dear and regretted wife and the face of paul solange. monsieur dalize let his friend pour out his soul to him. he said only, with pitying affection, when monsieur roger had finished,-"my poor friend! it is a dream that is very near insanity." "alas! that is what i tell myself; and still----" "and still?" repeated monsieur dalize. "you still doubt? come with me." he re-entered the château with roger. when he reached the parlor he went straight to paul solange. "paul," said he, "to-morrow is the mail, and i shall write to your father." "ah, sir," answered paul, "i will give you my letter; maybe you can put it in yours." monsieur dalize seemed to be trying to think of something. "how long a time is it," said he, "since i have had the pleasure of seeing your excellent father?" "two years, sir; but he will surely come to france this winter." monsieur dalize looked at roger; then he whispered in his ear,-"you have heard." [illustration] [illustration] chapter xx. fire. certainly monsieur roger had heard, certainly he tried to convince himself; but when his looks fell upon paul, his reason forsook him and he doubted again, and even he hoped. some days passed in a semi-sadness that made every one feel uneasy. the children, without knowing why, knew that something had happened which troubled the mutual happiness of their life. monsieur and madame dalize alone understood and pitied their friend roger. they endeavored to interest him in other things,--but monsieur roger refused walks, excursions, and the invitations of the neighbors. he had asked monsieur dalize to let him alone for a while, as he felt the need of solitude. one morning albert said to his father,-"father, paul and i wish to go with a fishing-party to the farm, as we did last year. will you allow us to do so?" "yes," answered monsieur dalize; "but on one condition." "what is it?" "that you take monsieur roger with you." albert looked at his father, and answered,-"then you refuse?" "why, no,--i only make that condition." "yes, father; but as we cannot fulfil the condition, it is equal to a refusal." "why cannot you fulfil it? what is there so difficult about it?" "you know as well as i, my dear father, monsieur roger has been for some time very sad, very preoccupied; he wants to remain by himself, and consequently he will refuse to go to the farm." "who knows?" "well, at all events, i would not dare to ask him." "well, then, let paul do it." "but what would paul say?" "he will say that i am detained here, that i cannot come with you, and that, not thinking it prudent to allow you to go fishing alone, i object to it unless monsieur roger will consent to take my place." "very well, father," said albert, in a disappointed tone. "we will see whether paul succeeds; but i am afraid he will not." but paul did succeed. monsieur roger could not resist the request so pleasantly made by the boy. that evening, after dinner, they left home to sleep at the farm, which was situated on the borders of the river yonne. they had to get up at daybreak in order to begin their fishing. the farmers gave up to monsieur roger the only spare room they had in the house. albert and paul had to sleep in what they called the turret. this turret, the last mossy vestige of the feudal castle, whose very windows were old loop-holes, now furnished with panes of glass, stood against one end of the farm-house. it was divided into three stories: the first story was a place where they kept hay and straw; in the second there slept a young farm-boy; the higher story was reserved for another servant, who was just now absent. "in war we must do as the warriors do," cried albert, gayly; "besides, we have not so long to sleep. you may take whichever room you like the best." "i will take the highest story, if you are willing," answered paul; "the view must be beautiful." "oh, the view! through the loop-holes and their blackened glasses! however, you can climb up on the old platform of the turret if you wish. it is covered with zinc, like the roof of an ordinary house; but, all the same, one can walk upon it. come, i will show it to you." the wooden staircase was easily ascended by the boys. when they had reached the room which paul was to occupy, albert pointed his hand towards the ceiling and made paul remark a large bolt. "see," said he: "you have only to get upon a chair to draw this bolt and to push the trap-door, which gives admission to the turret. on the roof you will, in fact, see a beautiful view." "i shall do that to-morrow morning, when i get up," answered paul. albert, after he had said good-night to his friend, descended the staircase and slept in the bed which the farm-boy had yielded to him; the latter was to spend the night upon a bed of hay in the first story. a distant clock in the country had struck twelve. monsieur roger had opened the window of his room, and, being unable to sleep, was thinking, still the prey to the fixed idea, still occupied by the strange resemblance; and now the two names of paul and george mingled together in his mind and were applied only to the one and the same dear being. suddenly the odor of smoke came to him, brought on the breeze. in the cloudy night he saw nothing, and still the smoke grew more and more distinct. every one was asleep at the farm: no light was burning, no sound was heard. monsieur roger bent over the window-sill and looked uneasily around him. the loop-holes of the lower story of the turret were illuminated; then sparks escaped from it, soon followed by jets of flame. at the same instant the wooden door which opened into the yard was violently burst open, and monsieur roger saw two young people in their night-gowns fleeing together and crying with a loud voice. this was all so quick that monsieur roger had had neither the time nor the thought of calling for help. a spasm of fear had seized him, which was calmed, now that paul and albert were safe; but the alarm had been given, and the farm-hands had awakened. but what help could they expect? the nearest village was six miles off; the turret would be burned before the engines could arrive. monsieur roger had run out with the others to witness this fire which they could not extinguish. he held albert in his arms, embraced him, and said to him,-"but, tell me, where is paul?" albert looked around him. "he must be here,--unless fright has made him run away." "no, he is not here. but you are sure that he ran out of the tower, are you not?" "certainly, since it was he who came and shook me in my bed while i was asleep." at this moment a young boy in a night-gown came out of the crowd, and, approaching albert, said,-"no; it was i, sir, who shook you." monsieur roger looked at the boy who had just spoken, and he felt a horrible fear take possession of him. he saw that it was the farm-boy. it must have been he whom he had seen fleeing a moment before with albert. but paul? had he remained in the turret? and the flames which licked the walls had almost reached the floor where paul was sleeping. was the poor boy still asleep? had he heard nothing? "a ladder!" cried monsieur roger, with a cry of fear and despair. the ladder was immediately brought; but it was impossible to place it against the turret, whose base was in flames. monsieur roger in a second had examined the battlements which composed the roof. he ran towards the farm-house, climbed up the staircase to the top story, opened a trap-door, and found himself upon the roof. crawling on his hands and knees, following the ridge of the roof, he reached the turret, and found himself even with the story where paul solange was asleep. the loop-hole was before him. with a blow of his elbow he broke the glass; then he cried,-"paul! paul!" below the people looked at him in mournful silence. no reply came from the room; he could see nothing through the darkness. monsieur roger had a gleam of hope: paul must have escaped. but a sheet of fire higher than the others threw a sudden light through the loop-hole on the other side. monsieur roger was seized with indescribable anguish. paul solange was there in his bed. was he asleep? monsieur roger cried out anew with all his force. paul remained motionless. then monsieur roger leaned over the roof, and said to the people below,-"cry at the top of your voices! make a noise!" but the next moment he made a sign to them to be silent,--for monsieur roger had felt somebody crawling behind him, somebody who had followed his perilous path. it was albert dalize. "oh, my friend,--my poor friend!" cried monsieur roger; "what can we do? is it not enough to make you crazy? see! the staircase is in flames. you can hardly pass your arm through the loop-holes. whether he wakes or not, he is lost." and then he said, with an awful gravity, "then, it is better he should not awake." "no," replied albert, quickly; "there is an opening at the top of the tower." "there is an opening?" "yes, a trap-door, which i showed him only a little while ago, before we went to sleep." monsieur roger raised himself upon the roof to a standing position. "what are you doing?" cried albert. "i am going to try to reach the top of the tower." "it is useless; the bolt opens in the room. paul only can open it." "paul can open it." "if he awakes. but how is it he does not awake?" and in his turn albert called to his friend. paul made no movement. the flames were gaining, growing more and more light, and the smoke was filtering through the plank floor and filling the room. [illustration] "ah, i understand," cried monsieur roger, "i understand: he is not sleeping. that is not sleep,--that is asphyxia." "asphyxia?" repeated albert, in a voice choked with fear. the scene was terrible. there was the boy, a prisoner, who was going to die under the eyes of those who loved him, and separated from them solely by a circle of stone and of fire,--a circle which they could not cross. he was going to die without any knowledge that he was dying. asphyxia held him in a death-like trance. albert saw the floor of the room crack and a tongue of flame shoot up, which lighted up the sleeping face of paul solange. then he heard a strange cry from a terrified and awful voice. the voice cried,-"george! george!" and it was monsieur roger who had twice called that name. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxi. saved. albert still looked. then he saw paul solange raise himself upon his bed, and, seeing the fire, pass his hands over his eyes and his forehead, jump to the floor, reflect a moment, as if endeavoring to remember something, then seize a chair, get upon it, and pull the bolt of the trap-door. at the same time he remarked that monsieur roger was no longer near him. braving the danger, monsieur roger had jumped from the roof, and succeeded in reaching the top of the turret; and now it was he who pulled paul from the trap-door and gathered him up in his arms. the boy had fainted. obeying an order shouted by albert, two farm-boys trusted themselves upon the roof, bringing with them a ladder and ropes. then monsieur roger was able to come down with his precious burden. albert lent his aid to the rescuer, and paul was taken down into the yard. at this moment a carriage arrived, which had been driving at the top of its speed. it stopped at the door of the farm-house. monsieur dalize appeared. from the château the flames had been seen by a watchman, who had gone to awake his master. monsieur dalize, understanding the danger, frightened at what might be happening over there in that farm-house on fire, under that roof which sheltered his child, his best friend, and paul solange, had immediately harnessed a horse, with the aid of the watchman, and, telling him to say nothing to madame dalize, had departed at the top of his speed. he arrived in time to see monsieur roger and albert, who were bearing paul with them. he approached, trembling. "paul!" he cried. "calm yourself," monsieur roger hastened to say: "he has only fainted. it is nothing; but we shall have to take him home." "the carriage is ready." "then everything is for the best." paul was seated in the carriage, between albert and monsieur roger. the latter had placed his left arm under paul's head to sustain him. the poor child was still insensible; but there could be no better remedy for him than the fresh air of the night,--the fresh air which the rapid movement of the carriage caused to penetrate into his lungs. monsieur dalize, who drove, turned around frequently, looking at roger. the latter held in his right hand paul solange's hand, and from time to time placed his ear against the boy's breast. "well?" said monsieur dalize, anxiously. "his pulse is still insensible," answered monsieur roger; "but stop your horse for a moment." the carriage stopped. then, being no longer interfered with by the noise, monsieur roger again applied his ear, and said,-"his heart beats; it beats very feebly, but it beats. now go ahead." again the carriage started. at the end of some minutes, monsieur roger, who still held paul's wrist between his fingers, suddenly felt beneath the pulsations of the radial artery. he cried out, with a loud voice, but it was a cry of joy,-"he is saved!" he said to monsieur dalize. at that very moment paul solange opened his eyes; but he closed them again, as if a heavy sleep, stronger than his will, were weighing upon his eyelids. again he opened them, and looked with an undecided look, without understanding. at that moment they arrived at the house. everybody was on foot. the fire at the farm had been perceived by others besides the watchman. they had all risen from their beds, and madame dalize, awakened by the noise, had, unfortunately, learned the terrible news. she was awaiting in cruel agony the return of her husband. at last she saw him driving the carriage and bringing with him the beings who were dear to her. paul, leaning on the arms of monsieur roger and albert, was able to cross the slight distance which separated them from the vestibule. there monsieur roger made him sit down in an arm-chair, near the window, which he opened wide. monsieur and madame dalize and albert stood beside paul, looking at him silently and uneasily; but they were reassured by the expression of monsieur roger. with common accord they left him the care of his dear patient. monsieur roger was looking at paul with tender eyes,--an expression of happiness, of joy, illumined his face: and this expression, which monsieur dalize had not seen for long years upon the face of his friend, seemed to him incomprehensible, for he was still ignorant of the extraordinary thing that had happened. at this moment, miss miette, in her night-cap, hardly taking time to dress herself, rushed into the vestibule. her childish sleep had been interrupted by the tumult in the house. she had run down half awake. "mamma, mamma," she cried, "what is the matter?" then, as she ran to throw herself upon her mother's knees, she saw the arm-chair and paul sitting in it. she stopped at once, and, before they had the time or the thought of stopping her, she had taken paul's hands, saying to him, very sadly,-"paul, paul, are you sick?" paul's eyes, which until this time had remained clouded and as if fixed upon something which he could not see, turned to miette. little by little they brightened as his senses returned to him: his eyes commenced to sparkle. he looked, and, with a soft but weary voice, he murmured,-"miette, my little miette." [illustration] then he turned his head, trying to find out where it was he found himself, who were the people around him. "what has happened?" he asked. nobody dared to answer. everybody waited for monsieur roger; but monsieur roger kept silent. he let nature take care of itself. indeed, he even hid himself slightly behind monsieur dalize. paul's looks passed over the faces which were in front or beside him; but they did not stop there: they seemed to look for something or some one which they did not meet. then, with a sudden movement, paul bent over a little. he saw monsieur roger; he started; the blood came back to his face; he tried to speak, and could only let fall a few confused words. but, though they could not understand his words, what they did understand was his gesture. he held out his arms towards monsieur roger. the latter advanced and clasped paul solange in a fatherly embrace. the effort made by the sick boy had wearied him. he closed his eyes in sleep; but this time it was a healthy sleep, a refreshing sleep. monsieur roger and monsieur dalize took the sleeping paul up to his room. and miss miette, as she regained her boudoir, said to herself, with astonishment,-"it is extraordinary! monsieur roger embraced paul as if he were his papa." [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxii. george! george! monsieur roger stayed up all the remainder of that night by the side of paul, whose sleep was calm and dreamless, like the sleep which succeeds to some strong emotion, some great fatigue. paul was still sleeping in the morning when monsieur dalize softly turned the handle of the door and entered the room on tiptoe. his entrance was made with so much precaution that monsieur roger himself did not hear him. monsieur dalize had some seconds in which to observe roger. he saw him sitting beside the bed, his eyes fixed upon the child, in a thoughtful attitude. monsieur roger was studying the delicate face which lay upon the pillow. he examined its features one by one, and, thinking himself alone, thinking that he would not be interrupted in this examination, he was calling up the mysterious resemblance with which he had already acquainted his friend. but he had not just now begun this study,--he had pursued it all night. the light, however, of the lowered lamp had not been favorable, and the emotion which he felt agitated him still too much to leave his judgment clear. when the morning sun had risen, chasing away all the vague images of the darkness and the doubts of the mind. roger, having recovered his composure, looked at the child whom he had saved, and asked himself if the child was not his own. he was drawn from these reflections by feeling himself touched upon the shoulder. monsieur dalize had approached and asked,-"has he passed a good night?" "excellent," answered monsieur roger, in a low tone; "but we must let him sleep as long as he can. give orders that no noise shall be made around here and that no one shall enter. he must awake of his own accord. when he awakes he will only feel a slight fatigue." "then i am going to give these orders and tell the good news," said monsieur dalize. he retired as softly as he had entered, but by accident, near the door, he stumbled against a chair. he stopped, holding his breath; but roger made a sign that he could go on. the slight noise had not awakened paul, or at least had not awakened him completely; he had turned around upon his bed for the first time since he had been placed there. monsieur roger, who never took his eyes off him, understood that he was dreaming. the dream seemed to be a painful one, for some feeble groans and murmurs escaped him. then upon the face of the sleeping child appeared an expression of great fear. monsieur roger did not wish to leave paul a prey to such a dream. he approached near to raise him a little upon the bed. the moment that monsieur roger's two hands softly touched paul's head, the expression of fear disappeared, the features became quiet and calm, the groans ceased, and suddenly there escaped his lips the single word "papa." monsieur roger started. with his trembling hands he still sustained the child; he bent over, ready to embrace him, forgetting that the child was sleeping and dreaming. monsieur roger was about to utter the name which choked him,--"my son." then paul solange opened his eyes. he looked up dreamily; then he recognized the face before him, and surprise mingled with affection in his tones. "monsieur roger!" he said. he looked around him, saw that he was in his own room, and remembered nothing else. he asked,-"why are you here, monsieur roger?" mastering himself, monsieur roger answered that he had come to find out how paul was, as he had seen him suffering the night before. "i, suffering?" asked paul. then he sought to remember, and, all of a sudden, he cried, "the fire over there at the farm!" although his memory had not entirely returned, he recollected something. he hesitated to speak. then, with an anxious voice, he asked,-"and albert?" "albert," answered monsieur roger, "he is below; and everybody is waiting until you come down to breakfast." "then there were no accidents?" "no." "how fortunate! i will dress myself and be down in a minute." and, in fact, in a few minutes paul was ready, and descended leaning on monsieur roger's arm. the latter, as they entered the dining-room, made a sign to them that they should all keep silence: he did not wish that they should fatigue the tired mind of the child with premature questions; but when they were sitting at the table, paul, addressing albert, said,-"tell me what passed last night. it is strange i scarcely remember." "no," said madame dalize: "we are at table for breakfast, and we have all need for food,--you, paul, above all. come, now, let us eat; a little later we may talk." [illustration] "it is well said," said monsieur dalize. there was nothing to do but to obey. and, indeed, paul was glad to do so, for he was very hungry. he had lost so much strength that the stomach for the moment was more interesting to him than the brain. they breakfasted, and then they went out upon the lawn before the château, under a large walnut-tree, which every day gave its hospitable shade to the dalize family and their guests. "well, my dear paul," said monsieur dalize, "how are you at present?" "very well, indeed, sir, very well," answered paul. "i was a little feeble when i first awoke, but now,--now----" he stopped speaking; he seemed lost in thought. "what is the matter?" asked albert. "i am thinking of last night at the farm,--the fire." "oh, that was nothing," said albert. "but," continued paul, "how did we get back here?" "in the carriage. father came for us and brought us home." "and how did we leave the farm?" monsieur roger followed with rapt attention the workings of paul's memory. he was waiting in burning anxiety the moment when paul should remember. one principal fact, only one thing occupied his attention. would paul remember how and by whom he had been borne from the torpor which was strangling him? would he remember that cry,--that name which had had the miraculous power to awake him, to bring him back to life? if paul remembered that, then, perhaps---and again monsieur roger was a prey to his fixed idea,--to his stroke of folly, as monsieur dalize called it. the latter, besides, knew nothing as yet, and monsieur roger counted upon the sudden revelation of this extraordinary fact to shake his conviction. but paul had repeated his question. he asked,-"how did we leave the farm-house? how were we saved?" and as albert did not know whether he should speak, whether he should tell everything, paul continued: "but speak, explain to me: i am trying to find out. i cannot remember; and that gives me pain here." and he touched his head. monsieur roger made a sign to albert, and the latter spoke: "well, do you remember the turret, where we had our rooms? you slept above, i below. do you remember the trap-door that i showed you? in the middle of the night i felt myself awakened by somebody, and i followed him. in my half sleep i thought that this some one was you, my poor friend; but, alas! you remained above; you were sleeping without fear. why, it was monsieur roger who first saw the danger that you were in." paul, while albert was speaking, had bent his head, seeking in his memory and beginning to put in order his scattered thoughts. when albert pronounced the name of monsieur roger, paul raised his eyes towards him with a look which showed that he would soon remember. "and afterwards?" said he. "and afterwards monsieur roger climbed upon the roof, at the risk of his life, and reached the loop-hole which opened into your chamber. he broke the glass of the window; but you did not hear him: the smoke which was issuing through the floor had made you insensible,--had almost asphyxiated you." "ah, i remember!" cried paul. "i was sleeping, and, at the same time, i was not sleeping. i knew that i was exposed to some great danger, but i had not the strength to make a movement. i seemed paralyzed. i heard cries and confused murmurs, sounds of people coming and going. i felt that i ought to rise and flee, but that was impossible. my arms, my legs would not obey me; my eyelids, which i attempted to open, were of lead. i soon thought that everything was finished, that i was lost; and still i was saying to myself that i might be raised out of this stupor. it seemed to me that the efforts of some one outside might be so, that an order, a prayer might give back to my will the power which it had lost; but the stupor took hold of me more and more intensely. i was going to abandon myself to it, when, all of a sudden, i heard myself called. yes, somebody called me; but not in the same way that i have been called before. in that cry there was such a command, such a prayer, so much faith, that my will at once recovered strength to make my body obey it. i roused myself; i saw and i understood, and, luckily, i remembered the trap-door which you had shown me. i could scarcely lift it; but there was some one there,--yes, some one who saved me." paul solange uttered a great cry. "ah," said he, "it was monsieur roger!" and he ran to throw himself into the arms which monsieur roger extended to him. miss miette profited by the occasion to wipe her eyes, which this scene had filled with big tears in spite of herself. then she turned to paul, and said,-"but the one who called to you? was it true? it was not a dream?" "oh, no; it was some one. but who was it?" "it was monsieur roger," answered albert. "and so you understood him?" continued miette, very much interested. "and he called you loudly by your name, 'paul! paul!'" paul solange did not answer. this question had suddenly set him to thinking. no, he had not heard himself called thus. but how had he been called? seeing that paul was silent, albert answered his little sister's question: "certainly," said he, "he called paul by his name." then he interrupted himself, and, remembering all of a sudden: "no," cried he; "monsieur roger called out another name." "what other name?" asked monsieur dalize, much surprised. "he cried out, 'george! george!'" monsieur dalize turned his head towards roger and saw the eyes of his friend fixed upon his own. he understood at once. poor roger was still a slave to the same thought, the same illusion. madame dalize and miette, who were acquainted with the sorrows of monsieur roger, imagined that in this moment of trouble he had in spite of himself called up the image of his child. paul, very gravely, was dreamily saying to himself that the name of george was the name which he had heard, and that it was to the sound of this name that he had answered, and he was asking himself the mysterious reason for such a fact. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxiii. a proof? monsieur dalize took his friend roger by the arm, and they walked together down one of the solitary pathways of the park. when they were some distance off from madame dalize and the children, monsieur dalize stopped, looked his friend squarely in the eyes, and said, in a faltering tone,-"then you still think it? you have retained that foolish idea? you think that paul----?" "yes," interrupted monsieur roger, in a firm voice, and without avoiding the eyes of his friend, "i think it, and more than that." then, lowering his head, in a softened tone, but without hesitation, he said, "i think that paul is my son." monsieur dalize looked at his friend with a feeling of real pity. "your son?" he said. "you think that paul is your son? and on what do you found this improbable, this impossible belief? upon a likeness which your sorrowful spirit persists in tracing. truly, my dear roger, you grieve me. i thought you had a firmer as well as a clearer head. to whom could you confide such absurd ideas?" "to you, in the first place, as i have already done," said monsieur roger, gravely. "the resemblance which you doubt, and which, in fact, seems impossible to prove, is not a resemblance which i see between paul and george, but between paul and her who was his mother; of that i am sure." "you are sure?" "yes; and in speaking thus i am in possession of all my senses, as you see. now, would you like to know what further clue i have? perhaps i have one. i will tell it to you." here monsieur roger interrupted himself. "no," said he: "you will laugh at me." "speak," said monsieur dalize. "i am sorry for you, and i shall not laugh at your delusion. speak. i will listen." "well," said monsieur roger, "this very morning, when you left the room, the noise that you made troubled the sleep of paul; a dream passed through his brain, and i followed all its phases. i saw that paul was going over the terrible scene of the night before; i knew that by the terror of his face and by the murmur of his lips. he evidently thought himself exposed to danger; then it seemed as if he heard something, as if he knew that help was at hand. he made a movement, as if to extend his hands, and from his mouth came this word, 'papa.'" monsieur roger looked at his friend, who remained silent. "you have not understood?" he said. monsieur dalize shook his head. "ah, but i understood," continued monsieur roger; "i am certain that i understood. in his dream paul--no, no, not paul, but george, my little george--had heard himself called as ten years ago he had been called at the time of the shipwreck, during the fire on shipboard, and he was answering to that call; and it was to no stranger that he was answering; it was not to monsieur roger; no, it was to his father: it was to me." monsieur roger stopped, seeking some other proof which he might furnish to monsieur dalize. the latter was plunged in thought; his friend's faith commenced to shake his doubt. he certainly did not share roger's idea, but he was saying to himself that perhaps this idea was not so impossible as it would seem at first sight. roger continued, hesitating from the moment he had to pronounce the name of paul solange: "you remember exactly the story that paul told. were you not struck with it? did not paul acknowledge that in his torpor, in his semi-asphyxia, he had called for help, called to his assistance some unknown force which would shake and awake his dazed and half-paralyzed will? and did not this help come, this sudden force, when he felt himself called? now, how many times i had cried out 'paul' without waking the child! paul was not his name; he did not hear it. i had to shout to him, making use of his own name, his real name. i cried out, 'george!' and george heard and understood me. george was saved." monsieur dalize listened attentively: he was following up a train of reasoning. at the end of some moments he answered monsieur roger, who was awaiting with impatience the result of his thoughts. "alas, my poor friend! in spite of all my reason tells me, i should like to leave to you your hope, but it is impossible. i have seen paul's father; i know him; i have spoken to him, i have touched him; that father is not a shadow,--he exists in flesh and blood. you have heard paul himself speak of him. in a few months he will come to paris; you will see him; and then you will be convinced." "but have you seen the birth-register of paul solange?" asked monsieur roger. "have i seen it? i may have done so, but i don't remember just now." "but that register must have been made; it must be in france, in the hands of some one." "certainly." "where can it be?" "at the lyceum, in the dockets of the registrar." "well, my friend, my dear friend, i must see it. you understand?" "yes, i understand. you wish to have under your own eyes the proof of your mistake. you shall have it. as the guardian of paul solange, i will write the registrar to send me a copy of that birth-register. are you satisfied?" "yes." "and now, i ask you to be calm, to keep cool." "oh, don't be uneasy about me," answered monsieur roger. then the two friends rejoined the group which they had left. miette rose when she saw monsieur roger. "ah!" she cried, "monsieur roger is going to tell us that." "that? what?" asked monsieur dalize. "why, what asphyxia is," answered miette. "ah, my friend," said monsieur dalize, turning to roger, "i will leave the word to you." "very well," answered monsieur roger. "asphyxia is,--it is----" and as monsieur roger was seeking for some easy words in which to explain himself, miette cried out, with a laugh,-"perhaps you don't know yourself,--you who know everything?" "yes, i know it," answered monsieur roger, with a smile; "but, in order to tell you, i must first explain to you what is the formation of the blood, and tell you something of oxygen and carbonic acid, and----" "well, tell us," cried miette, "if you think it will interest us.--it will, won't it, paul?" paul bent his head. monsieur roger saw this gesture, and replied,-"well, then, i am going to tell you." [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxiv. the air and the lungs. "in order to live," continued monsieur roger, "you must breathe. you don't doubt that?" "no," said miss miette, seriously. "now, respiration consists in the absorption by the blood of some of the oxygen of the air and in breathing out carbonic acid. the oxygen, in combining with the carbon and hydrogen of the blood, excites a real combustion in the lungs, which results in the production of heat and in the exhalation of vapor and carbonic acid." monsieur roger was going to continue in the same scientific tone, when monsieur dalize remarked to him that his explanation did not seem to be at all understood by the children. the latter, a little embarrassed, held their tongues. "you are right," replied monsieur roger, addressing monsieur dalize; "that is a silence which is certainly not very flattering. i intend to profit by this lesson by beginning once more at the beginning." "you are right," said miette. "well, then, respiration is the very important function whose object is to introduce air into our lungs. "what are the lungs, and why is it necessary to introduce air into them? and, in the first place, how is this air introduced? through the mouth and through the nose. then it passes through the larynx and arrives at a large tube, which is called the trachea, or wind-pipe. it is this tube which, as i shall show you, forms the two lungs. as it enters the chest, this tube branches out into two smaller tubes, which are called the primary bronches. one of these bronches goes to the right, to make the right lung; the other to the left, to make the left lung. each primary bronche is soon divided into a number of little tubes, called secondary bronches. the secondary bronches divide up into a number of other tubes, which are still smaller; and so on, and so on. imagine a tree with two branches, one spreading towards the right, and the other towards the left. upon these two branches grow other branches; upon these other branches still others, and so on. the branches become smaller and smaller until they become mere twigs. now, imagine these twigs ending in leaves, and you will have some idea of that which is sometimes called the pulmonary tree, with its thousand branches." "no," said miette: "bronches." "bronches,--you are right," said monsieur roger, who could not help smiling at miss miette. "the tree which i have taken as a comparison finishes by dividing itself into twigs, which, as i have said, end in leaves. but you know, of course, that the twigs of the pulmonary tree in our breast do not end in leaves. they end in a sort of very small cells, surrounded by very thin walls. these cells are so small that they need a microscope to detect them, and their walls are very, very thin; the cells are all stuck fast together, and together they constitute a spongy mass, which is the lung. now let us pass to the second question: why is it necessary to introduce air into the lungs?" "yes," said miette; "let us pass to that." [illustration] "the blood, in going out of the heart, circulates to all the parts of the body in order to make necessary repairs; at the same time it charges itself with all the old matter which has been used up and is no longer any good and carries it along. now, what is it going to do with this old matter? it will burn it. where will it burn it? in the lungs. now, there can be no combustion when there is no air. the blood, wishing to burn its waste matter, and wishing also to purify the alimentary principles which the veins have drawn from the stomach, has need of air. where will it find it? in the lungs. and that is why it is necessary to introduce air into our lungs, or, in other words, that is why we breathe. the lungs are a simple intermediary between the air and the blood. among the cells of the lungs veins finer than hair wind and turn. these veins gather up the blood filled with waste matter. it is blood of a black color, which is called venous blood. the walls of the veins which transport the blood are so thin that air, under the atmospheric pressure,--this pressure which i have told you all about,--passes through them and into the blood. then the venous blood charges itself with the oxygen contained in the air, and frees itself from what i have called its waste material, and which is nothing less than carbon. immediately its aspect changes. this venous blood becomes what is called arterial blood; this black blood becomes rich vermilion,--it is regenerated. it goes out again to carry life to all our organs. now, this time," asked monsieur roger, pausing, "have i made myself understood?" [illustration] "yes," said miette, speaking both for paul and for herself; "yes, we have understood,--except when you speak of oxygen, of carbon, and of combustion." "oh, i was wrong to speak of them," answered monsieur roger, pretending to be vexed. "that may be," answered miss miette, very calmly; "but as you did speak of them, you must tell us what they are." "yes, you must, my friend," remarked monsieur dalize, taking sides with his little girl. "mustn't he, papa? mustn't monsieur roger explain?" asked miette. "come, now," said monsieur roger, in a resigned tone. "you must know, then, that air is composed of two gases,--oxygen and nitrogen; therefore, when we breathe, we send into our lungs oxygen and nitrogen. you might think, when we throw out this air, when we exhale,--you might think, i say, that this air coming out of our lungs is still composed of oxygen and of nitrogen in the same proportions. now, it is not so at all. the quantity of nitrogen has not varied, but, in the first place, there is less oxygen, and there is another gas,--carbonic acid gas; where, then, is the oxygen which we have not exhaled, and whence comes this carbonic acid which we did not inhale? then, besides, in the air exhaled there is vapor. where does that come from? these phenomena result from the combustion of which i speak; but, in order that you should understand how this combustion occurs, i must explain to you what is oxygen and what is nitrogen. and as it is a long story, you must let me put it off till this evening; then i will talk until you are weary, my dear little miette." miette looked at albert and paul, and answered for them with remarkable frankness: "it will be only right if you do weary us. it is we who asked you, and, besides, we have so often wearied you that it is only right you should have your revenge on us. still----" "still, what?" "still, we can trust you," added miette, laughing, and throwing her arms around roger's neck. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxv. oxygen. "we were saying that oxygen----" cried miss miette, with a smile, that evening, after dinner, seeing that monsieur roger had completely forgotten his promise. "yes," monsieur dalize hastened to add, as he wished to distract his friend from sad thoughts; "yes, my dear roger, we were saying that oxygen----" "is a gas," continued monsieur roger, good-humoredly. "yes, it is a gas; and miette, i suppose, will want to ask me, 'what is gas?'" "certainly," said miette. "well, it is only recently that we have found out, although the old scientists, who called themselves alchemists, had remarked that besides those things that come within reach of our senses there also exists something invisible, impalpable; and, as their scientific methods did not enable them to detect this thing, they had considered it a portion of the spirit land; and indeed some of the names which they adopted under this idea still remain in common use. don't we often call alcohol 'spirits of wine'? as these ancients did not see the air which surrounded them, it was difficult for them to know that men live in an ocean of gas, in the same way as fish live in water; and they could not imagine that air is a matter just as much as water is. you remember that universal gravitation was discovered through----" "the fall of an apple," said miette. "yes; and that was something that every one knew; it was a very common fact that an apple would fall. well, it was another common fact, another well-known thing, which enabled the fleming van helmont to discover in the seventeenth century the real existence of gases, or at least of a gas. van helmont, one winter evening, was struck by the difference between the bulk of the wood which burned on his hearth and the bulk of the ashes left by the wood after its combustion. he wished to examine into this phenomenon, and he made some experiments. he readily found that sixty-two pounds of charcoal left, after combustion, only one pound of ashes. now, what had become of the other sixty-one pounds? reason showed him that they had been transformed into something invisible, or, according to the language of the times, into some aërial spirit. this something van helmont called 'gaast,' which in flemish means spirit, and which is the same word as our ghost. from the word gaast we have made our word gas. the gas which van helmont discovered was, as we now know, carbonic acid. this scientist made another experiment which caused him to think a good deal, but which he could not explain. now, we can repeat this experiment, if it will give you any pleasure." "certainly," said miette; "what shall i bring you?" "only two things,--a soup-plate and a candle." monsieur roger lit the candle and placed it in the middle of the soup-plate, which he had filled with water. then he sought among the instruments which had come with the air-pump, and found a little glass globe. he placed the globe over the candle in the middle of the plate. very soon, as if by a species of suction, the water of the plate rose in the globe; then the candle went out. "can miss miette explain to me what she has just seen?" said monsieur roger. [illustration] miette reflected, and said,-"as the water rose in the globe, it must have been because the air had left the globe, since the water came to take its place." "yes," answered monsieur roger; "but the air could not leave the globe, as there is no opening in the globe on top, and below it there is water. it did not leave the globe, but it diminished. now, tell me why it diminished." "ah, i cannot tell you." "well, van helmont was in just your position. he could not know anything about the cause of this diminution, because he was ignorant of the composition of the air, which was not discovered until the next century by the celebrated french chemist lavoisier. now, this is how lavoisier arrived at this important discovery. in the first place, he knew that metals, when they are calcined,--that is to say, when they are exposed to the action of fire,--increase in weight. this fact had been remarked before his time by dr. jehan rey, under the following circumstances: a druggist named brun came one day to consult the doctor. rey asked to be allowed to feel his pulse. "'but i am not sick,' cried the druggist. "'then what are you doing here?' said the doctor. "'i come to consult you.' "'then you must be sick.' "'not at all. i come to consult you not for sickness, but in regard to an extraordinary thing which occurred in my laboratory.' "'what was it?' asked rey, beginning to be interested. "'i had to calcine two pounds six ounces of tin. i weighed it carefully and then calcined it, and after the operation i weighed it again by chance, and what was my astonishment to find two pounds and thirteen ounces! whence come these extra seven ounces? that is what i could not explain to myself, and that is why i came to consult you.' "rey tried the same experiment again and again, and finally concluded that the increase of weight came from combination with some part of the air. "it is probable that this explanation did not satisfy the druggist; and yet the doctor was right. the increase came from the combination of the metal with that part of the air which lavoisier called oxygen. that great chemist, after long study, declared that air was not a simple body, but that it was a composite formed of two bodies, of two gases,--oxygen and nitrogen. this opinion, running counter as it did to all preconceived ideas, raised a storm around the head of the learned man. he was looked upon as a fool, as an imbecile, as an ignoramus. that is the usual way. "lavoisier resolved to show to the unbelievers the two bodies whose existence he had announced. in the experiment of increasing the weight of metals during calcination, an experiment which has been often repeated since jehan rey's time, either tin or lead had always been used. now, these metals, during calcination, absorb a good deal of oxygen from the air, but, once they have absorbed it, they do not give it up again. lavoisier abandoned tin and lead, and made use of a liquid metal called mercury. mercury possesses not only the property of combining with the oxygen of the air when it is heated, but also that of giving back this oxygen as soon as the boiling-point is passed. the chemist put mercury in a glass retort whose neck was very long and bent over twice. the retort was placed upon an oven in such a way that the bent end of the neck opened into the top of the globe full of air, placed in a tube also full of mercury. by means of a bent tube, a little air had been sucked out of the globe in such a way that the mercury in the tube, finding the pressure diminished, had risen a slight distance in the globe. in this manner the height of the mercury in the globe was very readily seen. the level of the mercury in the globe was noted exactly, as well as the temperature and the pressure. everything being now ready for the experiment, lavoisier heated the mercury in the retort to the boiling-point, and kept it on the fire for twelve days. the mercury became covered with red pellicles, whose number increased towards the seventh and eighth days; at the end of the twelfth day, as the pellicles did not increase, lavoisier discontinued the heat. then he found out that the mercury had risen in the globe much higher than before he had begun the experiment, which indicated that the air contained in the globe had diminished. the air which remained in the globe had become a gas which was unfit either for combustion or for respiration; in fact, it was nitrogen. but the air which had disappeared from the globe, where had it gone to? what had become of it?" "yes," said miette, "it is like the air of our globe just now. where has it gone?" "wait a moment. let us confine ourselves to lavoisier's experiment." "we are listening." "well, lavoisier decided that the air which had disappeared could not have escaped from the globe, because that was closed on all sides. he examined the mercury. it seemed in very much the same state. what difference was there? none, excepting the red pellicles. then it was in the pellicles that he must seek for the air which had disappeared. so the red pellicles were taken up and heated in a little retort, furnished with a tube which could gather the gas; under the action of heat the pellicles were decomposed. lavoisier obtained mercury and a gas. the quantity of gas which he obtained represented the exact difference between the original bulk of the air in the globe and the bulk of the gas which the globe held at the end of the experiment. therefore lavoisier had not been deceived. the air which had disappeared from the globe had been found. this gas restored from the red pellicles was much better fitted than the air of the atmosphere for combustion and respiration. when a candle was placed in it, it burned with a dazzling light. a piece of charcoal, instead of consuming quietly, as in ordinary air, burned with a flame and with a sort of crackling sound, and with a light so strong that the eye could hardly bear it. that gas was oxygen." "and so the doubters were convinced," said miette. "or at least they ought to have been," added monsieur dalize, philosophically. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxvi. why water puts out fire. "you have never seen oxygen any more than you have seen air," continued monsieur roger. "you have never seen it, and you never will see it with your eyes,--for those organs are very imperfect. i need not therefore say oxygen is a colorless gas; and yet i will say it to you by force of habit. all books of chemistry begin in this way. besides this, it is without smell and without taste. oxygen is extremely well fitted for combustion. a half-extinguished candle--that is, one whose wick is still burning but without flame--will relight instantly if placed in a globe full of oxygen. almost all the metals, except the precious metals, such as gold, silver, and platinum, burn, or oxydize more or less rapidly, when they are put in contact with oxygen; for, besides those lively combustions, in which metals, or other materials, become hot and are maintained in a state of incandescence, there are other kinds of burning which may be called slow combustions. you have often had under your eyes, without knowing it, examples of these slow combustions. for example, you have seen bits of iron left in the air, or in the water, and covered with a dark-red or light-red matter." "that is rust," said miette. "yes, that is what they call rust; and this rust is nothing less than the product of the combustion of the iron. the oxygen which is found in the air, or the water, has come in contact with the bit of iron and has made it burn. it is a slow combustion, without flames, but it nevertheless releases some heat. verdigris, in some of its forms, is nothing less than the product of the combustion----" "of copper," interrupted miette again. "miette has said it. these metals burn when they come in contact with the oxygen of the air,--or, in the language of science, they are oxydized; and this oxydation is simple combustion. therefore, oxygen is the principal agent in combustion. the process which we call burning is due to the oxygen uniting itself to some combustible body. there is no doubt on that subject, for it has been found that the weight of the products of combustion is equal to the sum of the weight of the body which burns and that of the oxygen which combines with it. in the experiment which we have made, if the oxygen has diminished in the globe, if it seems to have disappeared, it is because it has united itself and combined with the carbon of the candle to form the flame. in the same way in lavoisier's experiment it had combined itself with the mercury to form the red pellicles. the candle had gone out when all the oxygen in the globe had been absorbed; the red pellicles had ceased to form when they found no more oxygen. in this way lavoisier discovered that the air was formed of a mixture of two gases: the first was oxygen, of which we have just spoken; the second was nitrogen. the nitrogen, which is also a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas, possesses some qualities that are precisely contrary to those of oxygen. oxygen is the agent of combustion. nitrogen extinguishes bodies in combustion. oxygen is a gas indispensable to our existence, with which our lungs breathe, and which revives our being. the nitrogen, on the contrary, contains no properties that are directly useful to the body. animals placed in a globe full of nitrogen perish of asphyxia. in other words, they drown in the gas, or are smothered by it. i suppose you will ask me what is the use of this gas, and why it enters into the composition of the air? you will ask it with all the more curiosity when you know that the air contains four times as much nitrogen as oxygen; to be exact, a hundred cubic feet of air contains seventy-nine cubic feet of nitrogen and twenty-one cubic feet of oxygen. now, the important part that nitrogen plays is to moderate the action of the oxygen in respiration. you may compare this nitrogen mixed with oxygen to the water which you put in a glass of wine to temper it. nitrogen possesses also another property which is more general: it is one of the essential elements in a certain number of mineral and vegetable substances and the larger portion of animal substances. there are certain compounds containing nitrogen which are indispensable to our food. an animal nourished entirely on food which is destitute of nitrogen would become weak and would soon die." "excuse me, monsieur roger," said albert dalize: "how can nitrogen enter into our food?" "that is a very good question," added miette, laughing; "surely you cannot eat nitrogen and you cannot eat gas." "the question is indeed a very sensible one," answered monsieur roger; "but this is how nitrogen enters into our food. we are carnivorous, are we not? we eat meat and flesh of animals. and what flesh do we chiefly eat? the flesh of sheep and of cattle. sheep and cattle are herbivorous: they feed on herbs, on vegetables. now, vegetables contain nitrogen. they have taken this nitrogen, either directly or indirectly, from the atmosphere and have fixed it in their tissues. herbivorous animals, in eating vegetables, eat nitrogen, and we, who are carnivorous, we also eat nitrogen, since we eat the herbivorous animals. we also eat vegetable food, many kinds of which contain more or less nitrogen. do you understand?" "yes, i understand," said miette. "there is nobody living who really understands this matter very well, for it is an extremely obscure, though very important, subject," replied monsieur roger. "but, to resume our explanation. besides oxygen and nitrogen, there is also in the air a little carbonic acid and vapor. the carbonic acid will bring us back to the point from which we started,--the phenomenon of breathing. carbonic acid is a gas formed by oxygen and carbon. the carbon is a body which is found under a large variety of forms. it has two or more varieties,--it is either pure or mixed with impurities. its varieties can be united in two groups. the first group comprises the diamond and graphite, or plumbago, which are natural carbon. the second group comprises coal, charcoal, and the soot of a chimney, which we may call, for convenience, artificial carbon. when oxygen finds itself in contact with carbonaceous matter,--that is to say, with matter that contains carbon,--and when the surrounding temperature has reached the proper degree of heat, carbonic acid begins to be formed. in the oven and the furnace, coal and charcoal mingle with the oxygen of the air and give the necessary heat; but it is first necessary that by the aid of a match, paper, and kindling-wood you should have furnished the temperature at which oxygen can join with the carbon in order to burn it. that is what we may call an active or a live combustion; but there can also be a slow combustion of carbon,--a combustion without flame, and still giving out heat. it is this combustion which goes on in our body by means of respiration." "ah, now we have come around to it!" cried miette. "that is the very thing i was inquiring about." "well, now that we have come around to it," answered monsieur roger, "tell me what i began to say to you on the subject of respiration." "that is not very difficult," answered miette, in her quiet manner. "you told us that we swallowed oxygen and gave out carbonic acid; and you also said, 'whence comes this carbonic acid? from combustion.' that is why i said, just now, 'we have come around to it.'" "very good,--very good, indeed, only we do not _swallow_ oxygen, but we _inhale_ it," said monsieur dalize, charmed with the cleverness of his little girl. "what, then, is the cause of this production of carbonic acid?" continued monsieur roger. "you don't know? well, i am going to tell you. the oxygen of the air which we breathe arrives into our lungs and finds itself in contact with the carbon in the black or venous blood. the carbon contained here joins with the oxygen, and forms the carbonic acid which we breathe out. this is a real, a slow combustion which takes place not only in our lungs,--as i said at first, in order not to make the explanation too difficult,--but also in all the different portions of our body. the air composed of oxygen and nitrogen--for the nitrogen enters naturally with the oxygen--penetrates into the pulmonary cells, spreads itself through the blood, and is borne through the numberless little capillary vessels. it is in these little vessels that combustion takes place,--that is to say, that the oxygen unites with the carbon and that carbonic acid is formed. this carbonic acid circulates, dissolved in the blood, until it can escape out of it. it is in the lungs that it finds liberty. when it arrives there it escapes from the blood, is exhaled, and is at once replaced by the new oxygen and the new nitrogen which arrive from outside. the nitrogen absorbed in aspiration at the same time as the oxygen is found to be of very much the same quantity when it goes out. there has therefore been no appreciable absorption of nitrogen. now, this slow combustion causes the heat of our body; in fact, what is called the animal-heat is due to the caloric set free at the moment when the oxygen is converted into carbonic acid, in the same way as in all combustion of carbon. in conclusion, i will remind you that our digestion is exercised on two sorts of food,--nitrogenous food and carbonaceous food. nitrogenous food--like fibrin, which is the chief substance in flesh; albumen, which is the principal substance of the egg; caseine, the principal substance of milk; legumine, of peas and beans--is assimilated in our organs, which they regenerate, which they rebuild continually. carbonaceous foods--like the starch of the potato, of sugar, alcohol, oils, and the fat of animals--do not assimilate; they do not increase at all the substance of our muscles or the solidity of our bones. it is they which are burned and which aid in burning those waste materials of the venous blood of which i have already spoken. still, many starchy foods do contain some nutritive principles, but in very small quantity. you will understand how little when you know that you would have to eat about fifteen pounds of potatoes to give your body the force that would be given it by a single pound of beef." "oh," said miette, "i don't like beef; but fifteen pounds of potatoes,--i would care still less to eat so much at once." "all the less that they would fatten you perceptibly," replied monsieur roger; "in fact, it is the carbonaceous foods which fatten. if they are introduced into the body in too great a quantity, they do not find enough oxygen to burn them, and they are deposited in the adipose or fatty tissue, where they will be useless and often harmful. you see how indispensable oxygen is to human life, and you now understand that if respiration does not go on with regularity, if the oxygen of your room should become exhausted, if the lungs were filled with carbonic acid produced by the combustion of fuel outside the body, there would follow at first a great deal of difficulty in breathing, then fainting, torpor, and, finally, asphyxia." these last words, pronounced by monsieur roger with much emotion, brought before them a remembrance so recent and so terrible that all remained silent and thoughtful. it was miss miette who first broke the spell by asking a new question of her friend roger. asphyxia had recalled to her the fire. then she had thought of the manner of extinguishing fire, and she said, all of a sudden, her idea translating itself upon her lips almost without consciousness,-"why does water extinguish fire?" monsieur roger, drawn out of his thoughts by this question, raised his head, looked at miette, and said to her,-"in the first place, do you know what water is?" "no; but you were going to tell me." "all right. the celebrated lavoisier, after having shown that air is not a simple body, but that it is composed of two gases, next turned his attention to the study of water, which was also, up to that time, considered to be an element; that is, a simple body. he studied it so skilfully that he succeeded in showing that water was formed by the combination of two gases." "of two gases!--water?" cried miette. "certainly, of two gases. one of these gases is oxygen, which we have already spoken of, and the other is hydrogen." "which we are going to speak of," added miette. "of course," answered monsieur roger, "since you wish it. but it was not lavoisier, however, who first discovered hydrogen. this gas had been discovered before his time by the chemists paracelsus and boyle, who had found out that in placing iron or zinc in contact with an acid called sulphuric acid, there was disengaged an air "like a breath." this air "like a breath" is what we now call hydrogen. lavoisier, with the assistance of the chemist meusnier, proved that it was this gas which in combining with oxygen formed water. in order to do this he blew a current of hydrogen into a retort filled with oxygen. as this hydrogen penetrated into the retort, he set fire to it by means of electric sparks. two stop-cocks regulated the proper proportions of the oxygen and the hydrogen in the retort. when the combustion took place, they saw water form in drops upon the sides of the retort and unite at the bottom. water was therefore the product of the combination of hydrogen with oxygen. the following anecdote is told in regard to this combination. a chemist of the last century, who was fond of flattery, was engaged to give some lessons to a young prince of the blood royal. when he came to explain the composition of water, he prepared before his scholar the necessary apparatus for making the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, and, at the moment when he was about to send the electric spark into the retort, he said, bowing his head,-[illustration] "'if it please your royal highness, this hydrogen and oxygen are about to have the honor of combining before you.' "i don't know if the hydrogen and the oxygen were aware of the honor which was being done them; but certainly they combined with no more manners than if their spectator was an ordinary boy. now, i may add, you must not confound combinations with mixtures; thus, air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, while water is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. this combination is a union of the molecules of the two gases which produces a composite body formed of new molecules. these new molecules are water. now, this last word recalls to me miette's question." "yes," said the latter: "why does water put out fire?" "there are two reasons for this phenomenon," said monsieur roger: "the first is that water thrown upon the fire forms around the matter in combustion a thick cloud, or vapor, which prevents the air from reaching it. the wood, which was burning--that is to say, which was mingling with the oxygen of the air--finds its communication intercepted. the humid vapor has interposed between the carbon of the wood and the oxygen of the air; therefore, the combustion is forced to stop. further, water falling upon the fire is transformed, as you very well know, into vapor, or steam. now, this conversion into vapor necessitates the taking up of a certain quantity of heat. this heat is taken away from the body which is being burned, and that body is thus made much cooler; the combustion therefore becomes less active, and the fire is at last extinguished." "very good," said miette; "but still another question, and i will let you alone." "you promise?" "yes." "well, then, what is your last question?" "why is a candle put out by blowing on it, and why do they light a fire by doing the same thing?" "in these two cases there are two very different actions," replied monsieur roger: "in the first there is a mechanical action, and in the second a chemical action. in blowing upon a candle the violence of the air which you send out of your mouth detaches a flame which holds on only to the wick. the burning particles of this wick are blown away, and consequently the combustion is stopped. but the case is very different when you blow with a bellows or with your mouth upon the fire in the stove. there the substance in combustion, whether wood or coal, is a mass large enough to resist the violence of the current of air you throw in, and it profits from the air which you send to it so abundantly, by taking the oxygen which it contains and burning up still more briskly. "now, that is the answer to your last question; and i must beg you to remember your promise, and ask me no more hard questions to-night." "yes, friend roger," said miette, "i will leave you alone; you may go to sleep." "and it will be a well-earned sleep," added madame dalize, with the assent of every one. [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxvii. paul or george? at the end of this long talk every one rose. monsieur and madame dalize, with monsieur roger and albert, walked towards the château. paul solange, silent and motionless, followed them with his eyes. when monsieur roger reached the step, he turned and made a friendly gesture to paul, who responded by a bow. his eyes, in resting on monsieur roger, had an affectionate, softened, and respectful look. miette saw it, and was struck by it. she approached, passed her arm in paul's, and said, softly,-"you love him very much,--monsieur roger?" "yes," answered paul, with surprise. "you love him very, very much?" "yes." "and he too loves you very well. i can see that. but do you love him as much as if he----?" and miette paused, embarrassed a little, feeling that what she was going to say was very important; still, being certain that she was right, she continued: "as much as if he was--your papa?" paul started. "yes; you love him as much and perhaps--perhaps more," she cried, seeing paul start. "why do you say things like that to me?" murmured paul, much moved. "because--nothing." "why do you think that i love monsieur roger in the manner that you have just said?" "because----" "because what?" "well, because i look at my papa just as i see you looking at monsieur roger." paul tried to hide his embarrassment, and replied,-"you are foolish." then he looked up at miette, who shook her head and smiled, as if to say that she was not foolish. an idea came to him. "miette," said he, softly, "i am going to ask you something." "ask it." "but you will tell it to no one?" "to no one." "well, do you know why monsieur roger, at the fire at the farm, called me--called me george?" "why, certainly, i know." "you know?" cried paul. "yes: he called you george because he thought suddenly that his child, his little george, whom he lost in a fire,--in a fire on shipboard----" paul solange listened, opening his eyes very wide. "ah, that is true. you don't know anything about it. you were not here when monsieur roger told us this terrible thing." "no, i was not here; but you were here, miette. well, speak--tell me all about it." then miette repeated to paul monsieur roger's story; she told him about the departure of monsieur roger, his wife, and their little george for america, their voyage on the ship, then the fire at sea. she told about the grief, the almost insane grief, which monsieur roger had felt when he saw himself separated from his wife and his son, who had been taken off in a boat, while he remained upon the steamer. then she told paul of the despair of monsieur roger when he saw that boat disappear and bear down with it to a watery grave those whom he loved. [illustration] "at that moment," continued miette, "monsieur roger told us that he cried out 'george! george!' with a voice so loud, so terrified, that certainly his little boy must have heard." miette stopped. "why, what is the matter, paul?" she cried: "are you sick?" for paul solange had suddenly become so pale that miette was scared. "not at all," said he; "not at all; but finish your story." "it is finished." "how?" "poor monsieur roger has never again seen his wife or his little george--or at least he saw his wife, whose body had been cast up by the waves, but the body of the little boy remained at the bottom of the sea." after a silence, miette added,-"you now understand how it is that the fire at the farm recalled to him at once the fire on the ship, and why, in his grief, in his fright to see you in so great a danger, he thought of his little boy, and cried 'george!' you understand, don't you?" paul remained an instant without answering; then, very gravely, with a pale face and wide open eyes, he said,-"i understand." paul solange did not sleep the night which followed the day on which he learned all these things. his brain was full of strange thoughts. he was calling up shadowy confused recollections. he sought to go back as far as possible to the first years of his childhood, but his memory was at fault. he suddenly found a dark corner where everything disappeared; he could go no farther; but now that he knew monsieur roger's story, he was certain, absolutely certain that he had answered to the name of george in the fire at the farm. it was that name, that name only, which had suddenly shaken off his torpor and given him the strength to awake; it was that name that had saved him. feverishly searching in his memory, he said to himself that this name he had heard formerly pronounced with the same loud and terrified voice in some crisis, which must have been very terrible, but which he could not recall; and then, hesitating anxiously, feeling that he was making a fool of himself, he asked himself if it was during the fire on shipboard, of which miette had spoken, that he had heard this name of george; and little by little, in the silence of the night, this conviction entered and fixed itself in his mind. then he turned his thoughts upon the way that monsieur roger had treated him. whence this sudden and great affection which monsieur roger had shown him? why that sympathy which he knew to be profound and whose cause he could not explain, as he did not merit it a bit more than his friend albert? why had monsieur roger so bravely risked his life to save him? why had his emotion been so great? lastly, why this cry of "george?" and paul solange arrived at this logical conclusion,-"if monsieur roger loves me so much; if he gave me, at the terrible moment when i came near dying, the name of his son, it must be because i recalled to him his son; it must be because i resemble his little george. and what then?" [illustration] [illustration] chapter xxviii. my father. when paul at last fell into an uneasy sleep, the sun had been up for some hours. monsieur dalize and his friend roger went out from the château. "has the postman not been here yet?" said monsieur dalize to his servant. "no sir; he will not be here for an hour." "very well; we will go to meet him." and in fact, in his haste, monsieur roger carried his friend off to meet the postman. but days had elapsed since monsieur dalize had, according to promise, written to the registrar of births, to ask him to forward a copy of the register of birth of paul solange, and no answer had yet arrived. this silence had astonished monsieur dalize and given a hope to monsieur roger. "there must be some reason, don't you see," he said, walking beside his friend. "some important reason why the registrar has not yet answered your pressing letter." "a reason, an important reason," replied monsieur dalize; "the explanation may be that the registrar is away." "no; there is some other reason," answered monsieur roger with conviction. half-way to the station they met the letter-carrier, who said,-"monsieur dalize, there are two letters for you." the first letter which monsieur dalize opened bore the address of the registrar of births. he rapidly read the few lines, then turned towards roger. "you are right," said he; "there is a reason. read." "i pray _you_ read it; i am too much excited," replied roger. monsieur dalize read as follows: "=sir=: "the researches which i have made in my docket to find the register of birth of paul solange must be my excuse for the delay. we have not the register of birth which you ask for, but in its place is a paper so important that i have not the right to part with it; still, i shall be ready to place this paper under your eyes when you come to paris. "yours respectfully," etc. "i go," said monsieur dalize, consulting his watch; "i have just time to catch the train, and i shall return in time for dinner. go back to the château and tell them that an important letter calls me to paris." monsieur roger took the hand of his friend with a joy which he could not conceal, and said,-"thank you." "i go to please you," answered monsieur dalize, not wishing that his friend should have hopes excited, for failure might leave him more unhappy than ever. "i am going to see this important paper, but i see no reason why it should show that paul was not the son of monsieur solange. so keep calm; you will need all your calmness on my return." before leaving, monsieur dalize opened the envelope of the second letter; as the first lines caught his eyes, an expression of sorrow and surprise came over his face. "that is very strange and very sad," said he. "what is it?" asked roger. "it is strange that this letter speaks of monsieur solange, the father of paul, and it is sad that it also brings me bad news." "speak," said roger, quickly. "this letter is from my successor in the banking house, and it says that monsieur solange, of martinique, has suspended payment." "has monsieur solange failed?" asked roger. "the letter adds that they are awaiting fuller information from the mail that should arrive to-day. you see that my presence in paris is doubly necessary. come down to the station to meet me in the coupé at five o'clock, and come alone." the sudden departure of monsieur dalize did not very much astonish the people at the château, but what did astonish them, and become a subject of remark for all, was the new expression on the face of monsieur roger. he seemed extremely moved, but his features showed hope and joy, which had chased away his usual sadness. madame dalize inquired what had happened, and monsieur roger told her the whole story. monsieur roger hoped, and he was even happier that day than ever to find himself near paul, because the latter showed himself more affectionate than ever. long before the appointed hour, monsieur roger was at the station, awaiting with impatience the return of monsieur dalize. at last the train came in sight, and soon monsieur dalize got out of the car. "well?" said roger, with a trembling voice, awaiting the yes or the no on which his happiness or his despair depended. monsieur dalize, without answering, led roger away from the station; then, when they were in the coupé, which started at a brisk pace, monsieur dalize threw his arms around his friend, with these words: "be happy, it is your son!" roger's eyes filled with tears, great big tears, which he could not restrain, tears of joy succeeding to the many tears of sorrow which he had shed. at last he murmured,-"you have the proofs?" "i have two proofs, one of which comes in a very sad way." "what is it?" "the confession of monsieur solange, who wrote to me on his death-bed." "unhappy man!" "unhappy, yes; but also guilty." "what do you mean?" "well, read first a copy of the paper which took the place of the birth-register of paul solange." through his tears, monsieur roger read as follows: "this 24th day of december, 1877, before me, jean-jacques solange, french consul of the island of saint-christopher, in the english antilles, appeared jan carit, captain of the danish fishing vessel, 'jutland,' and steffenz and kield, who declared to him that on the 15th of december, 1877, finding themselves near the island of eleuthera, in the archipelago of the bahamas, they perceived a raft, from which they took a child of the masculine sex, who seemed to be between two and three years old. we have given him the name of pierre paul. in witness whereof, the above-named parties have hereunto set their hands and seals." when he had finished, roger cried,-"there is no doubt,--the date, the place, everything is proof." [illustration] "which would not be sufficient, if i had not this." and monsieur dalize gave to his friend solange's letter. in this letter monsieur solange announced his ruin, and his approaching death from heart-disease; the doctors had given him up, and he begged monsieur dalize to tell paul that he was not his son. monsieur solange declared that he was the french consul at the island of saint christopher when some danish fishermen, from the island of saint thomas, brought him the child, which they had found in the sea. he and his wife had no children. they determined to adopt the child which had been found. monsieur solange confessed that he had been wanting in his duty in not making the necessary search. he excused himself sadly by saying that he was convinced of the death of the parents of the child, and he begged for pardon, as he had wished to bring this child up and make him happy. in finishing, he said that the linen of the child was marked "g. l. m.," and that the boy could pronounce the french words "maman" and "papa." "i pardon him," said, gravely and solemnly, monsieur roger. the coupé had entered the park, and the two gentlemen alighted before the château, where the family awaited them. monsieur dalize advanced towards him who had hitherto been called paul solange, and who really was george la morlière. "my dear child," said he, "i have news for you,--some very sad news and some very happy news." anxious, excited, george came forward. monsieur dalize continued: "you have lost him who was your adopted father,--monsieur solange." "monsieur solange is dead!" cried george, bowing his head, overwhelmed at the news. "but," monsieur dalize hastened to add, "you have found your real father." at these words george raised his head again; his eyes went straight towards those of monsieur roger. he ran forward and threw himself in the arms which were opened to him, repeating, between his tears,-"my father! my father!" and miss miette, who wept, as all the rest did, at this moving spectacle, said, in the midst of her sobs,-"i knew it; i knew it; i knew it was his papa!" [illustration] the fairy-land of science arabella b. buckley table of contents lecture i the fairy-land of science; how to enter it; how to use it; and how to enjoy it lecture ii sunbeams, and the work they do lecture iii the aerial ocean in which we live lecture iv a drop of water on its travels lecture v the two great sculptors water and ice lecture vi the voices of nature, and how we hear them lecture vii the life of a primrose lecture viii the history of a piece of coal lecture ix bees in the hive lecture x bees and flowers week 1 lecture i how to enter it; how to use it; and how to enjoy it i have promised to introduce you today to the fairy-land of science a somewhat bold promise, seeing that most of you probably look upon science as a bundle of dry facts, while fairyland is all that is beautiful, and full of poetry and imagination. but i thoroughly believe myself, and hope to prove to you, that science is full of beautiful pictures, of real poetry, and of wonder-working fairies; and what is more, i promise you they shall be true fairies, whom you will love just as much when you are old and greyheaded as when you are young; for you will be able to call them up wherever you wander by land or by sea, through meadow or through wood, through water or through air; and though they themselves will always remain invisible, yet you will see their wonderful poet at work everywhere around you. let us first see for a moment what kind of tales science has to tell, and how far they are equal to the old fairy tales we all know so well. who does not remember the tale of the "sleeping beauty in the wood," and how under the spell of the angry fairy the maiden pricked herself with the spindle and slept a hundred years? how the horses in the stall, the dogs in the court-yard, the doves on the roof, the cook who was boxing the scullery boy's ears in the kitchen, and the king and queen with all their courtiers in the hall remained spell-bound, while a thick hedge grew up all round the castle and all within was still as death. but when the hundred years had passed the valiant prince came, the thorny hedge opened before him bearing beautiful flowers; and he, entering the castle, reached the room where the princess lay, and with one sweet kiss raised her and all around her to life again. can science bring any tale to match this? tell me, is there anything in this world more busy and active than water, as it rushes along in the swift brook, or dashes over the stones, or spouts up in the fountain, or trickles down from the roof, or shakes itself into ripples on the surface of the pond as the wind blows over it? but have you never seen this water spell-bound and motionless? look out of the window some cold frosty morning in winter, at the little brook which yesterday was flowing gently past the house, and see how still it lies, with the stones over which it was dashing now held tightly in its icy grasp. notice the wind-ripples on the pond; they have become fixed and motionless. look up at the roof of the house. there, instead of living doves merely charmed to sleep, we have running water caught in the very act of falling and turned into transparent icicles, decorating the eaves with a beautiful crystal fringe. on every tree and bush you will catch the waterdrops napping, in the form of tiny crystals; while the fountain looks like a tree of glass with long down-hanging pointed leaves. even the damp of your own breath lies rigid and still on the window-pane frozen into delicate patterns like fern-leaves of ice. all this water was yesterday flowing busily, or falling drop by drop, or floating invisibly in the air; now it is all caught and spell-bound by whom? by the enchantments of the frost-giant who holds it fast in his grip and will not let it go. but wait awhile, the deliverer is coming. in a few weeks or days, or it may be in a few hours, the brave sun will shine down; the dull-grey, leaden sky will melt before his, as the hedge gave way before the prince in the fairy tale, and when the sunbeam gently kisses the frozen water it will be set free. then the brook will flow rippling on again; the frost-drops will be shaken down from the trees, the icicles fall from the roof, the moisture trickle down the window-pane, and in the bright, warm sunshine all will be alive again. is not this a fairy tale of nature? and such as these it is which science tells. again, who has not heard of catskin, who came out of a hollow tree, bringing a walnut containing three beautiful dresses the first glowing as the sun, the second pale and beautiful as the moon, the third spangled like the star-lit sky, and each so fine and delicate that all three could be packed into a walnut shell; and each one of these tiny structures is not the mere dress but the home of a living animal. it is a tiny, tiny shell-palace made of the most delicate lacework, each pattern being more beautiful than the last; and what is more, the minute creature that lives in it has built it out of the foam of the sea, though he himself is nothing more than a drop of jelly. lastly, anyone who has read the 'wonderful travellers' must recollect the man whose sight was so keen that he could hit the eye of a fly sitting on a tree two miles away. but tell me, can you see gas before it is lighted, even when it is coming out of the gas-jet close to your eyes? yet, if you learn to use that wonderful instrument the spectroscope, it will enable you to tell one kind of gas from another, even when they are both ninety-one millions of miles away on the face of the sun; nay more, it will read for you the nature of the different gases in the far distant stars, billions of miles away, and actually tell you whether you could find there any of the same metals which we have on the earth. we might find hundreds of such fairy tales in the domain of science, but these three will serve as examples, and we much pass on to make the acquaintance of the science-fairies themselves, and see if they are as real as our old friends. tell me, why do you love fairy-land? what is its charm? is it not that things happen so suddenly, so mysteriously, and without man having anything to do with it? in fairy-land, flowers blow, houses spring up like aladdin's palace in a single night, and people are carried hundreds of miles in an instant by the touch of a fairy wand. and then this land is not some distant country to which we can never hope to travel. it is here in the midst of us, only our eyes must be opened or we cannot see it. ariel and puck did not live in some unknown region. on the contrary, ariel's song is "where the bee sucks, there suck i; in a cowslip's bell i lie; there i couch when owls do cry. on the bat's back i do fly, after summer, merrily." the peasant falls asleep some evening in a wood and his eyes are opened by a fairy wand, so that he sees the little goblins and imps dancing around him on the green sward, sitting on mushrooms, or in the heads of the flowers, drinking out of acorn-cups, fighting with blades of grass, and riding on grasshoppers. so, too, the gallant knight, riding to save some poor oppressed maiden, dashes across the foaming torrent; and just in the middle, as he is being swept away, his eyes are opened, and he sees fairy water-nymphs soothing his terrified horse and guiding him gently to the opposite shore. they are close at hand, these sprites, to the simple peasant or the gallant knight, or to anyone who has the gift of the fairies and can see them. but the man who scoffs at them, and does not believe in them or care for them, he never sees them. only now and then they play him an ugly trick, leading him into some treacherous bog and leaving him to get out as he may. now, exactly all this which is true of the fairies of our childhood is true too of the fairies of science. there are forces around us, and among us, which i shall ask you to allow me to call fairies, and these are ten thousand times more wonderful, more magical, and more beautiful in their work, than those of the old fairy tales. they, too, are invisible, and many people live and die without ever seeing them or caring to see them. these people go about with their eyes shut, either because they will not open them, or because no one has taught them how to see. they fret and worry over their own little work and their own petty troubles, and do not know how to rest and refresh themselves, by letting the fairies open their eyes and show them the calm sweet picture of nature. they are like peter bell of whom wordsworth wrote: "a primrose by a river's brim a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more." but we will not be like these, we will open our eyes and ask, "what are these forces or fairies, and how can we see them?" just go out into the country, and sit down quietly and watch nature at work. listen to the wind as it blows, look at the clouds rolling overhead, and waves rippling on the pond at your feet. hearken to the brook as it flows by, watch the flower-buds opening one by one, and then ask yourself, "how all this is done?" go out in the evening and see the dew gather drop by drop upon the grass, or trace the delicate hoar-frost crystals which bespangle every blade on a winter's morning. look at the vivid flashes of lightening in a storm, and listen to the pealing thunder: and then tell me, by what machinery is all this wonderful work done? man does none of it, neither could he stop it if he were to try; for it is all the work of those invisible forces or fairies whose acquaintance i wish you to make. day and night, summer and winter, storm or calm, these fairies are at work, and we may hear them and know them, and make friends of them if we will. there is only one gift we must have before we can learn to know them we must have imagination. i do not mean mere fancy, which creates unreal images and impossible monsters, but imagination, the power of making pictures or images in our mind, of that which is, though it is invisible to us. most children have this glorious gift, and love to picture to themselves all that is told them, and to hear the same tale over and over again till they see every bit of it as if it were real. this is why they are sure to love science it its tales are told them aright; and i, for one, hope the day may never come when we may lose that childish clearness of vision, which enables us through the temporal things which are seen, to realize those eternal truths which are unseen. if you have this gift of imagination come with me, and in these lectures we will look for the invisible fairies of nature. watch a shower of rain. where do the drops come from? and why are they round, or rather slightly oval? in our fourth lecture we shall se that the little particles of water of which the raindrops are made, were held apart and invisible in the air by heat, one of the most wonderful of our forces* or fairies, till the cold wind passed by and chilled the air. then, when there was no longer so much heat, another invisible force, cohesion, which is always ready and waiting, seized on the tiny particles at once, and locked them together in a drop, the closest form in which they could lie. then as the drops became larger and larger they fell into the grasp of another invisible force, gravitation, which dragged them down to the earth, drop by drop, till they made a shower of rain. pause for a moment and think. you have surely heard of gravitation, by which the sun holds the earth and the planets, and keeps them moving round him in regular order? well, it is this same gravitation which is a t work also whenever a shower of rain falls to the earth. who can say that he is not a great invisible giant, always silently and invisibly toiling in great things and small whether we wake or sleep? *(i am quite aware of the danger incurred by using this word "force", especially in the plural; and how even the most modest little book may suffer at the hands of scientific purists by employing it rashly. as, however, the better term "energy" would not serve here, i hope i may be forgiven for retaining the muchabused term, especially as i sin in very good company.) now the shower is over, the sun comes out and the ground is soon as dry as though no rain had fallen. tell me; what has become of the rain-drops? part no doubt have sunk into the ground, and as for the rest, why you will say the sun has dried them up. yes, but how? the sun is more than ninety-one millions of miles away; how has he touched the rain-drops? have you ever heard that invisible waves are travelling every second over the space between the sun and us? we shall see in the next lecture how these waves are the sun's messengers to the earth, and how they tear asunder the rain-drops on the ground, scattering them in tiny particles too small for us to see, and bearing them away to the clouds. here are more invisible fairies working every moment around you, and you cannot even look out of the window without seeing the work they are doing. if, however, the day is cold and frosty, the water does not fall in a shower of rain; it comes down in the shape of noiseless snow. go out after such a snow-shower, on a calm day, and look at some of the flakes which have fallen; you will see, if you choose good specimens, that they are not mere masses of frozen water, but that each one is a beautiful six-pointed crystal star. how have these crystals been built up? what power has been at work arranging their delicate forms? in the fourth lecture we shall see that up in the clouds another of our invisible fairies, which, for want of a better name, we call the "force of crystallization," has caught hold of the tiny particles of water before "cohesion" had made them into round drops, and there silently but rapidly, has moulded them into those delicate crystal starts know as "snowflakes". and now, suppose that this snow-shower has fallen early in february; turn aside for a moment from examining the flakes, and clear the newly-fallen snow from off the flower-bed on the lawn. what is this little green tip peeping up out of the ground under the snowy covering? it is a young snowdrop plant. can you tell me why it grows? where it finds its food? what makes it spread out its leaves and add to its stalk day by day? what fairies are at work here? first there is the hidden fairy "life," and of her even our wisest men know but little. but they know something of her way of working, and in lecture vii we shall learn how the invisible fairy sunbeams have been buy here also; how last year's snowdrop plant caught them and stored them up in it's bulb, and how now in the spring, as soon as warmth and moisture creep down into the earth, these little imprisoned sun-waves begin to be active, stirring up the matter in the bulb, and making it swell and burst upwards till it sends out a little shoot through the surface of the soil. then the sun-waves above-ground take up the work, and form green granules in the tiny leaves, helping them to take food out of the air, while the little rootlets below are drinking water out of the ground. the invisible life and invisible sunbeams are busy here, setting actively to work another fairy, the force of "chemical attraction," and so the little snowdrop plant grows and blossoms, without any help from you or me. week 2 one picture more, and then i hope you will believe in my fairies. from the cold garden, you run into the house, and find the fire laid indeed in the grate, but the wood dead and the coals black, waiting to be lighted. you strike a match, and soon there is a blazing fire. where does the heat come from? why do the coals burn and give out a glowing light? have you not read of gnomes buried down deep in the earth, in mines, and held fast there till some fairy wand has released them, and allowed them to come to earth again? well, thousands and millions of years ago, those coals were plants; and like the snowdrop in the garden of to-day, they caught the sunbeams and worked them into their leaves. then the plants died and were buried deep in the earth and the sunbeams with them; and like the gnomes they lay imprisoned till the coals were dug out by the miners, and brought to your grate; and just now you yourself took hold of the fairy wand which was to release them. you struck a match, and its atoms clashing with atoms of oxygen in the air, set the invisible fairies "heat" and "chemical attraction" to work, and they were soon busy within the wood and the coals causing their atoms too to clash; and the sunbeams, so long imprisoned, leapt into flame. then you spread out your hands and cried, "oh, how nice and warm!" and little thought that you were warming yourself with the sunbeams of ages and ages ago. this is no fancy tale; it is literally true, as we shall see in lecture viii, that the warmth of a coal fire could not exist if the plants of long ago had not used the sunbeams to make their leaves, holding them ready to give up their warmth again whenever those crushed leaves are consumed. now, do you believe in, and care for, my fairy-land? can you see in your imagination fairy 'cohesion' ever ready to lock atoms together when they draw very near to each other: or fairy 'gravitation' dragging rain-drops down to the earth: or the fairy of 'crystallization' building up the snow-flakes in the clouds? can you picture tiny sunbeam-waves of light and heat travelling from the sun to the earth? do you care to know how another strange fairy, 'electricity,' flings the lightning across the sky and causes the rumbling thunder? would you like to learn how the sun makes pictures of the world on which he shines, so that we can carry about with us photographs or sun-pictures of all the beautiful scenery of the earth? and have you any curiosity about 'chemical action,' which works such wonders in air, and land, and sea? if you have any wish to know and make friends of these invisible forces, the next question is how are you to enter the fairy-land of science? there is but one way. like the knight or peasant in the fairy tales, you must open you eyes. there is no lack of objects, everything around you will tell some history if touched with the fairy wand of imagination. i have often thought, when seeing some sickly child drawn along the street, lying on its back while other children romp and play, how much happiness might be given to sick children at home or in hospitals, if only they were told the stories which lie hidden in the things around them. they need not even move from their beds, for sunbeams can fall on them there, and in a sunbeam there are stories enough to occupy a month. the fire in the grate, the lamp by the bedside, the water in the tumbler, the fly on the ceiling above, the flower in the vase on the table, anything, everything, has its history, and can reveal to us nature's invisible fairies. only you must with to see them. if you go through the world looking upon everything only as so much to eat, to drink, and to use, you will never see the fairies of science. but if you ask yourself why things happen, and how the great god above us has made and governs this world of ours; if you listen to the wind, and care to learn why it blows; if you ask the little flower why it opens in the sunshine and closes in the storm; and if when you find questions you cannot answer, you will take the trouble to hunt out in books, or make experiments to solve your own questions, then you will learn to know and love those fairies. mind, i do not advise you to be constantly asking questions of other people; for often a question quickly answered is quickly forgotten, but a difficulty really hunted down is a triumph for ever. for example, if you ask why the rain dries up from the ground, most likely you will be answered, "that the sun dries it," and you will rest satisfied with the sound of the words. but if you hold a wet handkerchief before the fire and see the damp rising out of it, then you have some real idea how moisture may be drawn up by heat from the earth. a little foreign niece of mine, only four years old, who could scarcely speak english plainly, was standing one morning near the bedroom window and she noticed the damp trickling down the window-pane. "auntie," she said, "what for it rain inside?" it was quite useless to explain to her in words, how our breath had condensed into drops of water upon the cold glass; but i wiped the pane clear, and breathed on it several times. when new drops were formed, i said, "cissy and auntie have done like this all night in the room." she nodded her little head and amused herself for a long time breathing on the window-pane and watching the tiny drops; and about a month later, when we were travelling back to italy, i saw her following the drops on the carriage window with her little finger, and heard her say quietly to herself, "cissy and auntie made you." had not even this little child some real picture in her mind of invisible water coming from her mouth, and making drops upon the window-pane? then again, you must learn something of the language of science. if you travel in a country with no knowledge of its language, you can learn very little about it: and in the same way if you are to go to books to find answers to your questions, you must know something of the language they speak. you need not learn hard scientific names, for the best books have the fewest of these, but you must really understand what is meant by ordinary words. for example, how few people can really explain the difference between a solid, such as the wood of the table; a liquid, as water; and a gas, such as i can let off from this gas-jet by turning the tap. and yet any child can make a picture of this in his mind if only it has been properly put before him. all matter in the world is made up of minute parts or particles; in a solid these particles are locked together so tightly that you must tear them forcibly apart if you with to alter the shape of the solid piece. if i break or bend this wood i have to force the particles to move round each other, and i have great difficulty doing it. but in a liquid, though the particles are still held together, they do not cling so tightly, but are able to roll or glide round each other, so that when you pour water out of a cup on to a table, it loses its cuplike shape and spreads itself out flat. lastly, in a gas the particles are no longer held together at all, but they try to fly away from each other; and unless you shut a gas in tightly and safely, it will soon have spread all over the room. a solid, therefore, will retain the same bulk and shape unless you forcibly alter it; a liquid will retain the same bulk, but no the same shape if it be left free; a gas will not retain either the same bulk or the same shape, but will spread over as large a space as it can find wherever it can penetrate. such simple things as these you must learn from books and by experiment. then you must understand what is meant by chemical attraction; and though i can explain this roughly here, you will have to make many interesting experiments before you will really learn to know this wonderful fairy power. if i dissolve sugar in water, though it disappears it still remains sugar, and does not join itself to the water. i have only to let the cup stand till the water dries, and the sugar will remain at the bottom. there has been no chemical attraction here. but now i will put something else in water which will call up the fairy power. here is a little piece of the metal potassium, one of the simple substances of the earth; that is to say, we cannot split it up into other substances, wherever we find it, it is always the same. now if i put this piece of potassium on the water it does not disappear quietly like the sugar. see how it rolls round and round, fizzing violently with a blue flame burning round it, and at last goes off with a pop. what has been happening here? you must first know that water is made of two substances, hydrogen and oxygen, and these are not merely held together, but are joined to completely that they have lost themselves and have become water; and each atom of water is made of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. now the metal potassium is devotedly fond of oxygen, and the moment i threw it on the water it called the fairy "chemical attraction' to help it, and dragged the atoms of oxygen out of the water and joined them to itself. in doing this it also caught part of the hydrogen, but only half, and so the rest was left out in the cold. no, not in the cold! for the potassium and oxygen made such a great heat in clashing together that the rest of the hydrogen became very hot indeed, and sprang into the air to find some other companion to make up for what it had lost. here it found some free oxygen floating about, and it seized upon it so violently, that they made a burning flame, while the potassium with its newly found oxygen and hydrogen sank down quietly into the water as potash. and so you see we have got quite a new substance potash in the basin; made with a great deal of fuss by chemical attraction drawing different atoms together. when you can really picture this power to yourself it will help you very much to understand what you read and observe about nature. next, as plants grow around you on every side, and are of so much importance in the world, you must also learn something of the names of the different parts of a flower, so that you may understand those books which explain how a plant grows and lives and forms its seeds. you must also know the common names of the parts of an animal, and of your own body, so that you may be interested in understanding the use of the different organs; how you breathe, and how your blood flows; how one animal walks, another flies, and another swims. then you must learn something of the various parts of the world, so that you may know what is meant by a river, a plain, a valley, or a delta. all these things are not difficult, you can learn them pleasantly from simple books on physics, chemistry, botany, physiology, and physical geography; and when you understand a few plain scientific terms, then all by yourself, if you will open your eyes and ears, you may wander happily in the fairy-land of science. then wherever you go you will find "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks sermons in stones, and good in everything." and now we come to the last part of our subject. when you have reached and entered the gates of science, how are you to use and enjoy this new and beautiful land? this is a very important question for you may make a twofold use of it. if you are only ambitious to shine in the world, you may use it chiefly to get prizes, to be at the top of your class, or to pass in examinations; but if you also enjoy discovering its secrets, and desire to learn more and more of nature and to revel in dreams of its beauty, then you will study science for its own sake as well. now it is a good thing to win prizes and be at the top of your class, for it shows that you are industrious; it is a good thing to pass well in examinations , for it show that you are accurate; but if you study science for this reason only, do not complain if you find it full, and dry, and hard to master. you may learn a great deal that is useful, and nature will answer you truthfully if you ask you questions accurately, but she will give you dry facts, just such as you ask for. if you do not love her for herself she will never take you to her heart. this is the reason why so many complain that science is dry and uninteresting. they forget that though it is necessary to learn accurately, for so only we can arrive at truth, it is equally necessary to love knowledge and make it lovely to those who learn, and to do this we must get at the spirit which lies under the facts. what child which loves its mother's face is content to know only that she has brown eyes, a straight nose, a small mouth, and hair arranged in such and such a manner? no, it knows that its mother has the sweetest smile of any woman living; that her eyes are loving, her kiss is sweet, and that when she looks grave, then something is wrong which must be put right. and it is in this way that those who wish to enjoy the fairy-land of science must love nature. it is well to know that when a piece of potassium is thrown on water the change which takes place is expressed by the formula k + h2o = kho + h. but it is better still to have a mental picture of the tiny atoms clasping each other, and mingling so as to make a new substance, and to feel how wonderful are the many changing forms of nature. it is useful to be able to classify a flower and to know that the buttercup belongs to the family ranunculaceae, with petals free and definite, stamens hypogynous and indefinite, pistil apocarpous. but it is far sweeter to learn about the life of the little plant, to understand why its peculiar flower is useful to it, and how it feeds itself, and makes its seed. no one can love dry facts; we must clothe them with real meaning and love the truths they tell, if we wish to enjoy science. let us take an example to show this. i have here a branch of white coral, a beautiful, delicate piece of nature's work. we will begin by copying a description of it from one of those class-books which suppose children to learn words like parrots, and to repeat them with just as little understanding. "coral is formed by an animal belonging to the kingdom of radiates, sub-kingdom polypes. the soft body of the animal is attached to a support, the mouth opening upwards in a row of tentacles. the coral is secreted in the body of the polyp out of the carbonate of lime in the sea. thus the coral animalcule rears its polypidom or rocky structure in warm latitudes, and constructs reefs or barriers round islands. it is limited in rage of depth from 25 to 30 fathoms. chemically considered, coral is carbonate of like; physiologically, it is the skeleton of an animal; geographically, it is characteristic of warm latitudes, especially of the pacific ocean." this description is correct, and even fairly complete, if you know enough of the subject to understand it. but tell me, does it lead you to love my piece of coral? have you any picture in your mind of the coral animal, its home, or its manner of working? but now, instead of trying to master this dry, hard passage, take mr. huxley's penny lecture on 'coral and coral reefs,' and with the piece of coral in your hand try really to learn its history. you will then be able to picture to yourself the coral animal as a kind of sea-anemone, something like those which you have often seen, like red, blue, or green flowers, putting out feelers in sea-water on our coasts, and drawing in the tiny sea-animals to digest them in that bag of fluid which serves the sea-anemone as a stomach. you will learn how this curious jelly animal can split itself in two, and so form two polyps, or send a bud out of its side and so grow up into a kind of "tree or bush of polyps," or how it can hatch little eggs inside it and throw out young ones from its mouth, provided with little hairs, by means of which they swim to new resting-places. you will learn the difference between the animal which builds up the red coral as its skeleton, and the group of animals which build up the white; and you will look with new interest on our piece of white coral, as you read that each of those little sups on its stem with delicate divisions like the spokes of a wheel has been the home of a separate polyp, and that from the sea-water each little jelly animal has drunk in carbonate of lime as you drink in sugar dissolved in water, and then has used it grain by grain to build that delicate cup and add to the coral tree. we cannot stop to examine all about coral now, we are only learning how to learn, but surely our specimen is already beginning to grow interesting; and when you have followed it out into the great pacific ocean, where the wild waves dash restlessly against the coral trees, and have seen these tiny drops of jelly conquering the sea and building huge walls of stone against the rough breakers, you will hardly rest till you know all their history. look at that curious circular island in the picture, covered with palm trees; it has a large smooth lake in the middle, and the bottom of this lake is covered with blue, red, and green jelly animals, spreading out their feelers in the water and looking like beautiful flowers, and all round the outside of the island similar animals are to be seen washed by the sea waves. such islands as this have been build entirely by the coral animals, and the history of the way in which the reefs have sunk gradually down, as the tiny creatures added to them inch by inch, is as fascinating as the story of the building of any fairy palace in the days of old. read all this, and then if you have no coral of your own to examine, go to the british museum and see the beautiful specimens in the glass cases there, and think that they have been built up under the rolling surf by the tiny jelly animals; and then coral will become a real living thing to you, and you will love the thoughts it awakens. but people often ask, what is the use of learning all this? if you do not feel by this time how delightful it is to fill your mind with beautiful pictures of nature, perhaps it would be useless to say more. but in this age of ours, when restlessness and love of excitement pervade so many lives, is it nothing to be taken out of ourselves and made to look at the wonders of nature going on around us? do you never feel tired and "out of sorts," and want to creep away from your companions, because they are merry and you are not? then is the time to read about the starts, and how quietly they keep their course from age to age; or to visit some little flower, and ask what story it has to tell; or to watch the clouds, and try to imagine how the winds drive them across the sky. no person is so independent as he who can find interest in a bare rock, a drop of water, the foam of the sea, the spider on the wall, the flower underfoot or the starts overhead. and these interests are open to everyone who enters the fairy-land of science. moreover, we learn from this study to see that there is a law and purpose in everything in the universe, and it makes us patient when we recognize the quiet noiseless working of nature all around us. study light, and learn how all colour, beauty, and life depend on the sun's rays; note the winds and currents of the air, regular even in their apparent irregularity, as they carry heat and moisture all over the world. watch the water flowing in deep quiet streams, or forming the vast ocean; and then reflect that every drop is guided by invisible forces working according to fixed laws. see plants springing up under the sunlight, learn the secrets of plant life, and how their scents and colours attract the insects. read how insects cannot live without plants, nor plants without the flitting butterfly or the busy bee. realize that all this is worked by fixed laws, and that out of it (even if sometimes in suffering and pain) springs the wonderful universe around us. and then say, can you fear for your own little life, even though it may have its troubles? can you help feeling a part of this guided and governed nature? or doubt that the power which fixed the laws of the stars and of the tiniest drop of water that made the plant draw power from the sun, the tine coral animal its food from the dashing waves; that adapted the flower to the insect and the insect to the flower is also moulding your life as part of the great machinery of the universe, so that you have only to work, and to wait, and to love? we are all groping dimly for the unseen power, but no one who loves nature and studies it can ever feel alone or unloved in the world. facts, as mere facts, are dry and barren, but nature is full of life and love, and her calm unswerving rule is tending to some great though hidden purpose. you may call this unseen power what you will may lean on it in loving, trusting faith, or bend in reverent and silent awe; but even the little child who lives with nature and gazes on her with open eye, must rise in some sense or other through nature to nature's god. week 3 lecture ii sunbeams and how they work who does not love the sunbeams, and feel brighter and merrier as he watches them playing on the wall, sparkling like diamonds on the ripples of the sea, or making bows of coloured light on the waterfall? is not the sunbeam so dear to us that it has become a household word for all that is merry and gay? and when we want to describe the dearest, busiest little sprite amongst us, who wakes a smile on all faces wherever she goes, do we not call her the "sunbeam of the house"? and yet how little even the wisest among us know about the nature and work of these bright messengers of the sun as they dart across space! did you ever wake quite early in the morning, when it was pitchdark and you could see nothing, not even your own hand; and then lie watching as time went on till the light came gradually creeping in at the window? if you have done this you will have noticed that you can at first only just distinguish the dim outline of the furniture; then you can tell the difference between the white cloth on the table and the dark wardrobe beside it; then by degrees all the smaller details, the handles of the drawer, the pattern on the wall, and the different colours of all the objects in the room become clearer and clearer till at last you see all distinctly in broad daylight. what has been happening here? and why have the things in the room become visible by such slow degrees? we say that the sun is rising, but we know very well that it is not the sun which moves, but that our earth has been turning slowly round, and bringing the little spot on which we live face to face with the great fiery ball, so that his beams can fall upon us. take a small globe, and stick a piece of black plaster over england, then let a lighted lamp represent the sun, and turn the globe slowly, so that the spot creeps round from the dark side away from the lamp, until it catches, first the rays which pass along the side of the globe, then the more direct rays, and at last stands fully in the blaze of the light. just this was happening to our spot of the world as you lay in bed and saw the light appear; and we have to learn today what those beams are which fall upon us and what they do for us. first we must learn something about the sun itself, since it is the starting-place of all the sunbeams. if the sun were a dark mass instead of a fiery one we should have none of these bright cheering messengers, and though we were turned face to face with him every day we should remain in one cold eternal night. now you will remember we mentioned in the last lecture that it is heat which shakes apart the little atoms of water and makes them gloat up in the air to fall again as rain; and that if the day is cold they fall as snow, and all the water is turned into ice. but if the sun were altogether dark, think how bitterly cold it would be; far colder than the most wintry weather ever known, because in the bitterest night some warmth comes out of the earth, where it has been stored from the sunlight which fell during the day. but if we never received any warmth at all, no water would ever rise up into the sky, no rain ever fall, no rivers flow, and consequently no plants could grow and no animals live. all water would be in the form of snow and ice, and the earth would be one great frozen mass with nothing moving upon it. so you see it becomes very interesting for us to learn what the sun is, and how he sends us his beams. how far away from us do you think he is? on a fine summer's day when we can see him clearly, it looks as if we had only to get into a balloon and reach him as he sits in the sky, and yet we know roughly that he is more than ninety-one millions of miles distant from our earth. these figures are so enormous that you cannot really grasp them. but imagine yourself in an express train, travelling at the tremendous rate of sixty miles an hour and never stopping. at that rate, if you wished to arrive at the sun today you would have been obliged to start 171 years ago. that is, you must have set off in the early part of the reign of queen anne, and you must have gone on, never, never resting, through the reigns of george i, george ii, and the long reign of george iii, then through those of george iv, william iv, and victoria, whirling on day and night at express speed, and at last, today, you would have reached the sun! and when you arrived there, how large do you think you would find him to be? anaxagoras, a learned greek, was laughed at by all his fellow greeks because he said that the sun was as large as the peloponne-sus, that is about the size of middlesex. how astonished they would have been if they could have known that not only is he bigger than the whole of greece, but more than a million times bigger than the whole world! our world itself is a very large place, so large that our own country looks only like a tiny speck upon it, and an express train would take nearly a month to travel round it. yet even our whole globe is nothing in size compared to the sun, for it only measures 8000 miles across, while the sun measures more the 852,000. imagine for a moment that you could cut the sun and the earth each in half as you would cut an apple; then if you were to lay the flat side of the half-earth on the flat side of the half sun it would take 106 such earths to stretch across the face of the sun. one of these 106 round spots on the diagram represents the size which our earth would look if placed on the sun; and they are so tiny compared to him that they look only like a string of minute beads stretched across his face. only think, then, how many of these minute dots would be required to fill the whole of the inside of fig. 4, if it were a globe. one of the best ways to form an idea of the whole size of the sun is to imagine it to be hollow, like an air-ball, and then see how many earths it would take to fill it. you would hardly believe that it would take one million, three hundred and thirty-one thousand globes the size of our world squeezed together. just think, if a huge giant could travel all over the universe and gather worlds, all as big as ours, and were to make first a heap of merely ten such worlds, how huge it would be! then he must have a hundred such heaps of ten to make a thousand world; and then he must collect again a thousand times that thousand to make a million, and when he had stuffed them all into the sun-ball he would still have only filled three-quarters of it! after hearing this you will not be astonished that such a monster should give out an enormous quantity of light and heat; so enormous that it is almost impossible to form any idea of it. sir john herschel has, indeed, tried to picture it for us. he found that a ball of lime with a flame of oxygen and hydrogen playing round it (such as we use in magic lanterns and call oxyhydrogen light) becomes so violently hot that it gives the most brilliant artificial light we can get such that you cannot put your eye near it without injury. yet if you wanted to have a light as strong as that of our sun, it would not be enough to make such a lime-ball as big as the sun is. no, you must make it as big as 146 suns, or more than 146,000,000 times as big as our earth, in order to get the right amount of light. then you would have a tolerably good artificial sun; for we know that the body of the sun gives out an intense white light, just as the limeball does, and that , like it, it has an atmosphere of glowing gases round it. but perhaps we get the best idea of the mighty heat and light of the sun by remembering how few of the rays which dart out on all sides from this fiery ball can reach our tiny globe, and yet how powerful they are. look at the globe of a lamp in the middle of the room, and see how its light pours out on all sides and into every corner; then take a grain of mustard-seed, which will very well represent the comparative size of our earth, and hold it up at a distance from the lamp. how very few of all those rays which are filling the room fall on the little mustard-seed, and just so few does our earth catch of the rays which dart out from the sun. and yet this small quantity (1/2000-millionth part of the whole) does nearly all the work of our world. (these and the preceding numerical statements will be found worked out in sir j. herschel's 'familiar lectures on scientific subjects,' 1868, from which many of the facts in the first part of the lecture are taken.) in order to see how powerful the sun's rays are, you have only to take a magnifying glass and gather them to a point on a piece of brown paper, for they will set the paper alight. sir john herschel tells us that at the cape of good hope the heat was even so great that he cooked a beefsteak and roasted some eggs by merely putting them in the sun, in a box with a glass lid! indeed, just as we should all be frozen to death if the sun were sold, so we should all be burnt up with intolerable heat if his fierce rays fell with all their might upon us. but we have an invisible veil protecting us, made of what do you think? of those tiny particles of water which the sunbeams draw up and scatter in the air, and which, as we shall see in lecture iv, cut off part of the intense heat and make the air cool and pleasant for us. week 4 we have now learnt something of the distance, the size, the light, and the heat of the sun the great source of the sunbeams. but we are as yet no nearer the answer to the question, what is a sunbeam? how does the sun touch our earth? now suppose i with to touch you from this platform where i stand, i can do it in two ways. firstly, i can throw something at you and hit you in this case a thing will have passed across the space from me to you. or, secondly, if i could make a violent movement so as to shake the floor of the room, you would feel a quivering motion; and so i should touch you across the whole distance of the room. but in this case no thing would have passed from me to you but a movement or wave, which passed along the boards of the floor. again, if i speak to you, how does the sound reach you ear? not by anything being thrown from my mouth to your ear, but by the motion of the air. when i speak i agitate the air near my mouth, and that makes a wave in the air beyond, and that one, another, and another (as we shall see more fully in lecture vi) till the last wave hits the drum of your ear. thus we see there are two ways of touching anything at a distance; 1st, by throwing some thing at it and hitting it; 2nd, by sending a movement of wave across to it, as in the case of the quivering boards and the air. now the great natural philosopher newton thought that the sun touched us in the first of these ways, and that sunbeams were made of very minute atoms of matter thrown out by the sun, and making a perpetual cannonade on our eyes. it is easy to understand that this would make us see light and feel heat, just as a blow in the eye makes us see starts, or on the body makes it feel hot: and for a long time this explanation was supposed to be the true one. but we know now that there are many facts which cannot be explained on this theory, though we cannot go into them here. what we will do, is to try and understand what now seems to be the true explanation of the sunbeam. about the same time that newton wrote, a dutchman, named huyghens, suggested that light comes from the sun in tiny waves, travelling across space much in the same way as ripples travel across a pond. the only difficulty was to explain in what substance these waves could be travelling: not through water, for we know that there is no water in space nor through air, for the air stops at a comparatively short distance from our earth. there must then be something filling all space between us and the sun, finer than either water or air. and now i must ask you to use all you imagination, for i want you to picture to yourselves something quite as invisible as the emperor's new clothes in andersen's fairy-tale, only with this difference, that our invisible something is very active; and though we can neither see it nor touch it we know it by its effects. you must imagine a fine substance filling all space between us and the sun and the starts. a substance so very delicate and subtle, that not only is it invisible, but it can pass through solid bodies such as glass, ice, or even wood or brick walls. this substance we call "ether." i cannot give you here the reasons why we must assume that it is throughout all space; you must take this on the word of such men as sir john herschel or professor clerk-maxwell, until you can study the question for yourselves. now if you can imagine this ether filling every corner of space, so that it is everywhere and passes through everything, ask yourselves, what must happen when a great commotion is going on in one of the large bodies which float in it? when the atoms of the gases round the sun are clashing violently together to make all its light and heat, do you not think they must shake this ether all around them? and then, since the ether stretches on all sides from the sun to our earth and all other planets, must not this quivering travel to us, just as the quivering of the boards would from me to you? take a basin of water to represent the ether, and take a piece of potassium like that which we used in our last lecture, and hold it with a pair of nippers in the middle of the water. you will see that as the potassium hisses and the flame burns round it, they will make waves which will travel all over the water to the edge of the basin,, and you can imagine how in the same way waves travel over the ether from the sun to us. straight away from the sun on all sides, never stopping, never resting, but chasing after each other with marvellous quickness, these tiny waves travel out into space by night and by day. when our spot of the earth where england lies is turned away from them and they cannot touch us, then it is night for us, but directly england is turned so as to face the sun, then they strike on the land, and the water, and warm it; or upon our eyes, making the nerves quiver so that we see light. look up at the sun and picture to yourself that instead of one great blow from a fist causing you to see starts for a moment, millions of tiny blows from these sun-waves are striking every instant on you eye; then you will easily understand that his would cause you to see a constant blaze of light. but when the sun is away, if the night is clear we have light from the starts. do these then too make waves all across the enormous distance between them and us? certainly they do, for they too are suns like our own, only they are so far off that the waves they send are more feeble, and so we only notice them when the sun's stronger waves are away. but perhaps you will ask, if no one has ever seen these waves not the ether in which they are made, what right have we to say they are there? strange as it may seem, though we cannot see them we have measured them and know how large they are, and how many can go into an inch of space. for as these tiny waves are running on straight forward through the room, if we put something in their way, they will have to run round it; and if you let in a very narrow ray of light through a shutter and put an upright wire in the sunbeam, you actually make the waves run round the wire just as water runs round a post in a river; and they meet behind the wire, just as the water meets in a v shape behind the post. now when they meet, they run up against each other, and here it is we catch them. fir if they meet comfortably, both rising up in a good wave, they run on together and make a bright line of light; but if they meet higgledy-piggledy, one up and the other down, all in confusion, they stop each other, and then there is no light but a line of darkness. and so behind your piece of wire you can catch the waves on a piece of paper, and you will find they make dark and light lines one side by side with the other, and by means of these bands it is possible to find out how large the waves must be. this question is too difficult for us to work it out here, but you can see that large waves will make broader light and dark bands than small ones will, and that in this way the size of the waves may be measured. and now how large do you think they turn out to be? so very, very tiny that about fifty thousand waves are contained in a single inch of space! i have drawn on the board the length of an inch, and now i will measure the same space in the air between my finger and thumb. within this space at this moment there are fifty thousand tiny waves moving up and down. i promised you we would find in science things as wonderful as in fairy tales. are not these tiny invisible messengers coming incessantly from the sun as wonderful as any fairies? and still more so when, as we shall see presently, they are doing nearly all the work of our world. we must next try to realize how fast these waves travel. you will remember that an express train would take 171 years to reach us from the sun; and even a cannon-ball would take from ten to thirteen years to come that distance. well, these tiny waves take only seven minutes and a half to come the whole 91 millions of miles. the waves which are hitting your eye at this moment are caused by a movement which began at the sun only 7 1/2 minutes ago. and remember, this movement is going on incessantly, and these waves are always following one after the other so rapidly that they keep up a perpetual cannonade upon the pupil of your eye. so fast do they come that about 608 billion waves enter your eye in one single second.* i do not ask you to remember these figures; i only ask you to try and picture to yourselves these infinitely tiny and active invisible messengers from the sun, and to acknowledge that light is a fairy thing. (*light travels at the rate of 190,000 miles, or 12,165,120,000 inches in a second. taking the average number of wave-lengths in an inch at 50,000, then 12,165,120,000 x 50,000 = 608,256,000,000,000.) but we do not yet know all about our sunbeams. see, i have here a piece of glass with three sides, called a prism. if i put it in the sunlight which is streaming through the window, what happens? look! on the table there is a line of beautiful colours. i can make it long or short, as i turn the prism, but the colours always remain arranged in the same way. here at my left hand is the red, beyond it orange, then yellow, green, blue, indigo or deep blue, and violet, shading one into the other all along the line. we have all seen these colours dancing on the wall when the sun has been shining brightly on the cut-glass pendants of the chandelier, and you may see them still more distinctly if you let a ray of light into a darkened room, and pass it through the prism as in the diagram (fig. 7). what are these colours? do they come from the glass? no; for you will remember to have seen them in the rainbow, and in the soapbubble, and even in a drop of dew or the scum on the top of a pond. this beautiful coloured line is only our sunbeam again, which has been split up into many colours by passing through the glass, as it is in the rain-drops of the rainbow and the bubbles of the scum of the pond. week 5 till now we have talked of the sunbeam as if it were made of only one set of waves of different sizes, all travelling along together from the sun. these various waves have been measured, and we know that the waves which make up red light are larger and more lazy than those which make violet light, so that there are only thirty-nine thousand red waves in an inch, while there are fifty-seven thousand violet waves in the same space. how is it then, that if all these different waves making different colours, hit on our eye, they do not always make us see coloured light? because, unless they are interfered with, they all travel along together, and you know that all colours, mixed together in proper proportion, make white. i have here a round piece of cardboard, painted with the seven colours in succession several times over. when it is still you can distinguish them all apart, but when i whirl it quickly round see! the cardboard looks quite white, because we see them all so instantaneously that they are mingled together. in the same way light looks white to you, because all the different coloured waves strike on your eye at once. you can easily make on of these card for yourselves only the white will always look dirty, because you cannot get the colours pure. now, when the light passes through the three-sided glass or prism, the waves are spread out, and the slow, heavy, red waves lag behind and remain at the lower end r of the coloured line on the wall (fig. 7), while the rapid little violet waves are bent more out of their road and run to v at the farther end of the line; and the orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo arrange themselves between, according to the size of their waves. and now you are very likely eager to ask why the quick waves should make us see one colour, and the slow waves another. this is a very difficult question, for we have a great deal still to learn about the effect of light on the eye. but you can easily imagine that colour is to our eye much the same as music is to our ear. you know we can distinguish different notes when the air-waves play slowly or quickly upon the drum of the ear (as we shall see in lecture vi) and somewhat in the same way the tiny waves of the ether play on the retina or curtain at the back of our eye, and make the nerves carry different messages to the brain: and the colour we see depends upon the number of waves which play upon the retina in a second. do you think we have now rightly answered the question what is a sunbeam? we have seen that it is really a succession of tiny rapid waves, travelling from the sun to us across the invisible substance we call "ether", and keeping up a constant cannonade upon everything which comes in their way. we have also seen that, tiny as these waves are, they can still vary in size, so that one single sunbeam is made up of myriads of different-sized waves, which travel all together and make us see white light; unless for some reason they are scattered apart, so that we see them separately as red, green, blue, or yellow. how they are scattered, and many other secrets of the sun-waves, we cannot stop to consider not, but must pass on to ask what work do the sunbeams do for us? they do two things they give us light and heat. it is by means of them alone that we see anything. when the room was dark you could not distinguish the table, the chairs, or even the walls of the room. why? because they had no light-waves to send to your eye. but as the sunbeams began to pour in at the window, the waves played upon the things in the room, and when they hit them they bounded off them back to your eye, as a wave of the sea bounds back from a rock and strikes against a passing boat. then, when they fell upon your eye, they entered it and excited the retina and the nerves, and the image of the chair or the table was carried to your brain. look around at all the things in this room. is it not strange to think that each one of them is sending these invisible messengers straight to your eye as you look at it; and that you see me, and distinguish me from the table, entirely by the kind of waves we each send to you? some substances send back hardly any waves of light, but let them all pass through them, and thus we cannot see them. a pane of clear glass, for instance, lets nearly all the light-waves pass through it, and therefore you often cannot see that the glass is there, because no light-messengers come back to you from it. thus people have sometimes walked up against a glass door and broken it, not seeing it was there. those substances are transparent which, for some reason unknown to us, allow the ether waves to pass through them without shaking the atoms of which the substance is made. in clear glass, for example, all the lightwaves pass through without affecting the substance of the glass; while in a white wall the larger part of the rays are reflected back to your eye, and those which pass into the wall, by giving motion to its atoms lose their own vibrations. into polished shining metal the waves hardly enter at all, but are thrown back from the surface; and so a steel knife or a silver spoon are very bright, and are clearly seen. quicksilver is put at the back of looking-glasses because it reflects so many waves. it not only sends back those which come from the sun, but those, too, which come from your face. so, when you see yourself in a looking-glass, the sun-waves have first played on your face and bounded off from it to the looking-glass; then, when they strike the looking-glass, they are thrown back again on to the retina of your eye, and you see your own face by means of the very waves you threw off from it an instant before. but the reflected light-waves do more for us than this. they not only make us see things, but they make us see them in different colours. what, you will ask, is this too the work of the sunbeams? certainly; for if the colour we see depends on the size of the waves which come back to us, then we must see things coloured differently according to the waves they send back. for instance, imagine a sunbeam playing on a leaf: part of its waves bound straight back from it to our eye and make us see the surface of the leaf, but the rest go right into the leaf itself, and there some of them are used up and kept prisoners. the red, orange, yellow, blue, and violet waves are all useful to the leaf, and it does not let them go again. but it cannot absorb the green waves, and so it throws them back, and they travel to your eye and make you see a green colour. so when you say a leaf is green, you mean that the leaf does not want the green waves of the sunbeam, but sends them back to you. in the same way the scarlet geranium rejects the red waves; this table sends back brown waves; a white tablecloth sends back nearly the whole of the waves, and a black coat scarcely any. this is why, when there is very little light in the room, you can see a white tablecloth while you would not be able to distinguish a black object, because the few faint rays that are there, are all sent back to you from a white surface. is it not curious to think that there is really no such thing as colour in the leaf, the table, the coat, or the geranium flower, but we see them of different colours because, for some reason, they send back only certain coloured waves to our eye? wherever you look, then, and whatever you see, all the beautiful tints, colours, lights, and shades around you are the work of the tiny sun-waves. again, light does a great deal of work when it falls upon plants. those rays of light which are caught by the leaf are by no means idle; we shall see in lecture vii that the leaf uses them to digest its food and make the sap on which the plant feeds. week 6 we all know that a plant becomes pale and sickly if it has not sunlight, and the reason is, that without these light-waves it cannot get food out of the air, nor make the sap and juices which it needs. when you look at plants and trees growing in the beautiful meadows; at the fields of corn, and at the lovely landscape, you are looking on the work of the tiny waves of light, which never rest all through the day in helping to give life to every green thing that grows. so far we have spoken only of light; but hold your hand in the sun and feel the heat of the sunbeams, and then consider if the waves of heat do not do work also. there are many waves in a sunbeam which move too slowly to make us see light when they hit our eye, but we can feel them as heat, though we cannot see them as light. the simplest way of feeling heat-waves is to hold a warm iron near your face. you know that no light comes from it, yet you can feel the heat-waves beating violently against your face and scorching it. now there are many of these dark heatrays in a sunbeam, and it is they which do most of the work in the world. in the first place, as they come quivering to the earth, it is they which shake the water-drops apart, so that these are carried up in the air, as we shall see in the next lecture. and then remember, it is these drops, falling again as rain, which make the rivers and all the moving water on the earth. so also it is the heat-waves which make the air hot and light, and so cause it to rise and make winds and air-currents, and these again give rise to ocean-currents. it is these dark rays, again, which strike upon the land and give it the warmth which enables plants to grow. it is they also which keep up the warmth in our own bodies, both by coming to us directly from the sun, and also in a very roundabout way through plants. you will remember that plants use up rays of light and heat in growing; then either we eat the plants, or animals eat the plants and we eat the animals; and when we digest the food, that heat comes back in our bodies, which the plants first took from the sunbeam. breathe upon your hand, and feel how hot your breath is; well, that heat which you feel, was once in a sunbeam, and has travelled from it through the food you have eaten, and has now been at work keeping up the heat of your body. but there is still another way in which these plants may give out the heat-waves they have imprisoned. you will remember how we learnt in the first lecture that coal is made of plants, and that the heat they give out is the heat these plants once took in. think how much work is done by burning coals. not only are our houses warmed by coal fires and lighted by coal gas, but our steam-engines and machinery work entirely by water which has been turned into steam by the heat of coal and coke fire; and our steamboats travel all over the world by means of the same power. in the same way the oil of our lamps comes either from olives, which grow on trees; or from coal and the remains of plants and animals in the earth. even our tallow candles are made of mutton fat, and sheep eat grass; as so, turn which way we will, we find that the light and heat on our earth, whether it comes from fires, or candles, or lamps, or gas, and whether it moves machinery, or drives a train, or propels a ship, is equally the work of the invisible waves of ether coming from the sun, which make what we call a sunbeam. lastly, there are still some hidden waves which we have not yet mentioned, which are not useful to us either as light or heat, and yet they are not idle. before i began this lecture, i put a piece of paper, which had been dipped in nitrate of silver, under a piece of glass; and between it and the glass i put a piece of lace. look what the sun has been doing while i have been speaking. it has been breaking up the nitrate of silver on the paper and turning it into a deep brown substance; only where the threads of the lace were, and the sun could not touch the nitrate of silver, there the paper has remained light-coloured, and by this means i have a beautiful impression of the lace on the paper. i will now dip the impression into water in which some hyposulphite of soda is dissolved, and this will "fix" the picture, that is, prevent the sun acting upon it any more; then the picture will remain distinct, and i can pass it round to you all. here, again, invisible waves have been at work, and this time neither as light nor as heat, but as chemical agents, and it is these waves which give us all our beautiful photographs. in any toyshop you can buy this prepared paper, and set the chemical waves at work to make pictures. only you must remember to fix it in the solution afterwards, otherwise the chemical rays will go on working after you have taken the lace away, and all the paper will become brown and your picture will disappear. and now, tell me, may we not honestly say, that the invisible waves which make our sunbeams, are wonderful fairy messengers as they travel eternally and unceasingly across space, never resting, never tiring in doing the work of our world? little as we have been able to learn about them in one short hour, do they not seem to you worth studying and worth thinking about, as we look at the beautiful results of their work? the ancient greeks worshipped the sun, and condemned to death one of their greatest philosophers, named anaxagoras, because he denied that it was a god. we can scarcely wonder at this when we see what the sun does for our world; but we know that it is a huge globe made of gases and fiery matter and not a god. we are grateful for the sun instead of to him, and surely we shall look at him with new interest, now that we can picture his tiny messengers, the sunbeams, flitting over all space, falling upon our earth, giving us light to see with, and beautiful colours to enjoy, warming the air and the earth, making the refreshing rain, and, in a word, filling the world with life and gladness. week 7 lecture iii the aerial ocean in which we live did you ever sit on the bank of a river in some quiet spot where the water was deep and clear, and watch the fishes swimming lazily along? when i was a child this was one of my favourite occupations in the summertime on the banks of the thames, and there was one question which often puzzled me greatly, as i watched the minnows and gudgeon gliding along through the water. why should fishes live in something and be often buffeted about by waves and currents, while i and others lived on the top of the earth and not in anything? i do not remember ever asking anyone about this; and if i had, in those days people did not pay much attention to children's questions, and probably nobody would have told me, what i now tell you, that we do live in something quite as real and often quite as rough and stormy as the water in which the fishes swim. the something in which we live is air, and the reason that we do not perceive it, is that we are in it, and that it is a gas, and invisible to us; while we are above the water in which the fishes live, and it is a liquid which our eyes can perceive. but let us suppose for a moment that a being, whose eyes were so made that he could see gases as we see liquids, was looking down from a distance upon our earth. he would see an ocean of air, or aerial ocean, all round the globe, with birds floating about in it, and people walking along the bottom, just as we see fish gliding along the bottom of a river. it is true, he would never see even the birds come near to the surface, for the highestflying bird, the condor, never soars more than five miles from the ground, and our atmosphere, as we shall see, is at least 100 miles high. so he would call us all deep-air creatures, just as we talk of deep-sea animals; and if we can imagine that he fished in this air-ocean, and could pull one of us out of it into space, he would find that we should gasp and die just as fishes do when pulled out of the water. he would also observe very curious things going on in our airocean; he would see large streams and currents of air, which we call winds, and which would appear to him as ocean-currents do to us, while near down to the earth he would see thick mists forming and then disappearing again, and these would be our clouds. from them he would see rain, hail and snow falling to the earth, and from time to time bright flashes would shoot across the airocean, which would be our lightning. nay even the brilliant rainbow, the northern aurora borealis, and the falling stars, which seem to us so high up in space, would be seen by him near to our earth, and all within the aerial ocean. but as we know of no such being living in space, who can tell us what takes place in our invisible air, and we cannot see it ourselves, we must try by experiments to see it with our imagination, though we cannot with our eyes. first, then, can we discover what air is? at one time it was thought that it was a simple gas and could not be separated into more than one kind. but we are now going to make an experiment by which it has been shown that air is made of two gases mingled together, and that one of these gases, called oxygen, is used up when anything burns, while the other nitrogen is not used, and only serves to dilute the minute atoms of oxygen. i have here a glass bell-jar, with a cork fixed tightly in the neck, and i place the jar over a pan of water, while on the water floats a plate with a small piece of phosphorus upon it. you will see that by putting the bell-jar over the water, i have shut in a certain quantity of air, and my object now is to use up the oxygen out of this air and leave only nitrogen behind. to do this i must light the piece of phosphorus, for you will remember it is in burning that oxygen is used up. i will take the cork out, light the phosphorus, and cork up the jar again. see! as the phosphorus burns white fumes fill the jar. these fumes are phosphoric acid which is a substance made of phosphorous and the oxygen of the air together. now, phosphoric acid melts in water just as sugar does, and in a few minutes these fumes will disappear. they are beginning to melt already, and the water from the pan is rising up in the bell-jar. why is this? consider for a moment what we have done. first, the jar was full of air, that is, of mixed oxygen and nitrogen; then the phosphorus used up the oxygen making white fumes; afterwards, the water sucked up these fumes; and so, in the jar now nitrogen is the only gas left, and the water has risen up to fill all the rest of the space that was once taken up with oxygen. we can easily prove that there is no oxygen now in the jar. i take out the cork and let a lighted taper down into the gas. if there were any oxygen the taper would burn, but you see it goes out directly proving that all the oxygen has been used up by the phosphorous. when this experiment is made very accurately, we find that for every pint of oxygen in air there are four pints of nitrogen, so that the active oxygen-atoms are scattered about, floating in the sleepy, inactive nitrogen. it is these oxygen-atoms which we use up when we breathe. if i had put a mouse under the bell-jar, instead of the phosphorus, the water would have risen just the same, because the mouse would have breathed in the oxygen and used it up in its body, joining it to carbon and making a bad gas, carbonic acid, which would also melt in the water, and when all the oxygen was used, the mouse would have died. do you see now how foolish it is to live in rooms that are closely shut up, or to hide your head under the bedclothes when you sleep? you use up all the oxygen-atoms, and then there are none left for you to breathe; and besides this, you send out of your mouth bad fumes, though you cannot see them, and these, when you breathe them in again, poison you and make you ill. perhaps you will say, if oxygen is so useful, why is not the air made entirely of it? but think for a moment. if there was such an immense quantity of oxygen, how fearfully fast everything would burn! our bodies would soon rise above fever heat from the quantity of oxygen we should take in, and all fires and lights would burn furiously. in fact, a flame once lighted would spread so rapidly that no power on earth could stop it, and everything would be destroyed. so the lazy nitrogen is very useful in keeping the oxygen-atoms apart; and we have time, even when a fire is very large and powerful, to put it out before it has drawn in more and more oxygen from the surrounding air. often, if you can shut a fire into a closed space, as in a closely-shut room or the hold of a ship, it will go out, because it has used up all the oxygen in the air. so, you see, we shall be right in picturing this invisible air all around us as a mixture of two gases. but when we examine ordinary air very carefully, we find small quantities of other gases in it, besides oxygen and nitrogen. first, there is carbonic acid gas. this is the bad gas which we give out of our mouths after we have burnt up the oxygen with the carbon of our bodies inside our lungs; and this carbonic acid is also given out from everything that burns. if only animals lived in the world, this gas would soon poison the air; but plants get hold of it, and in the sunshine they break it up again, as we shall see in lecture vii, and use up the carbon, throwing the oxygen back into the air for us to use. secondly, there are very small quantities of ammonia, or the gas which almost chokes you in smelling-salts, and which, when liquid is commonly called "spirits of hartshorn." this ammonia is useful to plants, as we shall see by and by. lastly, there is a great deal of water in the air, floating about as invisible vapour or water-dust, and this we shall speak of in the next lecture. still, all these gases and vapours in the atmosphere are in very small quantities, and the bulk of the air is composed of oxygen and nitrogen. having now learned what air is, the next question which presents itself is, why does it stay round our earth? you will remember we saw in the first lecture, that all the little atoms of a gas are trying to fly away from each other, so that if i turn on this gas-jet the atoms soon leave it, and reach you at the farther end of the room, and you can smell the gas. why, then, do not all the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen fly away from our earth into space, and leave us without any air? ah! here you must look for another of our invisible forces. have you forgotten our giant force, "gravitation," which draws things together from a distance? this force draws together the earth and the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen; and as the earth is very big and heavy, and the atoms of air are light and easily moved, they are drawn down to the earth and held there by gravitation. but for all that, the atmosphere does not leave off trying to fly away; it is always pressing upwards and outwards with all its might, while the earth is doing its best to hold it down. the effect of this is, that near the earth, where the pull downward is very strong, the air-atoms are drawn very closely together, because gravitation gets the best of the struggle. but as we get farther and farther from the earth, the pull downward becomes weaker, and then the air-atoms spring farther apart, and the air becomes thinner. suppose that the lines in this diagram represent layers of air. near the earth we have to represent them as lying closely together, but as they recede from the earth they are also farther apart. but the chief reason why the air is thicker or denser nearer the earth, is because the upper layers press it down. if you have a heap of papers lying one on the top of the other, you know that those at the bottom of the heap will be more closely pressed together than those above, and just the same is the case with the atoms of the air. only there is this difference, if the papers have lain for some time, when you take the top ones off, the under ones remain close together. but it is not so with the air, because air is elastic, and the atoms are always trying to fly apart, so that directly you take away the pressure they spring up again as far as they can. week 8 i have here an ordinary pop-gun. if i push the cork in very tight, and then force the piston slowly inwards, i can compress the air a good deal. now i am forcing the atoms nearer and nearer together, but at last they rebel so strongly against being more crowded that the cork cannot resist their pressure. out it flies, and the atoms spread themselves out comfortably again in the air all around them. now, just as i pressed the air together in the pop-gun, so the atmosphere high up above the earth presses on the air below and keeps the atoms closely packed together. and in this case the atoms cannot force back the air above them as they did the cork in the pop-gun; they are obliged to submit to be pressed together. even a short distance from the earth, however, at the top of a high mountain, the air becomes lighter, because it has less weight of atmosphere above it, and people who go up in balloons often have great difficulty in breathing, because the air is so thin and light. in 1804 a frenchman, named gay-lussac, went up four miles and a half in a balloon, and brought down some air; and he found that it was much less heavy than the same quantity of air taken close down to the earth, showing that it was much thinner, or rarer, as it is called;* and when, in 1862, mr. glaisher and mr. coxwell went up five miles and a half, mr. glaisher's veins began to swell, and his head grew dizzy, and he fainted. the air was too thin for him to breathe enough in at a time, and it did not press heavily enough on the drums of his ears and the veins of his body. he would have died if mr. coxwell had not quickly let off some of the gas in the balloon, so that it sank down into denser air. (*100 cubic inches near the earth weighed 31 grains, while the same quantity taken at four and a half miles up in the air weighed only 12 grains, or twofifths of the weight.) and now comes another very interesting question. if the air gets less and less dense as it is farther from the earth, where does it stop altogether? we cannot go up to find out, because we should die long before we reached the limit; and for a long time we had to guess about how high the atmosphere probably was, and it was generally supposed not to be more than fifty miles. but lately, some curious bodies, which we should have never suspected would be useful to us in this way, have let us into the secret of the height of the atmosphere. these bodies are the meteors, or falling stars. most people, at one time or another, have seen what looks like a star shoot right across the sky, and disappear. on a clear starlight night you may often see one or more of these bright lights flash through the air; for one falls on an average in every twenty minutes, and on the nights of august 9th and november 13th there are numbers in one part of the sky. these bodies are not really stars; they are simply stones or lumps of metal flying through the air, and taking fire by clashing against the atoms of oxygen in it. there are great numbers of these masses moving round and round the sun, and when our earth comes across their path, as it does especially in august and november, they dash with such tremendous force through the atmosphere that they grow white-hot, and give out light, and then disappear, melted into vapour. every now and then one falls to the earth before it is all melted away, and thus we learn that these stones contain tin, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, and other substances. it is while these bodies are burning that they look to us like falling stars, and when we see them we know that hey must be dashing against our atmosphere. now if two people stand a certain known distance, say fifty miles, apart on the earth and observe these meteors and the direction in which they each see them fall, they can calculate (by means of the angle between the two directions) how high they are above them when they first see them, and at that moment they must have struck against the atmosphere, and even travelled some way through it, to become white-hot. in this way we have learnt that meteors burst into light at least 100 miles above the surface of the earth, and so the atmosphere must be more than 100 miles high. our next question is as to the weight of our aerial ocean. you will easily understand that all this air weighing down upon the earth must be very heavy, even though it grows lighter as it ascends. the atmosphere does, in fact, weigh down upon land at the level of the sea as much as if a 15-pound weight were put upon every square inch of land. this little piece of linen paper, which i am holding up, measures exactly a square inch, and as it lies on the table, it is bearing a weight of 15 lbs. on its surface. but how, then, comes it that i can lift it so easily? why am i not conscious of the weight? to understand this you must give all your attention, for it is important and at first not very easy to grasp. you must remember, in the first place, that the air is heavy because it is attracted to the earth, and in the second place, that since air is elastic all the atoms of it are pushing upwards against this gravitation. and so, at any point in air, as for instance the place where the paper now is as i hold it up, i feel no pressure because exactly as much as gravitation is pulling the air down, so much elasticity is resisting and pushing it up. so the pressure is equal upwards, downwards, and on all sides, and i can move the paper with equal ease any way. even if i lay the paper on the table this is still true, because there is always some air under it. if, however, i could get the air quite away from one side of the paper, then the pressure on the other side would show itself. i can do this by simply wetting the paper and letting it fall on the table, and the water will prevent any air from getting under it. now see! if i try to lift it by the thread in the middle, i have great difficulty, because the whole 15 pounds' weight of the atmosphere is pressing it down. a still better way of making the experiment is with a piece of leather, such as the boys often amuse themselves with in the streets. this piece of leather has been well soaked. i drop it on the floor and see! it requires all my strength to pull it up. (in fastening the string to the leather the hole must be very small and the know as flat as possible, and it is even well to put a small piece of kid under the knot. when i first made this experiment, not having taken these precautions, it did not succeed well, owing to air getting in through the hole.) i now drop it on this stone weight, and so heavily is it pressed down upon it by the atmosphere that i can lift the weight without its breaking away from it. have you ever tried to pick limpets off a rock? if so, you know how tight they cling. the limpet clings to the rock just in the same way as this leather does to the stone; the little animal exhausts the air inside it's shell, and then it is pressed against the rock by the whole weight of the air above. perhaps you will wonder how it is that if we have a weight of 15 lbs. pressing on every square inch of our bodies, it does not crush us. and, indeed, it amounts on the whole to a weight of about 15 tons upon the body of a grown man. it would crush us if it were not that there are gases and fluids inside our bodies which press outwards and balance the weight so that we do not feel it at all. this is why mr. glaisher's veins swelled and he grew giddy in thin air. the gases and fluids inside his body were pressing outwards as much as when he was below, but the air outside did not press so heavily, and so all the natural condition of his body was disturbed. i hope we now realize how heavily the air presses down upon our earth, but it is equally necessary to understand how, being elastic, it also presses upwards; and we can prove this by a simple experiment. i fill this tumbler with water, and keeping a piece of card firmly pressed against it, i turn the whole upsidedown. when i now take my hand away you would naturally expect the card to fall, and the water to be spilt. but no! the card remains as if glued to the tumbler, kept there entirely by the air pressing upwards against it. (the engraver has drawn the tumbler only half full of water. the experiment will succeed quite as well in this way if the tumbler be turned over quickly, so that part of the air escapes between the tumbler and the card, and therefore the space above the water is occupied by air less dense than that outside.) and now we are almost prepared to understand how we can weigh the invisible air. one more experiment first. i have here what is called a u tube, because it is shaped like a large u. i pour some water in it till it is about half full, and you will notice that the water stands at the same height in both arms of the tube, because the air presses on both surfaces alike. putting my thumb on one end i tilt the tube carefully, so as to make the water run up to the end of one arm, and then turn it back again. but the water does not now return to its even position, it remains up in the arm on which my thumb rests. why is this? because my thumb keeps back the air from pressing at that end, and the whole weight of the atmosphere rests on the water at the other end. and so we learn that not only has the atmosphere real weight, but we can see the effects of this weight by making it balance a column of water or any other liquid. in the case of the wetted leather we felt the weight of the air, here we see its effects. now when we wish to see the weight of the air we consult a barometer, which works really just in the same way as the water in this tube. an ordinary upright barometer is simply a straight tube of glass filled with mercury or quicksilver, and turned upside-down in a small cup of mercury. the tube is a little more than 30 inches long, and though it is quite full of mercury before it is turned up, yet directly it stands in the cup the mercury falls, till there is a height of about 30 inches between the surface of the mercury in the cup, and that of the mercury in the tube. as it falls it leaves an empty space above the mercury which is called a vacuum, because it has no air in it. now, the mercury is under the same conditions as the water was in the u tube, there is no pressure upon it at the top of the tube, while there is a pressure of 15 lbs. upon it in the bowl, and therefore it remains held up in the tube. week 9 but why will it not remain more than 30 inches high in the tube? you must remember it is only kept up in the tube at all by the air which presses on the mercury in the cup. and that column of mercury now balances the pressure of the air outside, and presses down on the mercury in the cup at its mouth just as much as the air does on the rest. so this cup and tube act exactly like a pair of scales. the air outside is the thing to be weighed at one end as it presses on the mercury, the column answers to the leaden weight at the other end which tells you how heavy the air is. now if the bore of this tube is made an inch square, then the 30 inches of mercury in it weigh exactly 15 lbs, and so we know that the weight of the air is 15 lbs. upon every square inch, but if the bore of the tube is only half a square inch, and therefore the 30 inches of mercury only weigh 7 1/2 lbs. instead of 15 lbs., the pressure of the atmosphere will also be halved, because it will only act upon half a square inch of surface, and for this reason it will make no difference to the height of the mercury whether the tube be broad or narrow. but now suppose the atmosphere grows lighter, as it does when it has much damp in it. the barometer will show this at once, because there will be less weight on the mercury in the cup, therefore it will not keep the mercury pushed so high up in the tube. in other words, the mercury in the tube will fall. let us suppose that one day the air is so much lighter that it presses down only with a weight of 14 1/2 lbs. to the square inch instead of 15 lbs. then the mercury would fall to 29 inches, because each inch is equal to the weight of half a pound. now, when the air is damp and very full of water-vapour it is much lighter, and so when the barometer falls we expect rain. sometimes, however, other causes make the air light, and then, although the barometer is low, no rain comes, again, if the air becomes heavier the mercury is pushed up above 30 to 31 inches, and in this way we are able to weigh the invisible air-ocean all over the world, and tell when it grows lighter or heavier. this then, is the secret of the barometer. we cannot speak of the thermometer today, but i should like to warn you in passing that it has nothing to do with the weight of the air, but only with heat, and acts in quite a different way. and now we have been so long hunting out, testing and weighing our aerial ocean, that scarcely any time is left us to speak of its movements or the pleasant breezes which it makes for us in our country walks. did you ever try to run races on a very windy day? ah! then you feel the air strongly enough; how it beats against your face and chest, and blows down your throat so as to take your breath away; and what hard work it is to struggle against it! stop for a moment and rest, and ask yourself, what is the wind? why does it blow sometimes one way and sometimes another, and sometimes not at all? wind is nothing more than air moving across the surface of the earth, which as it passes along bends the tops of the trees, beats against the houses, pushes the ships along by their sails, turns the windmill, carries off the smoke from cities, whistles through the keyhole, and moans as it rushes down the valley. what makes the air restless? why should it not lie still all round the earth? it is restless because, as you will remember, its atoms are kept pressed together near the earth by the weight of the air above, and they take every opportunity, when they can find more room, to spread out violently and rush into the vacant space, and this rush we call a wind. imagine a great number of active schoolboys all crowded into a room till they can scarcely move their arms and legs for the crush, and then suppose all at once a large door is opened. will they not all come tumbling out pell-mell, one over the other, into the hall beyond, so that if you stood in their way you would most likely be knocked down? well, just this happens to the airatoms; when they find a space before them into which they can rush, they come on helter-skelter, with such force that you have great difficulty in standing against them, and catch hold of something to support you for fear you should be blown down. but how come they to find any empty space to receive them? to answer this we must go back again to our little active invisible fairies the sunbeams. when the sun-waves come pouring down upon the earth they pass through the air almost without heating it. but not so with the ground; there they pass down only a short distance and then are thrown back again. and when these sunwaves come quivering back they force the atoms of the air near the earth apart and make it lighter; so that the air close to the surface of the heated ground becomes less heavy than the air above it, and rises just as a cork rises in water. you know that hot air rises in the chimney; for if you put a piece of lighted paper on the fire it is carried up by the draught of air, often even before it can ignite. now just as the hot air rises from the fire, so it rises from the heated ground up into higher parts of the atmosphere. and as it rises it leaves only thin air behind it, and this cannot resist the strong cold air whose atoms are struggling and trying to get free, and they rush in and fill the space. one of the simplest examples of wind is to be found at the seaside. there in the daytime the land gets hot under the sunshine, and heats the air, making it grow light and rise. meanwhile the sunshine on the water goes down deeper, and so does not send back so many heat-waves into the air; consequently the air on the top of the water is cooler and heavier, and it rushes in from over the sea to fill up the space on the shore left by the warm air as it rises. this is why the seaside is so pleasant in hot weather. during the daytime a light sea-breeze nearly always sets in from the sea to the land. when night comes, however, then the land loses its heat very quickly, because it has not stored it up and the land-air grows cold; but the sea, which has been hoarding the sun-waves down in its depths, now gives them up to the atmosphere above it, and the sea-air becomes warm and rises. for this reason it is now the turn of the cold air from the land to spread over the sea, and you have a land-breeze blowing off the shore. again, the reason why there are such steady winds, called the trade winds, blowing towards the equator, is that the sun is very hot at the equator, and hot air is always rising there and making room for colder air to rush in. we have not time to travel farther with the moving air, though its journeys are extremely interesting; but if, when you read about the trade and other winds, you will always picture to yourselves warm air made light by the heat rising up into space and cold air expanding and rushing in to fill its place, i can promise you that you will not find the study of aerial currents so dry as many people imagine it to be. we are now able to form some picture of our aerial ocean. we can imagine the active atoms of oxygen floating in the sluggish nitrogen, and being used up in every candle-flame, gas-jet and fire, and in the breath of all living beings; and coming out again tied fast to atoms of carbon and making carbonic acid. then we can turn to trees and plants, and see them tearing these two apart again, holding the carbon fast and sending the invisible atoms of oxygen bounding back again into the air, ready to recommence work. we can picture all these air-atoms, whether of oxygen or nitrogen, packed close together on the surface of the earth, and lying gradually farther and farther apart, as they have less weight above them, till they become so scattered that we can only detect them as they rub against the flying meteors which flash into light. we can feel this great weight of air pressing the limpet on to the rock; and we can see it pressing up the mercury in the barometer and so enabling us to measure its weight. lastly, every breath of wind that blows past us tells us how this aerial ocean is always moving to and fro on the face of the earth; and if we think for a moment how much bad air and bad matter it must carry away, as it goes from crowded cities to be purified in the country, we can see how, in even this one way alone, it is a great blessing to us. yet even now we have not mentioned many of the beauties of our atmosphere. it is the tiny particles floating in the air which scatter the light of the sun so that it spreads over the whole country and into shady places. the sun's rays always travel straight forward; and in the moon, where there is no atmosphere, there is no light anywhere except just where the rays fall. but on our earth the sun-waves hit against the myriads of particles in the air and glide off them into the corners of the room or the recesses of a shady lane, and so we have light spread before us wherever we walk in the daytime, instead of those deep black shadows which we can see through a telescope on the face of the moon. again, it is electricity playing in the air-atoms which gives us the beautiful lightning and the grand aurora borealis, and even the twinkling of the starts is produced entirely by minute changes in the air. if it were not for our aerial ocean, the stars would stare at us sternly, instead of smiling with the pleasant twinkle-twinkle which we have all learned to love as little children. all these questions, however, we must leave for the present; only i hope you will be eager to read about them wherever you can, and open your eyes to learn their secrets. for the present we must be content if we can even picture this wonderful ocean of gas spread round our earth, and some of the work it does for us. we said in the last lecture that without the sunbeams the earth would be cold, dark, and frost-ridden. with sunbeams, but without air, it would indeed have burning heat, side by side with darkness and ice, but it could have no soft light. our planet might look beautiful to others, as the moon does to us, but it could have comparatively few beauties of its own. with the sunbeams and the air, we see it has much to make it beautiful. but a third worker is wanted before our planet can revel in activity and life. this worker is water; and in the next lecture we shall learn something of the beauty and the usefulness of the "drops of water" on their travels. week 10 lecture iv. a drop of water on its travels we are going to spend an hour to-day in following a drop of water on its travels. if i dip my finger in this basin of water and lift it up again, i bring with it a small glistening drop out of the body of water below, and hold it before you. tell me, have you any idea where this drop has been? what changes it has undergone, and what work it has been doing during all the long ages that water has lain on the face of the earth? it is a drop now, but it was not so before i lifted it out of the basin; then it was part of a sheet of water, and will be so again if i let it fall. again, if i were to put this basin on the stove till all the water had boiled away, where would my drop be then? where would it go? what forms will it take before it reappears in the rain-cloud, the river, or the sparkling dew? these are questions we are going to try to answer to-day; and first, before we can in the least understand how water travels, we must call to mind what we have learnt about the sunbeams and the air. we must have clearly pictured in our imagination those countless sun-waves which are for ever crossing space, and especially those larger and slower undulations, the dark heatwaves; for it is these, you will remember, which force the airatoms apart and make the air light, and it is also these which are most busy in sending water on its travels. but not these alone. the sun-waves might shake the water-drops as much as they liked and turn them into invisible vapour, but they could not carry them over the earth if it were not for the winds and currents of that aerial ocean which bears the vapour on its bosom, and wafts it to different regions of the world. let us try to understand how these two invisible workers, the sun-waves and the air, deal with the drops of water. i have here a kettle (fig. 18, p. 76) boiling over a spirit-lamp, and i want you to follow minutely what is going on in it. first, in the flame of the lamp, atoms of the spirit drawn up from below are clashing with the oxygen-atoms in the air. this, as you know, causes heat-waves and light-waves to move rapidly all round the lamp. the light-waves cannot pass through the kettle, but the heat-waves can, and as they enter the water inside they agitate it violently. quicker, and still more quickly, the particles of water near the bottom of the kettle move to and fro and are shaken apart; and as they become light they rise through the colder water letting another layer come down to be heated in its turn. the motion grows more and more violent, making the water hotter and hotter, till at last the particles of which it is composed fly asunder, and escape as invisible vapour. if this kettle were transparent you would not see any steam above the water, because it is in the form of an invisible gas. but as the steam comes out of the mouth of the kettle you see a cloud. why is this? because the vapour is chilled by coming out into the cold air, and its particles are drawn together again into tiny, tiny drops of water, to which dr. tyndall has given the suggestive name of water-dust. if you hold a plate over the steam you can catch these tiny drops, though they will run into one another almost as you are catching them. the clouds you see floating in the sky are made of exactly the same kind of water-dust as the cloud from the kettle, and i wish to show you that this is also really the same as the invisible steam within the kettle. i will do so by an experiment suggested by dr. tyndall. here is another spirit-lamp, which i will hold under the cloud of steam see! the cloud disappears! as soon as the water-dust is heated the heat-waves scatter it again into invisible particles, which float away into the room. even without the spirit-lamp, you can convince yourself that water-vapour may be invisible; for close to the mouth of the kettle you will see a short blank space before the cloud begins. in this space there must be steam, but it is still so hot that you cannot see it; and this proves that heat-waves can so shake water apart as to carry it away invisibly right before your eyes. now, although we never see any water travelling from our earth up into the skies, we know that it goes there, for it comes down again in rain, and so it must go up invisibly. but where does the heat come from which makes this water invisible? not from below, as in the case of the kettle, but from above, pouring down from the sun. wherever the sun-waves touch the rivers, ponds, lakes, seas, or fields of ice and snow upon our earth, they carry off invisible water-vapour. they dart down through the top layers of the water, and shake the water-particles forcibly apart; and in this case the drops fly asunder more easily and before they are so hot, because they are not kept down by a great weight of water above, as in the kettle, but find plenty of room to spread themselves out in the gaps between the air-atoms of the atmosphere. can you imagine these water-particles, just above any pond or lake, rising up and getting entangled among the air-atoms? they are very light, much lighter than the atmosphere; and so, when a great many of them are spread about in the air which lies just over the pond, they make it much lighter than the layer of air above, and so help it to rise, while the heavier layer of air comes down ready to take up more vapour. in this way the sun-waves and the air carry off water everyday, and all day long, from the top of lakes, rivers, pools, springs, and seas, and even from the surface of ice and snow. without any fuss or noise or sign of any kind, the water of our earth is being drawn up invisibly into the sky. it has been calculated that in the indian ocean three-quarters of an inch of water is carried off from the surface of the sea in one day and night; so that as much as 22 feet, or a depth of water about twice the height of an ordinary room, is silently and invisibly lifted up from the whole surface of the ocean in one year. it is true this is one of the hottest parts of the earth, where the sun-waves are most active; but even in our own country many feet of water are drawn up in the summer-time. what, then, becomes of all this water? let us follow it as it struggles upwards to the sky. we see it in our imagination first carrying layer after layer of air up with it from the sea till it rises far above our heads and above the highest mountains. but now, call to mind what happens to the air as it recedes from the earth. do you not remember that the air-atoms are always trying to fly apart, and are only kept pressed together by the weight of air above them? well, so this water-laden air rises up, its particles, no longer so much pressed together, begin to separate, and as all work requires an expenditure of heat, the air becomes colder, and then you know at once what must happen to the invisible vapour, -it will form into tiny water-drops, like the steam from the kettle. and so, as the air rises and becomes colder, the vapour gathers into the visible masses, and we can see it hanging in the sky, and call it clouds. when these clouds are highest they are about ten miles from the earth, but when they are made of heavy drops and hang low down, they sometimes come within a mile of the ground. look up at the clouds as you go home, and think that the water of which they are made has all been drawn up invisibly through the air. not, however, necessarily here in london, for we have already seen that air travels as wind all over the world, rushing in to fill spaces made by rising air wherever they occur, and so these clouds may be made of vapour collected in the mediterranean, or in the gulf of mexico off the coast of america, or even, if the wind is from the north, of chilly particles gathered from the surface of greenland ice and snow, and brought here by the moving currents of air. only, of one thing we may be sure, that they come from the water of our earth. sometimes, if the air is warm, these water-particles may travel a long way without ever forming into clouds; and on a hot, cloudless day the air is often very full of invisible vapour. then, if a cold wind comes sweeping along, high up in the sky, and chills this vapour, it forms into great bodies of water-dust clouds, and the sky is overcast. at other times clouds hang lazily in a bright sky, and these show us that just where they are (as in fig. 19) the air is cold and turns the invisible vapour rising from the ground into visible water-dust, so that exactly in those spaces we see it as clouds. such clouds form often on warm, still summer's day, and they are shaped like masses of wool, ending in a straight line below. they are not merely hanging in the sky, they are really resting upon a tall column of invisible vapour which stretches right up from the earth; and that straight line under the clouds marks the place where the air becomes cold enough to turn this invisible vapour into visible drops of water. week 11 and now, suppose that while these or any other kind of clouds are overhead, there comes along either a very cold wind, or a wind full of vapour. as it passes through the clouds, it makes them very full of water, for, if it chills them, it makes the waterdust draw more closely together; or, if it brings a new load of water-dust, the air is fuller than it can hold. in either case a number of water-particles are set free, and our fairy force "cohesion" seizes upon them at once and forms them into large water-drops. then they are much heavier than the air, and so they can float no longer, but down they come to the earth in a shower of rain. there are other ways in which the air may be chilled, and rain made to fall, as, for example, when a wind laden with moisture strikes against the cold tops of mountains. thus the khasia hills in india which face the bay of bengal, chill the air which crosses them on its way from the indian ocean. the wet winds are driven up the sides of the hills, the air expands, and the vapour is chilled, and forming into drops, falls in torrents of rain. sir j. hooker tells us that as much as 500 inches of rain fell in these hills in nine months. that is to say, if you could measure off all the ground over which the rain fell, and spread the whole nine months' rain over it, it would make a lake 500 inches, or more than 40 feet deep! you will not be surprised that the country on the other side of these hills gets hardly any rain, for all the water has been taken out of the air before it comes there. again for example in england, the wind comes to cumberland and westmorland over the atlantic, full of vapour, and as it strikes against the pennine hills it shakes off its watery load; so that the lake district is the most rainy in england, with the exception perhaps of wales, where the high mountains have the same effect. in this way, from different causes, the water of which the sun has robbed our rivers and seas, comes back to us, after it has travelled to various parts of the world, floating on the bosom of the air. but it does not always fall straight back into the rivers and seas again, a large part of it falls on the land, and has to trickle down slopes and into the earth, in order to get back to its natural home, and it is often caught on its way before it can reach the great waters. go to any piece of ground which is left wild and untouched you will find it covered with grass weeds, and other plants; if you dig up a small plot you will find innumerable tiny roots creeping through the ground in every direction. each of these roots has a sponge-like mouth by which the plant takes up water. now, imagine rain-drops falling on this plot of ground and sinking into the earth. on every side they will find rootlets thirsting to drink them in, and they will be sucked up as if by tiny sponges, and drawn into the plants, and up the stems to the leaves. here, as we shall see in lecture vii., they are worked up into food for the plant, and only if the leaf has more water than it needs, some drops may escape at the tiny openings under the leaf, and be drawn up again by the sun-waves as invisible vapour into the air. again, much of the rain falls on hard rock and stone, where it cannot sink in, and then it lies in pools till it is shaken apart again into vapour and carried off in the air. nor is it idle here, even before it is carried up to make clouds. we have to thank this invisible vapour in the air for protecting us from the burning heat of the sun by day and intolerable frost by night. let us for a moment imagine that we can see all that we know exists between us and the sun. first, we have the fine ether across which the sunbeams travel, beating down upon our earth with immense force, so that in the sandy desert they are like a burning fire. then we have the coarser atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen atoms hanging in this ether, and bending the minute sunwaves out of their direct path. but they do very little to hinder them on their way, and this is why in very dry countries the sun's heat is so intense. the rays beat down mercilessly, and nothing opposes them. lastly, in damp countries we have the larger but still invisible particles of vapour hanging about among the air-atoms. now, these watery particles, although they are very few (only about one twenty-fifth part of the whole atmosphere), do hinder the sun-waves. for they are very greedy of heat, and though the light-waves pass easily through them, they catch the heat-waves and use them to help themselves to expand. and so, when there is invisible vapour in the air, the sunbeams come to us deprived of some of their heat-waves, and we can remain in the sunshine without suffering from the heat. this is how the water-vapour shields us by day, but by night it is still more useful. during the day our earth and the air near it have been storing up the heat which has been poured down on them, and at night, when the sun goes down, all this heat begins to escape again. now, if there were no vapour in the air, this heat would rush back into space so rapidly that the ground would become cold and frozen even on a summer's night, and all but the most hardy plants would die. but the vapour which formed a veil against the sun in the day, now forms a still more powerful veil against the escape of the heat by night. it shuts in the heatwaves, and only allows them to make their way slowly upwards from the earth thus producing for us the soft, balmy nights of summer and preventing all life being destroyed in the winter. perhaps you would scarcely imagine at first that it is this screen of vapour which determines whether or not we shall have dew upon the ground. have you ever thought why dew forms, or what power has been at work scattering the sparkling drops upon the grass? picture to yourself that it has been a very hot summer's day, and the ground and the grass have been well warmed, and that the sun goes down in a clear sky without any clouds. at once the heatwaves which have been stored up in the ground, bound back into the air, and here some are greedily absorbed by the vapour, while others make their way slowly upwards. the grass, especially, gives out these heat-waves very quickly, because the blades, being very thin, are almost all surface. in consequence of this they part with their heat more quickly than they can draw it up from the ground, and become cold. now the air lying just above the grass is full of invisible vapour, and the cold of the blades, as it touches them, chills the waterparticles, and they are no longer able to hold apart, but are drawn together into drops on the surface of the leaves. we can easily make artificial dew for ourselves. i have here a bottle of ice which has been kept outside the window. when i bring it into the warm room a mist forms rapidly outside the bottle. this mist is composed of water-drops, drawn out of the air of the room, because the cold glass chilled the air all round it, so that it gave up its invisible water to form dew-drops. just in this same way the cold blades of grass chill the air lying above them, and steal its vapour. but try the experiment, some night when a heavy dew is expected, of spreading a thin piece of muslin over some part of the grass, supporting it at the four corners with pieces of stick so that it forms an awning. though there may be plenty of dew on the grass all round, yet under this awning you will find scarcely any. the reason of this is that the muslin checks the heat-waves as they rise from the grass, and so the grass-blades are not chilled enough to draw together the water-drops on their surface. if you walk out early in the summer mornings and look at the fine cobwebs flung across the hedges, you will see plenty of drops on the cobwebs themselves sparkling like diamonds; but underneath on the leaves there will be none, for even the delicate cobweb has been strong enough to shut in the heat-waves and keep the leaves warm. again, if you walk off the grass on to the gravel path, you find no dew there. why is this? because the stones of the gravel can draw up heat from the earth below as fast as they give it out, and so they are never cold enough to chill the air which touches them. on a cloudy night also you will often find little or no dew even on the grass. the reason of this is that the clouds give back heat to the earth, and so the grass does not become chilled enough to draw the water-drops together on its surface. but after a hot, dry day, when the plants are thirsty and there is little hope of rain to refresh them, then they are able in the evening to draw the little drops from the air and drink them in before the rising sun comes again to carry them away. but our rain-drop undergoes other changes more strange than these. till now we have been imagining it to travel only where the temperature is moderate enough for it to remain in a liquid state as water. but suppose that when it is drawn up into the air it meets with such a cold blast as to bring it to the freezing point. if it falls into this blast when it is already a drop, then it will freeze into a hailstone, and often on a hot summer's day we may have a severe hailstorm, because the rain-drops have crossed a bitterly cold wind as they were falling, and have been frozen into round drops of ice. but if the water-vapour reaches the freezing air while it is still an invisible gas, and before it has been drawn into a drop, then its history is very different. the ordinary force of cohesion has then no power over the particles to make them into watery globes, but its place is taken by the fairy process of "crystallization," and they are formed into beautiful white flakes, to fall in a snow-shower. i want you to picture this process to yourselves, for if once you can take an interest in the wonderful power of nature to build up crystals, you will be astonished how often you will meet with instances of it, and what pleasure it will add to your life. the particles of nearly all substances, when left free and not hurried, can build themselves into crystal forms. if you melt salt in water and then let all the water evaporate slowly, you will get salt-crystals; -beautiful cubes of transparent salt all built on the same pattern. the same is true of sugar; and if you will look at the spikes of an ordinary stick of sugar-candy, such as i have here, you will see the kind of crystals which sugar forms. you may even pick out such shapes as these from the common crystallized brown sugar in the sugar basin, or see them with a magnifying glass on a lump of white sugar. but it is not only easily melted substances such as sugar and salt which form crystals. the beautiful stalactite grottos are all made of crystals of lime. diamonds are crystals of carbon, made inside the earth. rock-crystals, which you know probably under the name of irish diamonds, are crystallized quartz; and so, with slightly different colourings, are agates, opals, jasper, onyx, cairngorms, and many other precious stones. iron, copper, gold, and sulphur, when melted and cooled slowly build themselves into crystals, each of their own peculiar form, and we see that there is here a wonderful order, such as we should never have dreamt of, if we had not proved it. if you possess a microscope you may watch the growth of crystals yourself by melting some common powdered nitre in a little water till you find that no more will melt in it. then put a few drops of this water on a warm glass slide and place it under the microscope. as the drops dry you will see the long transparent needles of nitre forming on the glass, and notice how regularly these crystals grow, not by taking food inside like living beings, but by adding particle to particle on the outside evenly and regularly. week 12 can we form any idea why the crystals build themselves up so systematically? dr. tyndall says we can, and i hope by the help of these small bar magnets to show you how he explains it. these little pieces of steel, which i hope you can see lying on this white cardboard, have been rubbed along a magnet until they have become magnets themselves, and i can attract and lift up a needle with any one of them. but if i try to lift one bar with another, i can only do it by bringing certain ends together. i have tied a piece of red cotton (c, fig. 21) round one end of each of the magnets, and if i bring two red ends together they will not cling together but roll apart. if, on the contrary, i put a red end against an end where there is not cotton, then the two bars cling together. this is because every magnet has two poles or points which are exactly opposite in character, and to distinguish them one is called the positive pole and the other the negative pole. now when i bring two red ends, that is, two positive poles together, they drive each other away. see! the magnet i am not holding runs away from the other. but if i bring a red end and a black end, that is, a positive and a negative end together, then they are attracted and cling. i will make a triangle (a, fig. 21) in which a black end and a red end always come together, and you see the triangle holds together. but now if i take off the lower bar and turn it (b, fig. 21) so that two red ends and two black ends come together, then this bar actually rolls back from the others down the cardboard. if i were to break these bars into a thousand pieces, each piece would still have two poles, and if they were scattered about near each other in such a way that they were quite free to move, they would arrange themselves always so two different poles came together. now picture to yourselves that all the particles of those substances which form crystals have poles like our magnets, then you can imagine that when the heat which held them apart is withdrawn and the particles come very near together, they will arrange themselves according to the attraction of their poles and so build up regular and beautiful patterns. so, if we could travel up to the clouds where this fairy power of crystallization is at work, we should find the particles of water-vapour in a freezing atmosphere being built up into minute solid crystals of snow. if you go out after a snow-shower and search carefully, you will see that the snow-flakes are not mere lumps of frozen water, but beautiful six-pointed crystal stars, so white and pure that when we want to speak of anything being spotlessly white, you say that it is "white as snow." some of these crystals are simply flat slabs with six sides, others are stars with six rods or spikes springing from the centre, others with six spikes each formed like a delicate fern. no less than a thousand different forms of delicate crystals have been found among snowflakes, but though there is such a great variety, yet they are all built on the six-sided and six-pointed plan, and are all rendered dazzlingly white by the reflection of the light from the faces of the crystals and the tiny air-bubbles built up within them. this, you see, is why, when the snow melts, you have only a little dirty water in your hand; the crystals are gone and there are no more air-bubbles held prisoners to act as looking-glasses to the light. hoar-frost is also made up of tiny water-crystals, and is nothing more than frozen dew hanging on the blades of grass and from the trees. but how about ice? here, you will say, is frozen water, and yet we see no crystals, only a clear transparent mass. here, again, dr. tyndall helps us. he says (and as i have proved it true, so may you for yourselves, if you will) that if you take a magnifying glass, and look down on the surface of ice on a sunny day, you will see a number of dark, six-sided stars, looking like flattened flowers, and in the centre of each a bright spot. these flowers, which are seen when the ice is melting, are our old friends the crystal stars turning into water, and the bright spot in the middle is a bubble of empty space, left because the watery flower does not fill up as much room as the ice of the crystal star did. and this leads us to notice that ice always takes up more room than water, and that this is the reason why our water-pipes burst in severe frosts; for as the water freezes it expands with great force, and the pipe is cracked, and then when the thaw comes on , and the water melts again, it pours through the crack it has made. it is not difficult to understand why ice should take more room; for we know that if we were to try to arrange bricks end to end in star-like shapes, we must leave some spaces between, and could not pack them so closely as if they lay side by side. and so, when this giant force of crystallization constrains the atoms of frozen water to grow into star-like forms, the solid mass must fill more room than the liquid water, and when the star melts, this space reveals itself to us in the bright spot of the centre. we have now seen our drop of water under all its various forms of invisible gas, visible steam, cloud, dew, hoar-frost, snow, and ice, and we have only time shortly to see it on its travels, not merely up and down, as hitherto, but round the world. we must first go to the sea as the distillery, or the place from which water is drawn up invisibly, in its purest state, into the air; and we must go chiefly to the seas of the tropics, because here the sun shines most directly all the year round, sending heat-waves to shake the water-particles asunder. it has been found by experiment that, in order to turn 1 lb. of water into vapour, as much heat must be used as is required to melt 5 lbs. of iron; and if you consider for a moment how difficult iron is to melt, and how we can keep an iron poker in a hot fire and yet it remains solid, this will help you to realize how much heat the sun must pour down in order to carry off such a constant supply of vapour from the tropical seas. now, when all this vapour is drawn up into the air, we know that some of it will form into clouds as it gets chilled high up in the sky, and then it will pour down again in those tremendous floods of rain which occur in the tropics. but the sun and air will not let it all fall down at once, and the winds which are blowing from the equator to the poles carry large masses of it away with them. then, as you know, it will depend on many things how far this vapour is carried. some of it, chilled by cold blasts, or by striking on cold mountain tops, as it travels northwards, will fall in rain in europe and asia, while that which travels southwards may fall in south america, australia, or new zealand, or be carried over the sea to the south pole. wherever it falls on the land as rain, and is not used by plants, it will do one of two things; either it will run down in streams and form brooks and rivers, and so at last find its way back to the sea, or it will sink deep in the earth till it comes upon some hard rock through which it cannot get, and then, being hard pressed by the water coming on behind, it will rise up again through cracks, and come to the surface as a spring. these springs, again, feed rivers, sometimes aboveground, sometimes for long distances under-ground; but one way or another at last the whole drains back into the sea. but if the vapour travels on till it reaches high mountains in cooler lands, such as the alps of switzerland; or is carried to the poles and to such countries as greenland or the antarctic continent, then it will come down as snow, forming immense snowfields. and here a curious change takes place in it. if you make an ordinary snowball and work it firmly together, it becomes very hard, and if you then press it forcibly into a mould you can turn it into transparent ice. and in the same way the snow which falls in greenland and on the high mountains of switzerland becomes very firmly pressed together, as it slides down into the valleys. it is like a crowd of people passing from a broad thoroughfare into a narrow street. as the valley grows narrower and narrower the great mass of snow in front cannot move down quickly, while more and more is piled up by the snowfall behind, and the crowd and crush grow denser and denser. in this way the snow is pressed together till the air that was hidden in its crystals, and which gave it its beautiful whiteness, is all pressed out, and the snow-crystals themselves are squeezed into one solid mass of pure, transparent ice. then we have what is called a "glacier," or river of ice, and this solid river comes creeping down till, in greenland, it reaches the edge of the sea. there it is pushed over the brink of the land, and large pieces snap off, and we have "icebergs." these icebergs made, remember, of the same water which was first draw up from the tropics float on the wide sea, and melting in its warm currents, topple over and over* (a floating iceberg must have about eight times as much ice under the water as it has above, and therefore, when the lower part melts in a warm current, the iceberg loses its balance and tilts over, so as to rearrange itself round the centre of gravity.) till they disappear and mix with the water, to be carried back again to the warm ocean from which they first started. in switzerland the glaciers cannot reach the sea, but they move down into the valleys till they come to a warmer region, and there the end of the glacier melts, and flows away in a stream. the rhone and many other rivers are fed by the glaciers of the alps; and as these rivers flow into the sea, our drop of water again finds its way back to its home. but when it joins itself in this way to its companions, from whom it was parted for a time, does it come back clear and transparent as it left them? from the iceberg it does indeed return pure and clear; for the fairy crystallization will have no impurities, not even salt, in her ice-crystals, and so as they melt they give back nothing but pure water to the sea. yet even icebergs bring down earth and stones frozen into the bottom of the ice, and so they feed the sea with mud. but the drops of water in rivers are by no means as pure as when they rose up into the sky. we shall see in the next lecture how rivers carry down not only sand and mud all along their course, but even solid matter such as salt, lime, iron, and flint, dissolved in the clear water, just as sugar is dissolved, without our being able to see it. the water, too, which has sunk down into the earth, takes up much matter as it travels along. you all know that the water you drink from a spring is very different from rain-water, and you will often find a hard crust at the bottom of kettles and in boilers, which is formed of the carbonate of lime which is driven out of the clear water when it is boiled. the water has become "hard" in consequence of having picked up and dissolved the carbonate of lime on its way through the earth, just in the same way as water would become sweet if you poured it through a sugar-cask. you will also have heard of iron-springs, sulphur-springs, and salt-springs, which come out of the earth, even if you have never tasted any of them, and the water of all these springs finds its way back at last to the sea. and now, can you understand why sea-water should taste salt and bitter? every drop of water which flows from the earth to the sea carries something with it. generally, there is so little of any substance in the water that we cannot taste it, and we call it pure water; but the purest of spring or river-water has always some solid matter dissolved in it, and all this goes to the sea. now, when the sun-waves come to take the water out of the sea again, they will have nothing but the pure water itself; and so all these salts and carbonates and other solid substances are left behind, and we taste them in sea-water. some day, when you are at the seaside, take some extra water and set it on the hob till a great deal has simmered gently away, and the liquid is very thick. then take a drop of this liquid, and examine it under a microscope. as it dries up gradually, you will see a number of crystals forming, some square and these will be crystals of ordinary salt; some oblong these will be crystals of gypsum or alabaster; and others of various shapes. then, when you see how much matter from the land is contained in sea-water, you will no longer wonder that the sea is salt; on the contrary, you will ask, why does it not grow salter every year? the answer to this scarcely belongs to our history of a drop of water, but i must just suggest it to you. in the sea are numbers of soft-bodied animals, like the jelly animals which form the coral, which require hard material for their shells or the solid branches on which they live, and they are greedily watching for these atoms of lime, of flint, or magnesia, and of other substances brought down into the sea. it is with lime and magnesia that the tiny chalk-builders form their beautiful shells, and the coral animals their skeletons, while another class of builders use the flint; and when these creatures die, their remains go to form fresh land at the bottom of the sea; and so, though the earth is being washed away by the rivers and springs it is being built up again, out of the same materials, in the depths of the great ocean. and now we have reached the end of the travels of our drop of water. we have seen it drawn up by the fairy "heat," invisible into the sky; there fairy "cohesion" seized it and formed it into water-drops and the giant, "gravitation," pulled it down again to the earth. or, if it rose to freezing regions, the fairy of "crystallization" built it up into snow-crystals, again to fall to the earth, and either to be melted back into water by heat, or to slide down the valleys by force of gravitation, till it became squeezed into ice. we have detected it, when invisible, forming a veil round our earth, and keeping off the intense heat of the sun's rays by day, or shutting it in by night. we have seen it chilled by the blades of grass, forming sparkling dew-drops or crystals of hoar-frost, glistening in the early morning sun; and we have seen it in the dark underground, being drunk up greedily by the roots of plants. we have started with it from the tropics, and travelled over land and sea, watching it forming rivers, or flowing underground in springs, or moving onwards to the high mountains or the poles, and coming back again in glaciers and icebergs. through all this, while it is being carried hither and thither by invisible power, we find no trace of its becoming worn out, or likely to rest from its labours. ever onwards it goes, up and down, and round and round the world, taking many forms, and performing many wonderful feats. we have seen some of the work that it does, in refreshing the air, feeding the plants, giving us clear, sparkling water to drink, and carrying matter to the sea; but besides this, it does a wonderful work in altering all the face of our earth. this work we shall consider in the next lecture, on "the two great sculptors water and ice." week 13 lecture v. the two great sculptors water and ice. in our last lecture we saw that water can exist in three forms:-1st, as an invisible vapour; 2nd, as liquid water; 3rd, as solid snow and ice. to-day we are going to take the two last of these forms, water and ice, and speak of them as sculptors. to understand why they deserve this name we must first consider what the work of a sculptor is. if you go into a statuary yard you will find there large blocks of granite, marble, and other kinds of stone, hewn roughly into different shapes; but if you pass into the studio, where the sculptor himself is at work you will find beautiful statues, more or less finished; and you will see that out of rough blocks of stone he has been able to cut images which look like living forms. you can even see by their faces whether they are intended to be sad, or thoughtful, or gay, and by their attitude whether they are writhing in pain, or dancing with joy, or resting peacefully. how has all this history been worked out from the shapeless stone? it has been done by the sculptor's chisel. a piece chipped off here, a wrinkle cut there, a smooth surface rounded off in another place, so as to give a gentle curve; all these touches gradually shape the figure and mould it out of the rough stone, first into a rude shape and afterwards, by delicate strokes, into the form of a living being. now, just in the same way as the wrinkles and curves of a statue are cut by the sculptor's chisel, so the hills and valleys, the steep slopes and gentle curves on the face of our earth, giving it all its beauty, and the varied landscapes we love so well, have been cut out by water and ice passing over them. it is true that some of the greater wrinkles of the earth, the lofty mountains, and the high masses of land which rise above the sea , have been caused by earthquakes and shrinking of the earth. we shall not speak of these to-day, but put them aside as belonging to the rough work of the statuary yard. but when once these large masses are put ready for water to work upon, then all the rest of the rugged wrinkles and gentle slopes which make the country so beautiful are due to water and ice, and for this reason i have called them "sculptors." go for a walk in the country, or notice the landscape as you travel on a railway journey. you pass by hills and through valleys, through narrow steep gorges cut in hard rock, or through wild ravines up the sides of which you can hardly scramble. then you come to grassy slopes and to smooth plains across which you can look for miles without seeing a hill; or, when you arrive at the seashore, you clamber into caves and grottos, and along dark narrow passages leading from one bay to another. all these hills, valleys, gorges, ravines, slopes, plains, caves, grottos, and rocky shores have been cut out by the water. day by day and year by year, while everything seems to us to remain the same, this industrious sculptor is chipping away, a few grains here, a corner there, a large mass in another place, till he gives to the country its own peculiar scenery, just as the human sculptor gives expression to his statue. our work to-day will consist in trying to form some idea of the way in which water thus carves out the surface of the earth, and we will begin by seeing how much can be done by our old friends the rain-drops before they become running streams. everyone must have noticed that whenever rain falls on soft ground it makes small round holes in which it collects, and then sinks into the ground, forcing its way between the grains of earth. but you would hardly think that the beautiful pillars in fig. 24 have been made entirely in this way by rain beating upon and soaking into the ground. where these pillars stand there was once a solid mass of clay and stones, into which the rain-drops crept, loosening the earthly particles; and then when the sun dried the earth again cracks were formed, so that the next shower loosened it still more, and carried some of the mud down into the valley below. but here and there large stones were buried in the clay, and where this happened the rain could not penetrate, and the stones became the tops of tall pillars of clay, washed into shape by the rain beating on its sides, but escaping the general destruction of the rest of the mud. in this way the whole valley has been carved out into fine pillars, some still having capping-stones, while others have lost them, and these last will soon be washed away. we have no such valleys of earth-pillars here in england, but you may sometimes see tiny pillars under bridges where the drippings have washed away the earth between the pebbles, and such small examples which you can observe for yourselves are quite as instructive as more important ones. another way in which rain changes the surface of the earth is by sinking down through loose soil from the top of a cliff to a depth of many feet till it comes to solid rock, and then lying spread over a wide apace. here it makes a kind of watery mud, which is a very unsafe foundation for the hill of earth above it, and so after a time the whole mass slips down and makes a fresh piece of land at the foot of the cliff. if you have ever been at the isle of wight you will have seen an undulating strip of ground, called the undercliff, at ventnor and other places, stretching all along the sea below the high cliffs. this land was once at the top of the cliff, and came down by succession of landslips such as we have been describing. a very great landslip of this kind happened in the memory of living people, at lyme regis, in dorsetshire, in the year 1839. you will easily see how in forming earth-pillars and causing landslips rain changes the face of the country, but these are only rare effects of water. it is when the rain collects in brooks and forms rivers that it is most busy in sculpturing the land. look out some day into the road or the garden where the ground slopes a little, and watch what happens during a shower of rain. first the rain-drops run together in every little hollow of the ground, then the water begins to flow along any ruts or channels it can find, lying here and there in pools, but always making its way gradually down the slope. meanwhile from other parts of the ground little rills are coming, and these all meet in some larger ruts where the ground is lowest, making one great stream, which at last empties itself into the gutter or an area, or finds its way down some grating. now just this, which we can watch whenever a heavy shower of rain comes down on the road, happens also all over the world. up in the mountains, where there is always a great deal of rain, little rills gather and fall over the mountain sides, meeting in some stream below. then, as this stream flows on, it is fed by many runnels of water, which come from all parts of the country, trickling along ruts, and flowing in small brooks and rivulets down the gentle slope of the land till they reach the big stream, which at last is important enough to be called a river. sometimes this river comes to a large hollow in the land and there the water gathers and forms a lake; but still at the lower end of this lake out it comes again, forming a new river, and growing and growing by receiving fresh streams until at last it reaches the sea. the river thames, which you all know, and whose course you will find clearly described in mr. huxley's 'physiography,' drains in this way no less than one-seventh of the whole of england. all the rain which falls in berkshire, oxfordshire, middlesex, hertfordshire, surrey, the north of wiltshire and north-west of kent, the south of buckinghamshire and of gloucestershire, finds its way into the thames; making an area of 6160 square miles over which every rivulet and brook trickle down to the one great river, which bears them to the ocean. and so with every other area of land in the world there is some one channel towards which the ground on all sides slopes gently down, and into this channel all the water will run, on its way to the sea. but what has this to do with sculpture or cutting out of valleys? if you will only take a glass of water out of any river, and let it stand for some hours, you will soon answer this question for yourself. for you will find that even from river water which looks quite clear, a thin layer of mud will fall to the bottom of the glass, and if you take the water when the river is swollen and muddy you will get quite a thick deposit. this shows that the brooks, the streams, and the rivers wash away the land as they flow over it and carry it from the mountains down to the valleys, and from the valleys away out into the sea. but besides earthly matter, which we can see, there is much matter dissolved in the water of rivers (as we mentioned in the last lecture), and this we cannot see. if you use water which comes out of a chalk country you will find that after a time the kettle in which you have been in the habit of boiling this water has a hard crust on its bottom and sides, and this crust is made of chalk or carbonate of lime, which the water took out of the rocks when it was passing through them. professor bischoff has calculated that the river rhine carries past bonn every year enough carbonate of lime dissolved in its water to make 332,000 million oyster-shells, and that if all these shells were built into a cube it would measure 560 feet. week 14 imagine to yourselves the whole of st. paul's churchyard filled with oyster-shells, built up in a large square till they reached half as high again as the top of the cathedral, then you will have some idea of the amount of chalk carried invisibly past bonn in the water of the rhine every year. since all this matter, whether brought down as mud or dissolved, comes from one part of the land to be carried elsewhere or out to sea, it is clear that some gaps and hollows must be left in the places from which it is taken. let us see how these gaps are made. have you ever clambered up the mountainside, or even up one of those small ravines in the hillside, which have generally a little stream trickling through them? if so, you must have noticed the number of pebbles, large and small, lying in patches here and there in the stream, and many pieces of broken rock, which are often scattered along the sides of the ravine; and how, as you climb, the path grows steeper, and the rocks become rugged and stick out in strange shapes. the history of this ravine will tell us a great deal about the carving of water. once it was nothing more than a little furrow in the hillside down which the rain found its way in a thin thread-like stream. but by and by, as the stream carried down some of the earth, and the furrow grew deeper and wider, the sides began to crumble when the sun dried up the rain which had soaked in. then in winter, when the sides of the hill were moist with the autumn rains, frost came and turned the water to ice, and so made the cracks still larger, and the swollen steam rushing down, caught the loose pieces of rock and washed them down into its bed. here they were rolled over and over, and grated against each other, and were ground away till they became rounded pebbles, such as lie in the foreground of the picture (fig. 25); while the grit which was rubbed off them was carried farther down by the stream. and so in time this became a little valley, and as the stream cut it deeper and deeper, there was room to clamber along the sides of it, and ferns and mosses began to cover the naked stone, and small trees rooted themselves along the banks, and this beautiful little nook sprang up on the hill-side entirely by the sculpturing of water. shall you not feel a fresh interest in all the little valleys, ravines, and gorges you meet with in the country, if you can picture them being formed in this way year by year? there are many curious differences in them which you can study for yourselves. some will be smooth, broad valleys and here the rocks have been soft and easily worn, and water trickling down the sides of the first valley has cut other channels so as to make smaller valleys running across it. in other places there will be narrow ravines, and here the rocks have been hard, so that they did not wear away gradually, but broke off and fell in blocks, leaving high cliffs on each side. in some places you will come to a beautiful waterfall, where the water has tumbled over a steep cliff, and then eaten its way back, just like a saw cutting through a piece of wood. there are two things in particular to notice in a waterfall like this. first, how the water and spray dash against the bottom of the cliff down which it falls, and grind the small pebbles against the rock. in this way the bottom of the cliff is undermined, and so great pieces tumble down from time to time, and keep the fall upright instead of its being sloped away at the top, and becoming a mere steam. secondly, you may often see curious cup-shaped holes, called "pot-holes," in the rocks on the sides of a waterfall, and these also are concerned in its formation. in these holes you will generally find two or three small pebbles, and you have here a beautiful example of how water uses stones to grind away the face of the earth. these holes are made entirely by the falling water eddying round and round in a small hollow of the rock, and grinding the pebbles which it has brought down, against the bottom and sides of this hollow, just as you grind round a pestle in a mortar. by degrees the hole grows deeper and deeper and though the first pebbles are probably ground down to powder, others fall in, and so in time there is a great hole perforated right through, helping to make the rock break and fall away. in this and other ways the water works its way back in a surprising manner. the isle of wight gives us some good instances of this; alum bay chine and the celebrated blackgang chine have been entirely cut out by waterfalls. but the best know and most remarkable example is the niagara falls, in america. here, the river niagara first wanders through a flat country, and then reaches the great lake erie in a hollow of the plain. after that, it flows gently down for about fifteen miles, and then the slope becomes greater and it rushes on to the falls of niagara. these falls are not nearly so high as many people imagine, being only 165 feet, or about half the height of st. paul's cathedral, but they are 2700 feet or nearly half-a-mile wide, and no less than 670,000 tons of water fall over them every minute, making magnificent clouds of spray. sir charles lyell, when he was at niagara, came to the conclusion that, taking one year with another, these falls eat back the cliff at the rate of about one foot a year, as you can easily imagine they would do, when you think with what force the water must dash against the bottom of the falls. in this way a deep cleft has been cut right back from queenstown for a distance of seven miles, to the place where the falls are now. this helps us a little to understand how very slowly and gradually water cuts its way; for if a foot a year is about the average of the waste of the rock, it will have taken more than thirty-five thousand years for that channel of seven miles to be made. but even this chasm cut by the falls of niagara is nothing compared with the canyons of colarado. canyon is a spanish word for a rocky gorge, and these gorges are indeed so grand, that if we had not seen in other places what water can do, we should never have been able to believe that it could have cut out these gigantic chasms. for more than three hundred miles the river colorado, coming down from the rocky mountains, has eaten its way through a country made of granite and hard beds of limestone and sandstone, and it has cut down straight through these rocks, leaving walls from half-a-mile to a mile high, standing straight up from it. the cliffs of the great canyon, as it is called, stretch up for more than a mile above the river which flows in the gorge below! fancy yourselves for a moment in a boat on this river, as shown in figure 27, and looking up at these gigantic walls of rock towering above you. even half-way up them, a man, if he could get there, would be so small you could not see him without a telescope; while the opening at the top between the two walls would seem so narrow at such an immense distance that the sky above would have the appearance of nothing more than a narrow streak of blue. yet these huge chasms have not been made by any violent breaking apart of the rocks or convulsion of an earthquake. no, they have been gradually, silently, and steadily cut through by the river which now glides quietly in the wider chasms, or rushes rapidly through the narrow gorges at their feet. "no description," says lieutenant ives, one of the first explorers of this river, "can convey the idea of the varied and majestic grandeur of this peerless waterway. wherever the river turns, the entire panorama changes. stately facades, august cathedrals, amphitheatres, rotundas, castellated walls, and rows of time-stained ruins, surmounted by every form of tower, minaret, dome and spire, have been moulded from the cyclopean masses of rock that form the mighty defile." who will say, after this, that water is not the grandest of all sculptors, as it cuts through hundreds of miles of rock, forming such magnificent granite groups, not only unsurpassed but unequalled by any of the works of man? but we must not look upon water only as a cutting instrument, for it does more than merely carve out land in one place, it also carries it away and lays it down elsewhere; and in this it is more like a modeller in clay, who smooths off the material from one part of his figure to put it upon another. running water is not only always carrying away mud, but at the same time laying it down here and there wherever it flows. when a torrent brings down stones and gravel from the mountains, it will depend on the size and weight of the pieces how long they will be in falling through the water. if you take a handful of gravel and throw it into a glass full of water, you will notice that the stones in it will fall to the bottom at once, the grit and coarse sand will take longer in sinking, and lastly, the fine sand will be an hour or two in settling down, so that the water becomes clear. now, suppose that this gravel were sinking in the water of a river. the stones would be buoyed up as long as the river was very full and flowed very quickly, but they would drop through sooner than the coarse sand. the coarse sand in its turn would begin to sink as the river flowed more slowly, and would reach the bottom while the fine sand was still borne on. lastly, the fine sand would sink through very, very slowly, and only settle in comparatively still water. from this it will happen that stones will generally lie near to the bottom of torrents at the foot of the banks from which they fall, while the gravel will be carried on by the stream after it leaves the mountains. this too, however, will be laid down when the river comes into a more level country and runs more slowly. or it may be left together with the finer mud in a lake, as in the lake of geneva, into which the rhone flows laden with mud and comes out at the other end clear and pure. but if no lake lies in the way the finer earth will still travel on, and the river will take up more and more as it flows, till at last it will leave this too on the plains across which it moves sluggishly along, or will deposit it at its mouth when it joins the sea. week 15 you all know the history of the nile; how, when the rains fall very heavily in march and april in the mountains of abyssinia, the river comes rushing down and brings with it a load of mud which it spreads out over the nile valley in egypt. this annual layer of mud is so thin that it takes a thousand years for it to become 2 or 3 feet thick; but besides that which falls in the valley a great deal is taken to the mouth of the river and there forms new land, making what is called the "delta" of the nile. alexandria, rosetta, and damietta, are towns which are all built on land made of nile mud which was carried down ages and ages ago, and which has now become firm and hard like the rest of the country. you will easily remember other deltas mentioned in books, and all these are made of the mud carried down from the land to the sea. the delta of the ganges and brahmapootra in india, is actually as large as the whole of england and wales, (58,311 square miles.) and the river mississippi in america drains such a large tract of country that its delta grows, mr. geikie tells us, at the rate of 86 yards in year. all this new land laid down in egypt, in india, in america, and in other places, is the work of water. even on the thames you may see mud-banks, as at gravesend, which are made of earth brought from the interior of england. but at the mouth of the thames the sea washes up very strongly every tide, and so it carries most of the mud away and prevents a delta growing up there. if you will look about when you are at the seaside, and notice wherever a stream flows down into the sea, you may even see little miniature deltas being formed there, though the sea generally washes them away again in a few hours, unless the place is well sheltered. this, then, is what becomes of the earth carried down by rivers. either on plains, or in lakes, or in the sea, it falls down to form new land. but what becomes of the dissolved chalk and other substances? we have seen that a great deal of it is used by river and sea animals to build their shells and skeletons, and some of it is left on the surface of the ground by springs when the water evaporates. it is this carbonate of lime which forms a hard crust over anything upon which it may happen to be deposited, and then these things are called "petrified." but it is in the caves and hollows of the earth that this dissolved matter is built up into the most beautiful forms. if you have ever been to buxton in derbyshire, you will probably have visited a cavern called poole's cavern, not far from there, which when you enter it looks as if it were built up entirely of rods of beautiful transparent white glass, hanging from the ceiling, from the walls, or rising up from the floor. in this cavern, and many others like it,*(see the picture at the head of the lecture.) water comes dripping through the roof, and as it falls carbonate of lime forms itself into a thin, white film on the roof, often making a complete circle, and then, as the water drips from it day by day, it goes on growing and growing till it forms a long needle-shaped or tube-shaped rod, hanging like an icicle. these rods are called stalactites, and they are so beautiful, as their minute crystals glisten when a light is taken into the cavern, that one of them near tenby is called the "fairy chamber." meanwhile, the water which drips on to the floor also leaves some carbonate of lime where it falls, and this forms a pillar, growing up towards the roof, and often the hanging stalactites and the rising pillars (called stalagmites) meet in the middle and form one column. and thus we see that underground, as well as aboveground, water moulds beautiful forms in the crust of the earth. at adelsberg, near trieste, there is a magnificent stalactite grotto made of a number of chambers one following another, with a river flowing through them; and the famous mammoth cave of kentucky, more than ten miles long, is another example of these wonderful limestone caverns. but we have not yet spoken of the sea, and this surely is not idle in altering the shape of the land. even the waves themselves in a storm wash against the cliffs and bring down stones and pieces of rock on to the shore below. and they help to make cracks and holes in the cliffs, for as they dash with force against them they compress the air which lies in the joints of the stone and cause it to force the rock apart, and so larger cracks are made and the cliff is ready to crumble. it is, however, the stones and sand and pieces of rock lying at the foot of the cliff which are most active in wearing it away. have you never watched the waves breaking upon a beach in a heavy storm? how they catch up the stones and hurl them down again, grinding them against each other! at high tide in such a storm these stones are thrown against the foot of the cliff, and each blow does something towards knocking away part of the rock, till at last, after many storms, the cliff is undermined and large pieces fall down. these pieces are in their turn ground down to pebbles which serve to batter against the remaining rock. professor geikie tells us that the waves beat in a storm against the bell rock lighthouse with as much force as if you dashed a weight of 3 tons against every square inch of the rock, and stevenson found stones of 2 tons' weight which had been thrown during storms right over the ledge of the lighthouse. think what force there must be in waves which can lift up such a rock and throw it, and such force as this beats upon our sea-coasts and eats away the land. fig. 28 is a sketch on the shores of arbroath which i made some years ago. you will not find it difficult to picture to yourselves how the sea has eaten away these cliffs till some of the strongest pieces which have resisted the waves stand out by themselves in the sea. that cave in the left-hand corner ends in a narrow dark passage from which you come out on the other side of the rocks into another bay. such caves as these are made chiefly by the force of the waves and the air, bringing down pieces of rock from under the cliff and so making a cavity, and then as the waves roll these pieces over and over and grind them against the sides, the hole is made larger. there are many places on the english coast where large pieces of the road are destroyed by the crumbling down of cliffs when they have been undermined by caverns such as these. thus, you see, the whole of the beautiful scenery of the sea the shores, the steep cliffs, the quiet bays, the creeks and caverns are all the work of the "sculptor" water; and he works best where the rocks are hardest, for there they offer him a good stout wall to batter, whereas in places where the ground is soft it washes down into a gradual gentle slope, and so the waves come flowing smoothly in and have no power to eat away the shore. and now, what has ice got to do with the sculpturing of the land? first, we must remember how much the frost does in breaking up the ground. the farmers know this, and always plough after a frost, because the moisture, freezing in the ground, has broken up the clods, and done half their work for them. but this is not the chief work of ice. you will remember how we learnt in our last lecture that snow, when it falls on the mountains, gradually slides down into the valleys, and is pressed together by the gathering snow behind until it becomes moulded into a solid river of ice (see fig. 29, frontispiece). in greenland and in norway there are enormous ice-rivers or glaciers, and even in switzerland some of them are very large. the aletsch glacier, in the alps, is fifteen miles long, and some are even longer than this. they move very slowly on an average about 20 to 27 inches in the centre, and 13 to 19 inches at the sides every twenty-four hours, in the summer and autumn. how they move, we cannot stop to discuss now; but if you will take a slab of thin ice and rest it upon its two ends only, you can prove to yourself that ice does bend, for in a few hours you will find that its own weight has drawn it down in the centre, so as to form a curve. this will help you to picture to yourselves how glaciers can adapt themselves to the windings of the valley, creeping slowly onwards until they come down to a point where the air is warm enough to melt them, and then the ice flows away in a stream of water. it is very curious to see the number of little rills running down the great masses of ice at the glacier's mouth, bringing down with them gravel, and every now and then a large stone, which falls splashing into the stream below. if you look at the glacier in the frontispiece, you will see that these stones come from those long lines of stones and boulders stretching along the sides and centre of the glacier. it is easy to understand where the stones at the side come from; for we have seen that damp and frost cause pieces to break off the surface of the rocks, and it is natural that these pieces should roll down the steep sides of the mountains on to the glacier. but the middle row requires some explanation. look to the back of the picture, and you will see that this line of stones is made of two side rows, which come from the valleys above. two glaciers, you see, have there joined into one, and so made a heap of stones all along their line of junction. these stones are being continually, though slowly, conveyed by the glacier, from all the mountains along its sides, down to the place where it melts. here it lets them fall, and they are gradually piled up till they form great walls of stone, which are called moraines. some of the moraines left by the larger glaciers of olden time, in the country near turin, form high hills, rising up even to 1500 feet. therefore, if ice did no more than carry these stone blocks, it would alter the face of the country; but it does much more than this. as the glacier moves along, it often cracks for a considerable way across its surface, and this crack widens and widens, until at last it becomes a great gaping chasm, or crevasse as it is called, so that you can look down it right to the bottom of the glacier. into these crevasses large blocks of rock fall, and when the chasm is closed again as the ice presses on, these masses are frozen firmly into the bottom of the glacier, much in the same way as a steel cutter is fixed in the bottom of a plane. and they do just the same kind of work; for as the glacier slides down the valley, they scratch and grind the rocks underneath them, rubbing themselves away, it is true, but also scraping away the ground over which they move. in this way the glacier becomes a cutting instrument, and carves out the valleys deeper and deeper as it passes through them. you may always know where a glacier has been, even if no trace of ice remains; for you will see rocks with scratches along them which have been cut by these stones; and even where the rocks have not been ground away, you will find them rounded like those in the left-hand of the frontispiece, showing that the glacierplane has been over them. these rounded rocks are called "roches moutonnees," because at the distance they look like sheep lying down. you have only to look at the stream flowing from the mouth of a glacier to see what a quantity of soil it has ground off from the bottom of the valley; for the water is thick, and coloured a deep yellow by the mud it carries. this mud soon reaches the rivers into which the streams run; and such rivers as the rhone and the rhine are thick with matter brought down from the alps. the rhone leaves this mud in the lake of geneva, flowing out at the other end quite clear and pure. a mile and a half of land has been formed at the head of the lake since the time of the romans by the mud thus brought down from the mountains. thus we see that ice, like water, is always busy carving out the surface of the earth, and sending down material to make new land elsewhere. we know that in past ages the glaciers were much larger than they are in our time; for we find traces of them over large parts of switzerland where glaciers do not now exist, and huge blocks which could only have been carried by ice, and which are called "erratic blocks," some of them as big as cottages, have been left scattered over all the northern part of europe. these blocks were a great puzzle to scientific men till, in 1840, professor agassiz showed that they must have been brought by ice all the way from norway and russia. in those ancient days, there were even glaciers in england; for in cumberland and in wales you may see their work, in scratched and rounded rocks, and the moraines they have left. llanberis pass, so famous for its beauty, is covered with ice-scratches, and blocks are scattered all over the sides of the valley. there is one block high up on the right-hand slope of the valley, as you enter from the beddgelert side, which is exactly poised upon another block, so that it rocks to and fro. it must have been left thus balanced when the ice melted round it. you may easily see that these blocks were carried by ice, and not by water, because their edges are sharp, whereas if they had been rolled in water, they would have been smoothed down. we cannot here go into the history of that great glacial period long ago, when large fields of ice covered all the north of england; but when you read it for yourselves and understand the changes on the earth's surface which we can see being made by ice now, then such grand scenery as the rugged valleys of wales, with large angular stone blocks scattered over them, will tell you a wonderful story of the ice of bygone times. and now we have touched lightly on the chief ways in which water and ice carve out the surface of the earth. we have seen that rain, rivers, springs, the waves of the sea, frost, and glaciers all do their part in chiselling out ravines and valleys, and in producing rugged peaks or undulating plains here cutting through rocks so as to form precipitous cliffs, there laying down new land to add to the flat country in one place grinding stones to powder, in others piling them up in gigantic ridges. we cannot go a step into the country without seeing the work of water around us; every little gully and ravine tells us that the sculpture is going on; every stream, with its burden of visible or invisible matter, reminds us that some earth is being taken away and carried to a new spot. in our little lives we see indeed but the very small changes, but by these we learn how greater ones have been brought about, and how we owe the outline of all our beautiful scenery, with its hills and valleys, its mountains and plains, its cliffs and caverns, its quiet nooks and its grand rugged precipices, to the work of the "two great sculptors, water and ice." week 16 lecture vi the voices of nature and how we hear them we have reached to-day the middle point of our course, and here we will make a new start. all the wonderful histories which we have been studying in the last five lectures have had little or nothing to do with living creatures. the sunbeams would strike on our earth, the air would move restlessly to and fro, the water-drops would rise and fall, the valleys and ravines would still be cut out by rivers , if there were no such thing as life upon the earth. but without living things there could be none of the beauty which these changes bring about. without plants, the sunbeams, the air and the water would be quite unable to clothe the bare rocks, and without animals and man they could not produce light, or sound, or feeling of any kind. in the next five lectures, however, we are going to learn something of the use living creatures make of the earth; and today we will begin by studying one of the ways in which we are affected by the changes of nature, and hear her voice. we are all so accustomed to trust to our sight to guide us in most of our actions, and to think of things as we see them, that we often forget how very much we owe to sound. and yet nature speaks to us so much by her gentle, her touching, or her awful sounds, that the life of a deaf person is even more hard to bear than that of a blind one. have you ever amused yourself with trying how many different sounds you can distinguish if you listen at an open window in a busy street? you will probably be able to recognize easily the jolting of the heavy wagon or dray, the rumble of the omnibus, the smooth roll of the private carriage and the rattle of the light butcher's cart; and even while you are listening for these, the crack of the carter's whip, the cry of the costermonger at his stall, and the voices of the passers-by will strike upon you ear. then if you give still more close attention you will hear the doors open and shut along the street, the footsteps of the passengers, the scraping of the shovel of the mud-carts; nay, if he happen to stand near, you may even hear the jingling of the shoeblack's pence as he plays pitch and toss upon the pavement. if you think for a moment, does it not seem wonderful that you should hear all these sounds so that you can recognize each one distinctly while all the rest are going on around you? but suppose you go into the quiet country. surely there will be silence there. try some day and prove it for yourself, lie down on the grass in a sheltered nook and listen attentively. if there be ever so little wind stirring you will hear it rustling gently through the trees; or even if there is not this, it will be strange if you do not hear some wandering gnat buzzing, or some busy bee humming as it moves from flower to flower. then a grasshopper will set up a chirp within a few yards of you, or, if all living creatures are silent, a brook not far off may be flowing along with a rippling musical sound. these and a hundred other noises you will hear in the most quiet country spot; the lowing of the cattle, the song of the birds, the squeak of the field-mouse, the croak of the frog, mingling with the sound of the woodman's axe in the distance, or the dash of some river torrent. and beside these quiet sounds, there are still other occasional voices of nature which speak to us from time to time. the howling of the tempestuous wind, the roar of the sea-waves in a storm, the crash of thunder, and the mighty noise of the falling avalanche; such sounds as these tell us how great and terrible nature can be. now, has it ever occurred to you to think what sounds is, and how it is that we hear all these things? strange as it may seem, if there were no creature that could hear upon the earth, there would be no such thing as sound, though all these movements in nature were going on just as they are now. try and grasp this thoroughly, for it is difficult at first to make people believe it. suppose you were stone-deaf, there would be no such thing as sound to you. a heavy hammer falling on an anvil would indeed shake the air violently, but since this air when it reached your ear would find a useless instrument, it could not play upon it. and it is this play on the drum of your ear and the nerves within it speaking to your brain which make sound. therefore, if all creatures on or around the earth were without ears or nerves of hearing, there would be no instrument on which to play, and consequently there would be no such thing as sound. this proves that two things are needed in order that we may hear. first, the outside movement which plays on our hearing instrument; and, secondly, the hearing instrument itself. first, then, let us try to understand what happens outside our ears. take a poker and tie a piece of string to it, and holding the ends of the string to your ears, strike the poker against the fender. you will hear a very loud sound, for the blow will set all the particles of the poker quivering, and this movement will pass right along the string to the drum of your ear and play upon it. now take the string away from you ears, and hold it with your teeth. stop your ears tight, and strike the poker once more against the fender. you will hear the sound quite as loudly and clearly as you did before, but this time the drum of your ear has not been agitated. how, then, has the sound been produced? in this case, the quivering movement has passed through your teeth into the bones of your hear, and from them into the nerves, and so produced sound in your brain. and now, as a final experiment, fasten the string to the mantelpiece, and hit it again against the fender. how much feebler the sound is this time, and how much sooner it stops! yet still it reaches you, for the movement has come this time across the air to the drums of your ear. here we are back again in the land of invisible workers! we have all been listening and hearing ever since we were babies, but have we ever made any picture to ourselves of how sound comes to us right across a room or a field, when we stand at one end and the person who calls is at the other? since we have studied the "aerial ocean," we know that the air filling the space between us, though invisible, is something very real, and now all we have to do is to understand exactly how the movement crosses this air. this we shall do most readily by means of an experiment made by dr. tyndall in his lectures on sound. i have here a number of boxwood balls resting in a wooden tray which has a bell hung at the end of it. i am going to take the end ball and roll it sharply against the rest, and then i want you to notice carefully what happens. see! the ball at the other end has flow off and hit the bell, so that you hear it ring. yet the other balls remain where they were before. why is this? it is because each of the balls, as it was knocked forwards, had one in front of it to stop it and make it bound back again, but the last one was free to move on. when i threw this ball from my hand against the others, the one in front of it moved, and hitting the third ball, bounded back again; the third did the same to the fourth, the fourth to the fifth, and so on to the end of the line. each ball thus came back to its place, but it passed the shock on to the last ball, and the ball to the bell. if i now put the balls close up to the bell, and repeat the experiment, you still hear the sound, for the last ball shakes the bell as if it were a ball in front of it. now imagine these balls to be atoms of air, and the bell your ear. if i clap my hands and so hit the air in front of them, each air-atom hits the next just as the balls did, and though it comes back to its place, it passes the shock on along the whole line to the atom touching the drum of your ear, and so you receive a blow. but a curious thing happens in the air which you cannot notice in the balls. you must remember that air is elastic, just as if there were springs between the atoms as in the diagram, fig. 31, and so when any shock knocks the atoms forward, several of them can be crowded together before they push on those in front. then, as soon as they have passed the shock on, they rebound and begin to separate again, and so swing to and fro till they come to rest. meanwhile the second set will go through just the same movements, and will spring apart as soon as they have passed the shock on to a third set, and so you will have one set of crowded atoms and one set of separated atoms alternately all along the line, and the same set will never be crowded two instants together. you may see an excellent example of this in a luggage train in a railway station, when the trucks are left to bump each other till they stop. you will see three or four trucks knock together, then they will pass the shock on to the four in front, while they themselves bound back and separate as far as their chains will let them: the next four trucks will do the same, and so a kind of wave of crowded trucks passes on to the end of the train, and they bump to and fro till the whole comes to a standstill. try to imagine a movement like this going on in the line of airatoms, the drum of your ear being at the end. those which are crowded together at that end will hit on the drum of your ear and drive the membrane which covers it inwards; then instantly the wave will change, these atoms will bound back, and the membrane will recover itself again, but only to receive a second blow as the atoms are driven forwards again, and so the membrane will be driven in and out till the air has settled down. this you see is quite different to the waves of light which moves in crests and hollows. indeed, it is not what we usually understand by a wave at all, but a set of crowdings and partings of atoms of air which follow each other rapidly across the air. a crowding of atoms is called a condensation, and a parting is called a rarefaction, and when we speak of the length of a wave of sound, we mean the distance between two condensations, or between two rarefactions. although each atom of air moves a very little way forwards and then back, yet, as a long row of atoms may be crowded together before they begin to part, a wave is often very long. when a man talks in an ordinary bass voice, he makes sound-waves from 8 to 12 feet long; a woman's voice makes shorter waves, from 2 to 4 feet long, and consequently the tone is higher, as we shall presently explain. and now i hope that some one is anxious to ask why, when i clap my hands, anyone behind me or at the side, can hear it as well or nearly as well as you who are in front. this is because i give a shock to the air all round my hands, and waves go out on all sides, making as it were gloves of crowdings and partings widening and widening away from the clap as circles widen on a pond. thus the waves travel behind me, above me, and on all sides, until they hit the walls, the ceiling, and the floor of the room, and wherever you happen to be, they hit upon your ear. week 17 if you can picture to yourself these waves spreading out in all directions, you will easily see why sound grows fainter at the distance. just close round my hands when i clap them, there is a small quantity of air, and so the shock i give it is very violent, but as the sound-waves spread on all sides they have more and more air to move, and so the air-atoms are shaken less violently and strike with less force on your ear. if we can prevent the sound-wave from spreading, then the sound is not weakened. the frenchman biot found that a low whisper could be heard distinctly for a distance of half a mile through a tube, because the waves could not spread beyond the small column of air. but unless you speak into a small space of some kind, you cannot prevent the waves going out from you in all directions. try and imagine that you see these waves spreading all round me now and hitting on your ears as they pass, then on the ears of those behind you, and on and on in widening globes till they reach the wall. what will happen when they get there? if the wall were thin, as a wooden partition is, they would shake it, and it again would shake the air on the other side, and so anyone in the next room would have the sound of my voice brought to their ear. but something more will happen. in any case the sound-waves hitting against the wall will bound back from it just as a ball bounds back when thrown against anything, and so another set of sound-waves reflected from the wall will come back across the room. if these waves come to your ear so quickly that they mix with direct waves, they help to make the sound louder in this room than you would in the open air, for the "ha" from my mouth and a second "ha" from the wall come to your ear so instantaneously that they make one sound. this is why you can often hear better at the far end of a church when you stand against a screen or a wall, then when you are half-way up the building nearer to the speaker, because near the wall the reflected waves strike strongly on your ear and make the sound louder. sometimes, when the sound comes from a great explosion, these reflected waves are so strong that they are able to break glass. in the explosion of gunpowder in st. john's wood, many houses in the back streets had their windows broken; for the sound-waves bounded off at angles from the walls and struck back upon them. now suppose the wall were so far behind you that the reflected sound-waves only hit upon your ear after those coming straight from me had died away; then you would hear the sound twice, "ha" from me and "ha" from the wall, and here you have an echo, "ha, ha." in order for this to happen in ordinary air, you must be standing at least 56 feet away from the point from which the waves are reflected, for then the second blow will come one-tenth of a second after the first one, and that is long enough for you to feel them separately.* miss c. a. martineau tells a story of a dog which was terribly frightened by an echo. thinking another dog was barking, he ran forward to meet him, and was very much astonished, when, as he came nearer the wall, the echo ceased. i myself once knew a case of this kind, and my dog, when he could find no enemy, ran back barking, till he was a certain distance off, and then the echo of course began again. he grew so furious at last that we had great difficulty in preventing him from flying at a strange man who happened to be passing at the time. (*sound travels 1120 feet in a second, in air of ordinary temperature, and therefore 112 feet in the tenth of a second. therefore the journey of 56 feet beyond you to reach the wall and 56 feet to return, will occupy the sound-wave one-tenth of a second and separate the two sounds.) sometimes, in the mountains, walls of rock rise at some distance one behind another, and then each one will send back its echo a little later than the rock before it, so that the "ha" which you give will come back as a peal of laughter. there is an echo in woodstock park which repeats the word twenty times. again sometimes, as in the alps, the sound-waves coming back rebound from mountain to mountain and are driven backwards and forwards, becoming fainter and fainter till they die away; these echoes are very beautiful. if you are now able to picture to yourselves one set of waves going to the wall, and another set returning and crossing them, you will be ready to understand something of that very difficult question, how is it that we can hear many different sounds at one time and tell them apart? have you ever watched the sea when its surface is much ruffled, and noticed how, besides the big waves of the tide, there are numberless smaller ripples made by the wind blowing the surface of the water, or the oars of a boat dipping in it, or even raindrops falling? if you have done this you will have seen that all these waves and ripples cross each other, and you can follow any one ripple with you eye as it goes on its way undisturbed by the rest. or you may make beautiful crossing and recrossing ripples on a pond by throwing in two stones at a little distance from each other, and here too you can follow any one wave on to the edge of the pond. now just in this way the waves of sound, in their manner of moving, cross and recross each other. you will remember too, that different sounds make waves of different lengths, just as the tide makes a long wave and the rain-drops tiny ones. therefore each sound falls with its own peculiar wave upon your ear, and you can listen to that particular wave just as you look at one particular ripple, and then the sound becomes clear to you. all this is what is going on outside your ear, but what is happening in your ear itself? how do these blows of the air speak to your brain? by means of the following diagram, fig. 33, we will try to understand roughly our beautiful hearing instrument, the ear. first, i want you to notice how beautifully the outside shell, or concha as it is called, is curbed round so that any movement of the air coming to it from the front is caught in it and reflected into the hole of the ear. put your finger round your ear and feel how the gristly part is curved towards the front of your head. this concha makes a curve much like the curve a deaf man makes with his hand behind his ear to catch the sound. animals often have to raise their ears to catch the sound well, but ours stand always ready. when the air-waves have passed in at the hole of your ear, they move all the air in the passage, which is called the auditory, or hearing, canal. this canal is lined with little hairs to keep out insects and dust, and the wax which collects in it serves the same purpose. but is too much wax collects, it prevents the air from playing well upon the drum, and therefore makes you deaf. across the end of this canal, a membrane or skin called the tympanum is stretched, like the parchment over the head of a drum, and it is this membrane which moves to and fro as the air-waves strike on it. a violent box on the ear will sometimes break this delicate membrane, or injure it, and therefore it is very wrong to hit a person violently on the ear. on the other side of this membrane, inside the ear, there is air, which fills the whole of the inner chamber and the tube, which runs down into the throat behind the nose, and is called the eustachian tube after the man who discovered it. this tube is closed at the end by a valve which opens and shuts. if you breathe out strongly, and then shut your mouth and swallow, you will hear a little "click" in your ear. this is because in swallowing you draw the air out of the eustachian tube and so draw in the membrane, which clicks as it goes back again. but unless you do this the tube and the whole chamber cavity behind the membrane remains full of air. now, as this membrane is driven to and fro by the sound-waves, it naturally shakes the air in the cavity behind it, and it also sets moving three most curious little bones. the first of the bones is fastened to the middle of the drumhead so that it moves to and fro every time this membrane quivers. the head of this bone fits into a hole in the next bone, the anvil, and is fastened to it by muscles, so as to drag it along with it; but, the muscles being elastic, it can draw back a little from the anvil, and so give it a blow each time it comes back. this anvil is in its turn very firmly fixed to the little bone, shaped like a stirrup, which you see at the end of the chain. this stirrup rests upon a curious body which looks in the diagram like a snail-shell with tubes coming out of it. this body, which is called the labyrinth, is made of bone, but it has two little windows in it, one covered only by a membrane, while the other has the head of the stirrup resting upon it. now, with a little attention you will understand that when the air in the canal shakes the drumhead to and fro, this membrane must drag with it the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. each time the drum goes in, the hammer will hit the anvil, and drive the stirrup against the little window; every time it goes out it will draw the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup out again, ready for another blow. thus the stirrup is always playing upon this little window. meanwhile, inside the bony labyrinth there is a fluid like water, and along the little passages are very fine hairs, which wave to and fro like reeds; and whenever the stirrup hits at the little window, the fluid moves these hairs to and fro, and they irritate the ends of a nerve, and this nerve carries the message to your brain. there are also some curious little stones called otoliths, lying in some parts of this fluid, and they, by their rolling to and fro, probably keep up the motion and prolong the sound. you must not imagine we have explained here the many intricacies which occur in the ear; i can only hope to give you a rough idea of it, so that you may picture to yourselves the air-waves moving backwards and forward in the canal of your ear, then the tympanum vibrating to and fro, the hammer hitting the anvil, the stirrup knocking at the little window, the fluid waving the fine hairs and rolling the tiny stones, the ends of the nerve quivering, and then (how we know not) the brain hearing the message. is not this wonderful, going on as it does at every sound you hear? and yet his is not all, for inside that curled part of the labyrinth, which looks like a snail-shell and is called the cochlea, there is a most wonderful apparatus of more than three thousand fine stretched filaments or threads, and these act like the strings of a harp, and make you hear different tones. if you go near to a harp or a piano, and sing any particular note very loudly, you will hear this note sounding in the instrument, because you will set just that particular string quivering, which gives the note you sang. the air-waves set going by your voice touch that string, because it can quiver in time with them, while none of the other strings can do so. now, just in the same way the tiny instrument of three thousand strings in your ear, which is called corti's organ, vibrates to the air-waves, one thread to one set of waves, and another to another, and according to the fibre that quivers, will be the sound you hear. here then at last, we see how nature speaks to us. all the movements going on outside, however violent and varied they may be, cannot of themselves make sound. but here, in the little space behind the drum of our ear, the air-waves are sorted and sent on to our brain, where they speak to us as sound. week 18 but why then do we not hear all sounds as music? why are some mere noise, and others clear musical notes? this depends entirely upon whether the sound-waves come quickly and regularly, or by an irregular succession of shocks. for example, when a load of stones is being shot out of a cart, you hear only a long, continuous noise, because the stones fall irregularly, some quicker, some slower, here a number together, and there two or three stragglers by themselves; each of these different shocks comes to your ear and makes a confused, noisy sound. but if you run a stick very quickly along a paling, you will hear a sound very like a musical not. this is because the rods of the paling are all at equal distances one from another, and so the shocks fall quickly one after another at regular intervals upon your ear. any quick and regular succession of sounds makes a note, even though it may be an ugly one. the squeak of a slate pencil along a slate, and the shriek of a railway whistle are not pleasant, but they are real notes which you could copy on a violin. i have here a simple apparatus which i have had made to show you that rapid and regular shocks produce a natural musical note. this wheel (fig. 34) is milled at the edge like a shilling, and when i turn it rapidly so that it strikes against the edge of the card fixed behind it, the notches strike in rapid succession, and produce a musical sound. we can also prove by this experiment that the quicker the blows are, the higher the note will be. i pull the string gently at first, and then quicker and quicker, and you will notice that the note grows sharper and sharper, till the movement begins to slacken, when the note goes down again. this is because the more rapidly the air is hit, the shorter are the waves it makes, and short waves give a high note. let us examine this with two tuning-forks. i strike one, and it sounds d, the third space in the treble; i strike the other, and it sounds g, the first leger line, five notes above the c. i have drawn on this diagram (fig. 35), an imaginary picture of these two sets of waves. you see that the g fork makes three waves, while the c fork makes only two. why is this? because the prong of the g fork moves three times backwards and forwards while the prong of the c fork only moves twice; therefore the g fork does not crowd so many atoms together before it draws back, and the waves are shorter. these two notes, c and g, are a fifth of an octave apart; if we had two forks, of which one went twice as fast as the other, making four waves while the other made two, then that note would be an octave higher. so we see that all the sounds we hear, the warning noises which keep us from harm, the beautiful musical notes with all the tunes and harmonies that delight us, even the power of hearing the voices of those we love, and learning from one another that which each can tell, all these depend upon the invisible waves of air, even as the pleasures of light depend on the waves of ether. it is by these sound-waves that nature speaks to us, and in all her movements there is a reason why her boice is sharp or tender, loud or gentle, awful or loving. take for instance the brook we spoke of at the beginning of the lecture. why does it sing so sweetly, while the wide deep river makes no noise? because the little brook eddies and purls round the stones, hitting them as it passes; sometimes the water falls down a large stone, and strikes against the water below; or sometimes it grates the little pebbles together as they lie in its bed. each of these blows makes a small globe of sound-waves, which spread and spread till they fall on your ear, and because they fall quickly and regularly, they make a low, musical note. we might almost fancy that the brook wished to show how joyfully it flows along, recalling shelley's beautiful lines: "sometimes it fell among the moss with hollow harmony, dark and profound; now on the polished stones it danced; like childhood laughing as it went." the broad deep river, on the contrary, makes none of these cascades and commotions. the only places against which it rubs are the banks and the bottom; and here you can sometimes hear it grating the particles of sand against each other if you listen very carefully. but there is another reason why falling water makes a sound, and often even a loud roaring noise in the cataract and in the breaking waves of the sea. you do not only hear the water dashing against the rocky ledges or on the beach, you also hear the bursting of innumerable little bladders of air which are contained in the water. as each of these bladders is dashed on the ground, it explodes and sends sound-waves to your ear. listen to the sea some day when the waves are high and stormy, and you cannot fail to be struck by the irregular bursts of sound. the waves, however, do not only roar as they dash on the ground; have you never noticed how they seem to scream as they draw back down the beach? tennyson calls it, "the scream of the madden'd beach dragged down by the wave;" and it is caused by the stones grating against each other as the waves drag them down. dr. tyndall tells us that it is possible to know the size of the stones by the kind of noise they make. if they are large, it is a confused noise, when smaller, a kind of scream; while a gravelly beach will produce a mere hiss. who could be dull by the side of a brook, a waterfall, or the sea, while he can listen for sounds like these, and picture to himself how they are being made? you may discover a number of other causes of sound made by water, if you once pay attention to them. nor is it only water that sings to us. listen to the wind, how sweetly it sighs among the leaves. there we hear it, because it rubs the leaves together, and they produce the sound-waves. but walk against the wind some day and you can hear it whistling in your own ear, striking against the curved cup, and then setting up a succession of waves in the hearing canal of the ear itself. why should it sound in one particular tone when all kinds of sound-waves must be surging about in the disturbed air? this glass jar will answer our question roughly. if i strike my tuning-fork and hold it over the jar, you cannot hear it, because the sound is feeble, but if i fill the jar gently with water, when the water rises to a certain point you will hear a loud clear note, because the waves of air in the jar are exactly the right length to answer to the note of the fork. if i now blow across the mouth of the jar you hear the same note, showing that a cavity of a particular length will only sound to the waves which fit it. do you see now the reason why pan-pipes give different sounds, or even the hole at the end of a common key when you blow across it? here is a subject you will find very interesting if you will read about it, for i can only just suggest it to you here. but now you will see that the canal of your ear also answers only to certain waves, and so the wind sings in your ear with a real if not a musical note. again, on a windy night have you not heard the wind sounding a wild, sad note down a valley? why do you think it sounds so much louder and more musical here than when it is blowing across the plain? because air in the valley will only answer to a certain set of waves, and, like the pan-pipe, gives a particular note as the wind blows across it, and these waves go up and down the valley in regular pulses, making a wild howl. you may hear the same in the chimney, or in the keyhole; all these are waves set up in the hole across which the wind blows. even the music in the shell which you hold to your ear is made by the air in the shell pulsating to and fro. and how do you think it is set going? by the throbbing of the veins in your own ear, which causes the air in the shell to vibrate. another grand voice of nature is the thunder. people often have a vague idea that thunder is produced by the clouds knocking together, which is very absurd, if you remember that clouds are but water-dust. the most probable explanation of thunder is much more beautiful than this. you will remember from lecture iii that heat forces the air-atoms apart. now, when a flash of lightning crosses the sky it suddenly expands the air all round it as it passes, so that globe after globe of sound-waves is formed at every point across which the lightning travels. now light, you remember, travels so wonderfully rapidly (192,000 miles in a second) that a flash of lightning is seen by us and is over in a second, even when it is two or three miles long. but sound comes slowly, taking five seconds to travel half a mile, and so all the sound-waves at each point of the two or three miles fall on our ear one after the other, and make the rolling thunder. sometimes the roll is made even longer by the echo, as the sound-waves are reflected to and fro by the clouds on their road; and in the mountains we know how the peals echo and re-echo till they die away. we might fill up far more than an hour in speaking of those voices which come to us as nature is at work. think of the patter of the rain, how each drop as it hits the pavement sends circles of sound-waves out on all sides; or the loud report which falls on the ear of the alpine traveller as the glacier cracks on its way down the valley; or the mighty boom of the avalanche as the snow slides in huge masses off the side of the lofty mountain. each and all of these create their sound-waves, large or small, loud or feeble, which make their way to your ear, and become converted into sound. we have, however, only time now just to glance at life-sounds, of which there are so many around us. do you know why we hear a buzzing, as the gnat, the bee, or the cockchafer fly past? not by the beating of their wings against the air, as many people imagine, and as is really the case with humming birds, but by the scraping of the under-part of their hard wings against the edges of their hind legs, which are toothed like a saw. the more rapidly their wings move the stronger the grating sound becomes, and you will now see why in hot, thirsty weather the buzzing of the gnat is so loud, for the more thirsty and the more eager he becomes, the wilder his movements will be. some insects, like the drone-fly (eristalis tenax), force the air through the tiny air-passages in their sides, and as these passages are closed by little plates, the plates vibrate to and fro and make sound-waves. again, what are those curious sounds you may hear sometimes if you rest your head on a trunk in the forest? they are made by the timber-boring beetles, which saw the wood with their jaws and make a noise in the world, even though they have no voice. all these life-sounds are made by creatures which do not sing or speak; but the sweetest sounds of all in the woods are the voices of the birds. all voice-sounds are made by two elastic bands or cushions, called vocal chords, stretched across the end of the tube or windpipe through which we breathe, and as we send the air through them we tighten or loosen them as we will, and so make them vibrate quickly or slowly and make sound-waves of different lengths. but if you will try some day in the woods you will find that a bird can beat you over and over again in the length of his note; when you are out of breath and forced to stop he will go on with his merry trill as fresh and clear as if he had only just begun. this is because birds can draw air into the whole of their body, and they have a large stock laid up in the folds of their windpipe, and besides this the air-chamber behind their elastic bands or vocal chords has two compartments where we have only one, and the second compartment has special muscles by which they can open and shut it, and so prolong the trill. only think what a rapid succession of waves must quiver through the air as a tiny lark agitates his little throat and pours forth a volume of song! the next time you are in the country in the spring, spend half an hour listening to him, and try and picture to yourself how that little being is moving all the atmosphere round him. then dream for a little while about sound, what it is, how marvellously it works outside in the world, and inside in your ear and brain; and then, when you go back to work again, you will hardly deny that it is well worth while to listen sometimes to the voices of nature and ponder how it is that we hear them. week 19 lecture vii the life of a primrose when the dreary days of winter and the early damp days of spring are passing away, and the warm bright sunshine has begun to pour down upon the grassy paths of the wood, who does not love to go out and bring home posies of violets, and bluebells, and primroses? we wander from one plant to another picking a flower here and a bud there, as they nestle among the green leaves, and we make our rooms sweet and gay with the tender and lovely blossoms. but tell me, did you ever stop to think, as you added flower after flower to your nosegay, how the plants which bear them have been building up their green leaves and their fragile buds during the last few weeks? if you had visited the same spot a month before, a few (of) last year's leaves, withered and dead, would have been all that you would have found. and now the whole wood is carpeted with delicate green leaves, with nodding bluebells, and pale-yellow primroses, as if a fairy had touched the ground and covered it with fresh young life. and our fairies have been at work here; the fairy "life," of whom we know so little, though we love her so well and rejoice in the beautiful forms she can produce; the fairy sunbeams with their invisible influence kissing the tiny shoots and warming them into vigour and activity; the gentle rain-drops, the balmy air, all these have been working, while you or i passed heedlessly by; and now we come and gather the flowers they have made, and too often forget to wonder how these lovely forms have sprung up around us. our work during the next hour will be to consider this question. you were asked last week to bring with you to-day a primroseflower, or a whole plant if possible, in order the better to follow out with me the "life of a primrose." (to enjoy this lecture, the reader ought to have, if possible, a primroseflower, an almond soaked for a few minutes in hot water, and a piece of orange.) this is a very different kind of subject from those of our former lectures. there we took worldwide histories; we travelled up to the sun, or round the earth, or into the air; now i only ask you to fix your attention on one little plant, and inquire into its history. there is a beautiful little poem by tennyson, which says "flower in the crannied wall, i pluck you out of the crannies; hold you here, root and all, in my hand, little flower; but if i could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, i should know what god and man is." we cannot learn all about this little flower, but we can learn enough to understand that it has a real separate life of its own, well worth knowing. for a plant is born, breathes, sleeps, feeds, and digests just as truly as an animal does, though in a different way. it works hard both for itself to get its food, and for others in making the air pure and fit for animals to breathe. it often lays by provision for the winter. it sends young plants out, as parents send their children, to fight for themselves in the world; and then, after living sometimes to a good old age, it dies, and leaves its place to others. we will try to follow out something of this life to-day; and first, we will begin with the seed. i have here a packet of primrose-seeds, but they are so small that we cannot examine them; so i have also had given to each one of you an almond-kernel, which is the seed of the almondtree, and which has been soaked, so that it splits in half easily. from this we can learn about seeds in general, and then apply it to the primrose. if you peel the two skins off your almond-seed (the thick, brown, outside skin, and the thin, transparent one under it), the two halves of the almond will slip apart quite easily. one of these halves will have a small dent at the pointed end, while in the other half you will see a little lump, which fitted into the dent when the two halves were joined. this little lump (a b, fig. 37) is a young plant, and the two halves of the almond are the seed leaves which hold the plantlet, and feed it till it can feed itself. the rounded end of the plantlet (b) sticking out of the almond, is the beginning of the root, while the other end (a) will in time become the stem. if you look carefully, you will see two little points at this end, which are the tips of future leaves. only think how minute this plantlet must be in a primrose, where the whole seed is scarcely larger than a grain of sand! yet in this tiny plantlet lies hid the life of the future plant. when a seed falls into the ground, so long as the earth is cold and dry, it lies like a person in a trance, as if it were dead; but as soon as the warm, damp spring comes, and the busy little sun-waves pierce down into the earth, they wake up the plantlet and make it bestir itself. they agitate to and fro the particles of matter in this tiny body, and cause them to seek out for other particles to seize and join to themselves. but these new particles cannot come in at the roots, for the seed has none; nor through the leaves, for they have not yet grown up; and so the plantlet begins by helping itself to the store of food laid up in the thick seed-leaves in which it is buried. here it finds starch, oils, sugar, and substances called albuminoids, -the sticky matter which you notice in wheat-grains when you chew them is one of the albuminoids. this food is all ready for the plantlet to use, and it sucks it in, and works itself into a young plant with tiny roots at one end, and a growing shoot, with leaves, at the other. but how does it grow? what makes it become larger? to answer this you must look at the second thing i asked you to bring a piece of orange. if you take the skin off a piece of orange, you will see inside a number of long-shaped transparent bags, full of juice. these we call cells, and the flesh of all plants and animals is made up of cells like these, only of various shapes. in the pith of elder they are round, large, and easily seen (a, fig. 39); in the stalks of plants they are long, and lap over each other (b, fig. 39), so as to give the stalk strength to stand upright. sometimes many cells growing one on the top of the other break into one tube and make vessels. but whether large or small, they are all bags growing one against the other. in the orange-pulp these cells contain only sweet juice, but in other parts of the orange-tree or any other plant they contain a sticky substance with little grains in it. this substance is called "protoplasm," or the first form of life, for it is alive and active, and under a microscope you may see in a living plant streams of the little grains moving about in the cells. now we are prepared to explain how our plant grows. imagine the tiny primrose plantlet to be made up of cells filled with active living protoplasm, which drinks in starch and other food from the seed-leaves. in this way each cell will grow too full for its skin, and then the protoplasm divides into two parts and builds up a wall between them, and so one cell becomes two. each of these two cells again breaks up into two more, and so the plant grows larger and larger, till by the time it has used up all the food in the seed-leaves, it has sent roots covered with fine hairs downwards into the earth, and a shoot with beginnings of leaves up into the air. sometimes the seed-leaves themselves come above the ground, as in the mustard-plant, and sometimes they are left empty behind, while the plantlet shoots through them. and now the plant can no longer afford to be idle and live on prepared food. it must work for itself. until now it has been taking in the same kind of food that you and i do; for we too find many seeds very pleasant to eat and useful to nourish us. but now this store is exhausted. upon what then is the plant to live? it is cleverer than we are in this, for while we cannot live unless we have food which has once been alive, plants can feed upon gases and water and mineral matter only. think over the substances you can eat or drink, and you will find they are nearly all made of things which have been alive: meat, vegetables, bread, beer, wine, milk; all these are made from living matter, and though you do take in such things as water and salt, and even iron and phosphorus, these would be quite useless if you did not eat and drink prepared food which your body can work into living matter. but the plant as soon as it has roots and leaves begins to make living matter out of matter that has never been alive. through all the little hairs of its roots it sucks in water, and in this water are dissolved more or less of the salts of ammonia, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, lime, magnesia, and even silica, or flint. in all kinds of earth there is some iron, and we shall see presently that this is very important to the plant. suppose, then, that our primrose has begun to drink in water at its roots. how is it to get this water up into the stem and leaves, seeing that the whole plant is made of closed bags or cells? it does it in a very curious way, which you can prove for yourselves. whenever two fluids, one thicker than the other, such as treacle and water for example, are only separated by a skin or any porous substance, they will always mix, the thinner one oozing through the skin into the thicker one. if you tie a piece of bladder over a glass tube, fill the tube half-full of treacle, and then let the covered end rest in a bottle of water, in a few hours the water will get in to the treacle and the mixture will rise up in the tube till it flows over the top. now, the saps and juices of plants are thicker than water, so, directly the water enters the cells at the root it oozes up into the cells above, and mixes with the sap. then the matter in those cells becomes thinner than in the cells above, so it too oozes up, and in this way cell by cell the water is pumped up into the leaves. when it gets there it finds our old friends the sun-beams hard at work. if you have ever tried to grow a plant in a cellar, you will know that in the dark its leaves remain white and sickly. it is only in the sunlight that a beautiful delicate green tint is given to them, and you will remember from lecture ii. that this green tint shows that the leaf has used all the sun-waves except those which make you see green; but why should it do this only when it has grown up in the sunshine? the reason is this: when the sunbeam darts into the leaf and sets all its particles quivering, it divides the protoplasm into two kinds, collected into different cells. one of these remains white, but the other kind, near the surface, is altered by the sunlight and by the help of the iron brought in by the water. this particular kind of protoplasm, which is called "chlorophyll," will have nothing to do with the green waves and throws them back, so that every little grain of this protoplasm looks green and gives the leaf its green colour. it is these little green cells that by the help of the sun-waves digest the food of the plant and turn the water and gases into useful sap and juices. we saw in lecture iii. that when we breathe-in air, we use up the oxygen in it and send back out of our mouths carbonic acid, which is a gas made of oxygen and carbon. now, every living things wants carbon to feed upon, but plants cannot take it in by itself, because carbon is solid (the blacklead in your pencils is pure carbon), and a plant cannot eat, it can only drink-in fluids and gases. here the little green cells help it out of its difficulty. they take in or absorb out of the air carbonic acid gas which we have given out of our mouths and then by the help of the sun-waves they tear the carbon and oxygen apart. most of the oxygen they throw back into the air for us to use, but the carbon they keep. if you will take some fresh laurel-leaves and put them into a tumbler of water turned upside-down in a saucer of water, and set the tumbler in the sunshine, you will soon see little bright bubbles rising up and clinging to the glass. these are bubbles of oxygen gas, and they tell you that they have been set free by the green cells which have torn from them the carbon of the carbonic acid in the water. but what becomes of the carbon? and what use is made of the water which we have kept waiting all this time in the leaves? water, you already know, is made of hydrogen and oxygen, but perhaps you will be surprised when i tell you that starch, sugar, and oil, which we get from plants, are nothing more than hydrogen and oxygen in different quantities joined to carbon. it is very difficult at first to picture such a black thing as carbon making part of delicate leaves and beautiful flowers, and still more of pure white sugar. but we can make an experiment by which we can draw the hydrogen and oxygen out of common loaf sugar, and then you will see the carbon stand out in all its blackness. i have here a plate with a heap of white sugar in it. i pour upon it first some hot water to melt and warm it, and then some strong sulphuric acid. this acid does nothing more than simply draw the hydrogen and oxygen out. see! in a few moments a black mass of carbon begins to rise, all of which has come out of the white sugar you saw just now. *(the common dilute sulphuric acid of commerce is not strong enough for this experiment, but pure sulphuric acid can be secured from any chemist. great care must be taken in using it, as it burns everything it touches.) you see, then, that from the whitest substance in plants we can get this black carbon; and in truth, one-half of the dry part of every plant is composed of it. now look at my plant again, and tell me if we have not already found a curious history? fancy that you see the water creeping in at the roots, oozing up from cell to cell till it reaches the leaves, and there meeting the carbon which has just come out of the air, and being worked up with it by the sun-waves into starch, or sugar, or oils. but meanwhile, how is new protoplasm to be formed? for without this active substance none of the work can go on. here comes into use a lazy gas we spoke of in lecture iii. there we thought that nitrogen was of no use except to float oxygen in the air, but here we shall find it very useful. so far, as we know, plants cannot take up nitrogen out of the air, but they can get it out of the ammonia which the water brings in at their roots. ammonia, you will remember, is a strong-smelling gas, made of hydrogen and nitrogen, and which is often almost stifling near a manure-heap. when you manure a plant you help it to get this ammonia, but at any time it gets some from the soil and also from the rain-drops which bring it down in the air. out of this ammonia the plant takes the nitrogen and works it up with the three elements, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, to make the substances called albuminoids, which form a large part of the food of the plant, and it is these albuminoids which go to make protoplasm. you will notice that while the starch and other substances are only made of three elements, the active protoplasm is made of these three added to a fourth, nitrogen, and it also contains phosphorus and sulphur. and so hour after hour and day after day our primrose goes on pumping up water and ammonia from its roots to its leaves, drinking in carbonic acid from the air, and using the sun-waves to work them all up into food to be sent to all parts of its body. in this way these leaves act, you see, as the stomach of the plant, and digest its food. sometimes more water is drawn up into the leaves than can be used, and then the leaf opens thousands of little mouths in the skin of its under surface, which let the drops out just as drops of perspiration ooze through our skin when we are overheated. these little mouths, which are called stomates (a, fig. 42) are made of two flattened cells, fitting against each other. when the air is damp and the plant has too much water these lie open and let it out, but when the air is dry, and the plant wants to keep as much water as it can, then they are closely shut. there are as many as a hundred thousand of these mouths under one apple-leaf, so you may imagine how small they often are. plants which only live one year, such as mignonette, the sweet pea, and the poppy, take in just enough food to supply their daily wants and to make the seeds we shall speak of presently. then, as soon as their seeds are ripe their roots begin to shrivel, and water is no longer carried up. the green cells can no longer get food to digest, and they themselves are broken up by the sunbeams and turn yellow, and the plant dies. but many plants are more industrious than the stock and mignonette, and lay by store for another year, and our primrose is one of these. look at this thick solid mass below the primrose leaves, out of which the roots spring. (see the plant in the foreground of the heading of the lecture.) this is really the stem of the primrose hidden underground, and all the starch, albuminoids, &c., which the plant can spare as it grows, are sent down into this underground stem and stored up there, to lie quietly in the ground through the long winter, and then when the warm spring comes this stem begins to send out leaves for a new plant. week 21 we have now seen how a plant springs up, feeds itself, grows, stores up food, withers, and dies; but we have said nothing yet about its beautiful flowers or how it forms its seeds. if we look down close to the bottom of the leaves in a primrose root in spring-time, we shall always find three or four little green buds nestling in among the leaves, and day by day we may see the stalk of these buds lengthening till they reach up into the open sunshine, and then the flower opens and shows its beautiful paleyellow crown. we all know that seeds are formed in the flower, and that the seeds are necessary to grow into new plants. but do we know the history of how they are formed, or what is the use of the different parts of the bud? let us examine them all, and then i think you will agree with me that this is not the least wonderful part of the plant. remember that the seed is the one important thing and then notice how the flower protects it. first, look at the outside green covering, which we call the calyx. see how closely it fits in the bud, so that no insects can creep in to gnaw the flower, nor any harm come to it from cold or blight. then, when the calyx opens, notice that the yellow leaves which form the crown or corolla, are each alternate with one of the calyx leaves, so that anything which got past the first covering would be stopped by the second. lastly, when the delicate corolla has opened out, look at those curious yellow bags just at the top of the tube (b,2, fig. 43). what is their use? but i fancy i see two or three little questioning faces which seem to say, "i see no yellow bags at the top of the tube." well, i cannot tell whether you can or not in the specimen you have in your hand; for one of the most curious things about primrose flowers is, that some of them have these yellow bags at the top of the tube and some of them hidden down right in the middle. but this i can tell you:those of you who have got no yellow bags at the top will have a round knob there (i a, fig. 43), and will find the yellow bags (b) buried in the tube. those, on the other hand, who have the yellow bags (2 b, fig. 43) at the top will find the knob (a) half-way down the tube. now for the use of these yellow bags, which are called the anthers of the stamens, the stalk on which they grow being called the filament or thread. if you can manage to split them open you will find that they have a yellow powder in them, called pollen, the same as the powder which sticks to your nose when you put it into a lily; and if you look with a magnifying glass at the little green knob in the centre of the flower, you will probably see some of this yellow dust sticking on it (a, fig. 43). we will leave it there for a time, and examine the body called the pistil, to which the knob belongs. pull off the yellow corolla (which will come off quite easily), and turn back the green leaves. you will then see that the knob stands on the top of a column, and at the bottom of this column there is a round ball (s v), which is a vessel for holding the seeds. in this diagram (a, fig. 43) i have drawn the whole of this curious ball and column as if cut in half, so that we may see what is in it. in the middle of the ball, in a cluster, there are a number of round transparent little bodies, looking something like round green orange-cells full of juice. they are really cells full of protoplasm, with one little dark spot in each of them, which by-and-by is to make our little plantlet that we found in the seed. "these, then, are seeds," you will say. not yet; they are only ovules, or little bodies which may become seeds. if they were left as they are they would all wither and die. but those little grains of pollen, which we saw sticking to the knob at the top, are coming down to help them. as soon as these yellow grains touch the sticky knob or stigma, as it is called, they throw out tubes, which grow down the column until they reach the ovules. in each one of these they find a tiny hole, and into this they creep, and then they pour into the ovule all the protoplasm from the pollen-grain which is sticking above, and this enables it to grow into a real seed, with a tiny plantlet inside. this is how the plant forms its seed to bring up new little ones next year, while the leaves and the roots are at work preparing the necessary food. think sometimes when you walk in the woods, how hard at work the little plants and big trees are, all around you. you breathe in the nice fresh oxygen they have been throwing out, and little think that it is they who are making the country so fresh and pleasant, and that while they look as if they were doing nothing but enjoying the bright sunshine, they are really fulfilling their part in the world by the help of this sunshine; earning their food from the ground working it up; turning their leaves where they can best get light (and in this it is chiefly the violet sun-waves that help them), growing, even at night, by making new cells out of the food they have taken in the day; storing up for the winter; putting out their flowers and making their seeds, and all the while smiling so pleasantly in quiet nooks and sunny dells that it makes us glad to see them. but why should the primroses have such golden crowns? plain green ones would protect the seed quite as well. ah! now we come to a secret well worth knowing. look at the two primrose flowers, 1 and 2, fig. 43, p. 163, and tell me how you think the dust gets on to the top of the sticky knob or stigma. no. 2 seems easy enough to explain, for it looks as if the pollen could fall down easily from the stamens on to the knob, but it cannot fall up, as it would have to do in no. 1. now the curious truth is, as mr. darwin has shown, that neither of these flowers can get the dust easily for themselves, but of the two no. 1 has the least difficulty. look at a withered primrose, and see how it holds its head down, and after a little while the yellow crown falls off. it is just about as it is falling that the anthers or bags of stamens burst open, and then, in no. 1 (fig. 44), they are dragged over the knob and some of the grains stick there. but in the other form of primrose, no. 2, when the flower falls off, the stamens do not come near the knob, so it has no chance of getting any pollen; and while the primrose is upright the tube is so narrow that the dust does not easily fall. but, as i have said, neither kind gets it very easily, nor is it good for them if they do. the seeds are much stronger and better if the dust or pollen of one flower is carried away and left on the knob or stigma of another flower; and the only way this can be done is by insects flying from one flower to another and carrying the dust on their legs and bodies. if you suck the end of the tube of the primrose flower you will find it tastes sweet, because a drop of honey has been lying there. when the insects go in to get this honey, they brush themselves against the yellow dust-bags, and some of the dust sticks to them, and then when they go to the next flower they rub it off on to its sticky knob. look at no. 1 and no. 2 (fig. 43) and you will see at once that if an insect goes into no. 1 and the pollen sticks to him, when he goes into no. 2 just that part of his body on which the pollen is will touch the knob; and so the flowers become what we call "crossed," that is, the pollen-dust of the one feeds the ovule of the other. and just the same thing will happen if he flies from no. 2 to no. 1. there the dust will be just in the position to touch the knob which sticks out of the flower. therefore, we can see clearly that it is good for the primrose that bees and other insects should come to it, and anything it can do to entice them will be useful. now, do you not think that when an insect once knew that the pale-yellow crown showed where honey was to be found, he would soon spy these crowns out as he flew along? or if they were behind a hedge, and he could not see them, would not the sweet scent tell him where to come and look for them? and so we see that the pretty sweet-scented corolla is not only delightful for us to look at and to smell, but it is really very useful in helping the primrose to make strong healthy seeds out of which the young plants are to grow next year. and now let us see what we have learnt. we began with a tiny seed, though we did not then know how this seed had been made. we saw the plantlet buried in it, and learnt how it fed at first on prepared food, but soon began to make living matter for itself out of gases taken from the water through the cells to its stomach the leaves! and how marvellously the sun-waves entering there formed the little green granules, and then helped them to make food and living protoplasm! at this point we might have gone further, and studied how the fibres and all the different vessels of the plant are formed, and a wondrous history it would have been. but it was too long for one hour's lecture, and you must read it for yourselves in books on botany. we had to pass on to the flower, and learn the use of the covering leaves, the gaily coloured crown attracting the insects, the dust-bags holding the pollen, the little ovules each with the germ of a new plantlet, lying hidden in the seedvessel, waiting for the pollen-grains to grow down to them. lastly, when the pollen crept in at the tiny opening we learnt that the ovule had now all it wanted to grow into a perfect seed. and so we came back to a primrose seed, the point from which we started; and we have a history of our primrose from its birth to the day when its leaves and flowers wither away and it dies down for the winter. but what fairies are they which have been at work here? first, the busy little fairy life in the active protoplasm; and secondly, the sun-waves. we have seen that it was by the help of the sunbeams that the green granules were made, and the water, carbonic acid, and nitrogen worked up into the living plant. and in doing this work the sun-waves were caught and their strength used up, so that they could no longer quiver back into space. but are they gone for ever? so long as the leaves or the stem or the root of the plant remain they are gone, but when those are destroyed we can get them back again. take a handful of dry withered plants and light them with a match, then as the leaves burn and are turned back again to carbonic acid, nitrogen, and water, our sunbeams come back again in the flame and heat. and the life of the plant? what is it, and why is this protoplasm always active and busy? i cannot tell you. study as we may, the life of the tiny plant is as much a mystery as your life and mine. it came, like all things, from the bosom of the great father, but we cannot tell how it came nor what it is. we can see the active grains moving under the microscope, but we cannot see the power that moves them. we only know it is a power given to the plant, as to you and to me, to enable it to live its life, and to do its useful work in the world. week 22 lecture viii the history of a piece of coal i have here a piece of coal (fig. 45), which, though it has been cut with some care so as to have a smooth face, is really in no other way different from any ordinary lump which you can pick for yourself out of the coal-scuttle. our work to-day is to relate the history of this black lump; to learn what it is, what it has been, and what it will be. it looks uninteresting enough at first sight, and yet if we examine it closely we shall find some questions to ask even about its appearance. look at the smooth face of this specimen and see if you can explain those fine lines which run across so close together as to look like the edges of the leaves of a book. try to break a piece of coal, and you will find that it will split much more easily along those lines than across the other way of the lump; and if you wish to light a fire quickly you should always put this lined face downwards so that the heat can force its way up through these cracks and gradually split up the block. then again if you break the coal carefully along one of these lines you will find a fine film of charcoal lying in the crack, and you will begin to suspect that this black coal must have been built up in very thin layers, with a kind of black dust between them. the next thing you will call to mind is that this coal burns and gives flame and heat, and that this means that in some way sunbeams are imprisoned in it; lastly, this will lead you to think of plants, and how they work up the strength of the sunbeams into their leaves, and hide black carbon in even the purest and whitest substance they contain. is coal made of burnt plants, then? not burnt ones, for if so it would not burn again; but you may have read how the makers of charcoal take wood and bake it without letting it burn, and then it turns black and will afterwards make a very good fire; and so you will see that it is probable that our piece of coal is made of plants which have been baked and altered, but which have still much sunbeam strength bottled up in them, which can be set free as they burn. if you will take an imaginary journey with me to a coal-pit near newcastle, which i visited many years ago, you will see that we have very good evidence that coal is made of plants, for in all coal-mines we find remains of them at every step we take. let us imagine that we have put on old clothes which will not spoil, and have stepped into the iron basket (see fig. 46) called by the miners a cage, and are being let down the shaft to the gallery where the miners are at work. most of them will probably be in the gallery b, because a great deal of the coal in a has been already taken out. but we will stop in a because there we can see a great deal of the roof and the floor. when we land on the floor of the gallery we shall find ourselves in a kind of tunnel with railway lines laid along it and trucks laden with coal coming towards the cage to be drawn up, while empty ones are running back to be loaded where the miners are at work. taking lamps in our hands and keeping out of the way of the trucks, we will first throw the light on the roof, which is made of shale or hardened clay. we shall not have gone many yards before we see impressions of plants in the shale, like those in this specimen (fig. 47), which was taken out of a coal-mine at neath in glamorganshire, a few days ago, and sent up for this lecture. you will recognize at once the marks of ferns (a), for they look like those you gather in the hedges of an ordinary country lane, and that long striped branch (b) does not look unlike a reed, and indeed it is something of this kind, as we shall see by-and-by. you will find plenty of these impressions of plants as you go along the gallery and look up at the roof, and with them there will be others with spotted stems, or with stems having a curious diamond pattern upon them, and many ferns of various kinds. next look down at your feet and examine the floor. you will not have to search long before you will almost certainly find a piece of stone like that represented in fig. 48, which has also come from neath colliery. this fossil, which is the cast of a piece of a plant, puzzled those who found it for a very long time. at last, however, mr. binney found the specimen growing to the bottom of the trunk of one of the fossil trees with spotted stems, called sigillaria; and so proved that this curious pitted stone is a piece of fossil root, or rather underground stem, like that which we found in the primrose, and that the little pits or dents in it are scars where the rootlets once were given off. whole masses of these root-stems, with ribbon-like roots lying scattered near them, are found buried in the layer of clay called the underclay which makes the floor of the coal, and they prove to us that this underclay must have been once the ground in which the roots of the coal-plants grew. you will feel still more sure of this when you find that there is not only one straight gallery of coal, but that galleries branch out right and left, and that everywhere you find the coal lying like a sandwich between the floor and the roof, showing that quite a large piece of country must be covered by these remains of plants all rooted in the underclay. but how about the coal itself? it seems likely, when we find roots below and leaves and stems above, that the middle is made of plants, but can we prove it? we shall see presently that it has been so crushed and altered by being buried deep in the ground that the traces of leaves have almost been destroyed, though people who are used to examining with the microscope, can see the crushed remains of plants in thin slices of coal. but fortunately for us, perfect pieces of plants have been preserved even in the coal-bed itself. do you remember our learning in lecture iv, that water with lime in it petrifies things, that is, leaves carbonate of lime to fill up grain by grain the fibres of an animal or plant as the living matter decays, and so keeps an exact representation of the object? now, it so happens that in a coal-bed at south ouram, near halifax, as well as in some other places, carbonate of lime trickled in before the plants were turned into coal, and made some round nodules in the plant-bed, which look like cannonballs. afterwards, when all the rest of the bed was turned into coal, these round balls remained crystallized, and by cutting thin transparent slices across the nodule we can distinctly see the leaves and stems and curious little round bodies which make up the coal. several such sections may be seen at the british museum, and when we compare these fragments of plants with those which we find above and below the coal-bed, we find that they agree, thus proving that coal is made of plants, and of those plants whose roots grew in the clay floor, while their heads reached up far above where the roof now is. the next question is, what kind of plants were these? have we anything like them living in the world now? you might perhaps think that it would be impossible to decide this question from mere petrified pieces of plants. but many men have spent their whole lives in deciphering all the fragments that could be found, and though the section given in fig. 49 may look to you quite incomprehensible, yet a botanist can reed it as we read a book. for example, at s and l, where stems are cut across, he can learn exactly how they were build up inside, and compare them with the stems of living plants, while the fruits cc and the little round spores lying near them, tell him their history as well as if he had gathered them from the tree. in this way we have learnt to know very fairly what the plants of the coal were like, and you will be surprised when i tell you that the huge trees of the coal-forests, of which we sometimes find trunks in the coal-mines from ten to fifty feet long, are only represented on the earth now by small insignificant plants, scarcely ever more than two feet, and often not many inches high. have you ever seen the little club moss or lycopodium which grows all over england, but chiefly in the north, on heaths and mountains? at the end of each of its branches it bears a cone made of scaly leaves; and fixed to the inside of each of these leaves is a case called a sporangium, full of little spores or moss-seeds, as we may call them, though they are not exactly like true seeds. in one of these club-mosses called selaginella, the cases near the bottom of the cone contain large spores, while those near the top contain a powdery dust. these spores are full of resin, and they are collected on the continent for making artificial lightning in the theatres, because they flare when lighted. now this little selaginella is of all living plants the one most like some of the gigantic trees of the coal-forests. if you look at this picture of a coal-forest (fig. 51), you will find it difficult perhaps to believe that those great trees, with diamond markings all up the trunk, hanging over from the right to the left of the picture, and covering all the top with their boughs, could be in any way relations of the little selaginella; yet we find branches of them in the beds above the coal, bearing cones larger but just like selaginella cones; and what is most curious, the spores in these cones are of exactly the same kind and not any larger than those of the club-mosses. these trees are called by botanists lepidodendrons, or scaly trees; there are numbers of them in all coal-mines, and one trunk has been found 49 feet long. their branches were divided in a curious forked manner and bore cones at the ends. the spores which fell from these cones are found flattened in the coal, and they may be seen scattered about in the coal-ball. week 23 another famous tree which grew in the coal-forests was the one whose roots we found in the floor or underclay of the coal. it has been called sigillaria, because it has marks like seals (sigillum, a seal) all up the trunk, due to the scars left by the leaves when they fell from the tree. you will see the sigillarias on the left-hand side of the coal-forest picture, having those curious tufts of leaves springing out of them at the top. their stems make up a great deal of the coal, and the bark of their trunks is often found in the clays above, squeezed flat in lengths of 30, 60, or 70 feet. sometimes, instead of being flat the bark is still in the shape of a trunk, and the interior is filled with sane; and then the trunk is very heavy, and if the miners do not prop the roof up well it falls down and kills those beneath it. stigmaria is the root of the sigillaria, and is found in the clays below the coal. botanists are not yet quite certain about the seed-cases of this tree, but mr. carruthers believes that they grew inside the base of the leaves, as they do in the quillwort, a small plant which grows at the bottom of our mountain lakes. but what is that curious reed-like stem we found in the piece of shale (see fig. 47)? that stem is very important, for it belonged to a plant called a calamite, which, as we shall see presently, helped to sift the earth away from the coal and keep it pure. this plant was a near relation of the "horsetail," or equisetum, which grows in our marshes; only, just as in the case of the other trees, it was enormously larger, being often 20 feet high, whereas the little equisetum, fig. 52, is seldom more than a foot, and never more than 4 feet high in england, though in tropical south america they are much higher. still, if you have ever gathered "horsetails," you will see at once that those trees in the foreground of the picture (fig. 51), with leaves arranged in stars round the branches, are only larger copies of the little marsh-plants; and the seed-vessels of the two plants are almost exactly the same. these great trees, the lepidodendrons, the sigillarias, and the calamites, together with large tree-ferns, are the chief plants that we know of in the coal-forests. it seems very strange at first that they should have been so large when their descendants are now so small, but if you look at our chief plants and trees now, you will find that nearly all of them bear flowers, and this is a great advantage to them, because it tempts the insects to bring them the pollen-dust, as we saw in the last lecture. now the lipidodendrons and their companions had no true flowers, but only these seed-cases which we have mentioned; but as there were no flowering plants in their time, and they had the ground all to themselves, they grew fine and large. by-and-by, however, when the flowering plants came in, these began to crowd out the old giants of the coal-forests, so that they dwindled and dwindled from century to century till their great-greatgrandchildren, thousands of generations after, only lift up their tiny heads in marshes and on heaths, and tell us that they were big once upon a time. and indeed they must have been magnificent in those olden days, when they grew thick and tall in the lonely marshes where plants and trees were the chief inhabitants. we find no traces in the clay-beds of the coal to lead us to suppose that men lived in those days, nor lions, nor tigers, nor even birds to fly among the trees; but these grand forests were almost silent, except when a huge animal something like a gigantic newt or frog went croaking through the marsh, or a kind of grasshopper chirruped on the land. but these forms of life were few and far between, compared to the huge trees and tangled masses of ferns and reeds which covered the whole ground, or were reflected in the bosom of the large pools and lakes round about which they grew. and now, if you have some idea of the plants and trees of the coal, it is time to ask how these plants became buried in the earth and made pure coal, instead of decaying away and leaving behind only a mixture of earth and leaves? to answer this question, i must ask you to take another journey with me across the atlantic to the shores of america, and to land at norfolk in virginia, because there we can see a state of things something like the marshes of the coal-forests. all round about norfolk the land is low, flat, and marshy, and to the south of the town, stretching far away into north carolina, is a large, desolate swamp, no less than forty miles long and twenty-five broad. the whole place is one enormous quagmire, overgrown with water-plants and trees. the soil is as black as ink from the old, dead leaves, grasses, roots, and stems which lie in it; and so soft, that everything would sink into it, if it were not for the matted roots of the mosses, ferns, and other plants which bind it together. you may dig down for ten or fifteen feet, and find nothing but peat made of the remains of plants which have lived and died there in succession for ages and ages, while the black trunks of the fallen trees lie here and there, gradually being covered up by the dead plants. the whole place is so still, gloomy, and desolate, that it goes by the name of the "great dismal swamp," and you see we have here what might well be the beginning of a bed of coal; for we know that peat when dried becomes firm and makes an excellent fire, and that if it were pressed till it was hard and solid it would not be unlike coal. if, then, we can explain how this peaty bed has been kept pure from earth, we shall be able to understand how a coal-bed may have been formed, even though the plants and trees which grow in this swamp are different from those which grew in the coal-forests. the explanation is not difficult; streams flow constantly, or rather ooze into the great dismal swamp from the land that lies to the west, but instead of bringing mud in with them as rivers bring to the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. in this way the spongy mass of dead plants remains free from earthy grains, while the water and the shade of the thick forest of trees prevent the leaves, stems, etc., from being decomposed by the air and sun. and so year after year as the plants die they leave their remains for other plants to take root in, and the peaty mass grows thicker and thicker, while tall cedar trees and evergreens live and die in these vast, swampy forests, and being in loose ground are easily blown down by the wind, and leave their trunks to be covered up by the growing moss and weeds. now we know that there were plenty of ferns and of large calamites growing thickly together in the coal-forests, for we find their remains everywhere in the clay, so we can easily picture to ourselves how the dense jungle formed by these plants would fringe the coal-swamp, as the present plants do the great dismal swamp, and would keep out all earthy matter, so that year after year the plants would die and form a thick bed of peat, afterwards to become coal. week 24 the next thing we have to account for is the bed of shale or hardened clay covering over the coal. now we know that from time to time land has gone slowly up and down on our globe so as in some places to carry the dry ground under the sea, and in others to raise the sea-bed above the water. let us suppose, then, that the great dismal swamp was gradually to sink down so that the sea washed over it and killed the reeds and shrubs. then the streams from the west would not be sifted any longer but would bring down mud, and leave it, as in the delta of the nile or mississippi, to make a layer over the dead plants. you will easily understand that this mud would have many pieces of dead trees and plants in it, which were stifled and died as it covered them over; and thus the remains would be preserved like those which we find now in the roof of the coal-galleries. but still there are the thick sandstones in the coal-mine to be explained. how did they come there? to explain them, we must suppose that the ground went on sinking till the sea covered the whole place where once the swamp had been, and then sea-sand would be thrown down over the clay and gradually pressed down by the weight of new sand above, till it formed solid sandstone and our coal-bed became buried deeper and deeper in the earth. at last, after long ages, when the thick mass of sandstones above the bed b (fig. 46) had been laid down, the sinking must have stopped and the land have risen a little, so that the sea was driven back; and then the rivers would bring down earth again and make another clay-bed. then a new forest would spring up, the ferns, calamites, lepidodendrons, and sigillarias would gradually form another jungle, and many hundred of feet above the buried coal-bed b, a second bed of peat and vegetable matter would begin to accumulate to form the coal-bed a. such is the history of how the coal which we now dig out of the depths of the earth once grew as beautiful plants on the surface. we cannot tell exactly all the ground over which these forests grew in england, because some of the coal they made has been carried away since by rivers and cut down by the waves of the sea, but we can say that wherever there is coal now, there they must have been then. try and picture to yourselves that on the east coast of northumberland and durham, where all is now black with coaldust, and grimy with the smoke of furnaces; and where the noise of hammers and steam-engines, and of carts and trucks hurrying to and fro, makes the country re-echo with the sound of labour; there ages ago in the silent swamp shaded with monster trees, one thin layer of plants after another was formed, year after year, to become the coal we now value so much. in lancashire, busy lancashire, the same thing was happening, and even in the middle of yorkshire and derbyshire the sea must have come up and washed a silent shore where a vast forest spread out over at least 700 or 800 square miles. in stafford-shire, too, which is now almost the middle of england, another small coal-field tells the same story, while in south wales the deep coal-mines and number of coal-seams remind us how for centuries and centuries forests must have flourished and have disappeared over and over again under the sand of the sea. but what is it that has changed these beds of dead plants into hard, stony coal? in the first place you must remember they have been pressed down under an enormous weight of rocks above them. we can learn something about this even from our common lead pencils. at one time the graphite or pure carbon, of which the blacklead (as we wrongly call it) of our pencils is made, was dug solid out of the earth. but so much has now been used that they are obliged to collect the graphite dust, and press it under a heavy weight, and this makes such solid pieces that they can cut them into leads for ordinary cedar pencils. now the pressure which we can exert by machinery is absolutely nothing compared to the weight of all those hundreds of feet of solid rock which lie over the coal-beds, and which has pressed them down for thousands and perhaps millions of years; and besides this, we know that parts of the inside of the earth are very hot, and many of the rocks in which coal is found are altered by heat. so we can picture to ourselves that the coal was not only squeezed into a solid mass, but often much of the oil and gas which were in the leaves of the plants was driven out by heat, and the whole baked, as it were, into one substance. the difference between coal which flames and coal which burns only with a red heat, is chiefly that one has been baked and crushed more than the other. coal which flames has still got in it the tar and the gas and the oils which the plant stored up in its leaves, and these when they escape again give back the sunbeams in a bright flame. the hard stone coal, on the contrary, has lost a great part of these oils, and only carbon remains, which seizes hold of the oxygen of the air and burns without flame. coke is pure carbon, which we make artificially by driving out the oils and gases from coal, and the gas we burn is part of what is driven out. we can easily make coal-gas here in this room. i have brought a tobacco-pipe, the bowl of which is filled with a little powdered coal, and the broad end cemented up with stourbridge clay. when we place this bowl over a spirit-lamp and make it very hot, the gas is driven out at the narrow end of the pipe and lights easily (see fig. 53). this is the way all our gas is made, only that furnaces are used to bake the coal in, and the gas is passed into large reservoirs till it is wanted for use. you will find it difficult at first to understand how coal can be so full of oil and tar and gases, until you have tried to think over how much of all these there is in plants, and especially in seeds think of the oils of almonds, of lavender, of cloves, and of caraways; and the oils of turpentine which we get from the pines, and out of which tar is made. when you remember these and many more, and also how the seeds of the club-moss now are largely charged with oil, you will easily imagine that the large masses of coal-plants which have been pressed together and broken and crushed, would give out a great deal of oil which, when made very hot, rises up as gas. you may often yourself see tar oozing out of the lumps of coal in a fire, and making little black bubbles which burst and burn. it is from this tar that james young first made the paraffin oil we burn in our lamps, and the spirit benzoline comes from the same source. from benzoline, again, we get a liquid called aniline, from which are made so many of our beautiful dyes mauve, magenta, and violet; and what is still more curious, the bitter almonds, peardrops, and many other sweets which children like to well, are actually flavoured by essences which come out of coal-tar. thus from coal we get not only nearly all our heat and our light, but beautiful colours and pleasant flavours. we spoke just now of the plants of the coal as being without beautiful flowers, and yet we see that long, long after their death they give us lovely colours and tints as beautiful as any in flower-world now. think, then, how much we owe to these plants which lived and died so long ago! if they had been able to reason, perhaps they might have said that they did not seem of much use in the world. they had no pretty flowers, and there was no one to admire their beautiful green foliage except a few croaking reptiles, and little crickets and grasshoppers; and they lived and died all on one spot, generation after generation, without seeming to do much good to anything or anybody. then they were covered up and put out of sight, and down in the dark earth they were pressed all out of shape and lost their beauty and became only black, hard coal. there they lay for centuries and centuries, and thousands and thousands of years, and still no one seemed to want them. at last, one day, long, long after man had been living on the earth, and had been burning wood for fires, and so gradually using up the trees in the forests, it was discovered that this black stone would burn, and from that time coal has been becoming every day more and more useful. without it not only should we have been without warmth in our houses, or light in our streets when the stock of forest-wood was used up; but we could never have melted large quantities of iron-stone and extracted the iron. we have proof of this in sussex. the whole country is full of iron-stone, and the railings of st. paul's churchyard are made of sussex iron. iron-foundries were at work there as long as there was wood enough to supply them, but gradually the works fell into disuse, and the last furnace was put out in the year 1809. so now, because there is no coal in sussex, the iron lies idle, while in the north, where the iron-stone is near the coalmines, hundreds of tons are melted out every day. again, without coal we could have had no engines of any kind, and consequently no large manufactories of cotton goods, linen goods, or cutlery. in fact, almost everything we use could only have been made with difficulty and in small quantities; and even if we could have made them it would have been impossible to have sent them so quickly all over the world without coal, for we could have had no railways or steamships, but must have carried all goods along canals, and by slow sailing vessels. we ourselves must have taken days to perform journeys now made in a few hours, and months to reach our colonies. in consequence of this we should have remained a very poor people. without manufactories and industries we should have had to live chiefly by tilling the ground, and everyone being obliged to toil for daily bread, there would have been much less time or opportunity for anyone to study science, or literature, or history, or to provide themselves with comforts and refinements of life. all this then, those plants and trees of the far-off ages, which seemed to lead such useless lives, have done and are doing for us. there are many people in the world who complain that life is dull, that they do not see the use of it, and that there seems no work specially for them to do. i would advise such people, whether they are grown up or little children, to read the story of the plants which form the coal. these saw no results during their own short existences, they only lived and enjoyed the bright sunshine, and did their work, and were content. and now thousands, probably millions, of years after they lived and died, england owes her greatness, and we much of our happiness and comfort, to the sunbeams which those plants wove into their lives. they burst forth again in our fires, in our brilliant lights, and in our engines, and do the greater part of our work; teaching us "that nothing walks with aimless feet that not one life shall be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void, when god hath made the pile complete." in memoriam week 25 lecture ix bees in the hive i am going to ask you to visit with me to-day one of the most wonderful cities with no human beings in it, and yet it is densely populated, for such a city may contain from twenty thousand to sixty thousand inhabitants. in it you will find streets, but no pavements, for the inhabitants walk along the walls of the houses; while in the houses you will see no windows, for each house just fits its owner, and the door is the only opening in it. though made without hands these houses are most evenly and regularly built in tiers one above the other; and here and there a few royal palaces, larger and more spacious than the rest, catch the eye conspicuously as they stand out at the corners of the streets. some of the ordinary houses are used to live in, while others serve as storehouses where food is laid up in the summer to feed the inhabitants during the winter, when they are not allowed to go outside the walls. not that the gates are ever shut: that is not necessary, for in this wonderful city each citizen follows the laws; going out when it is time to go out, coming home at proper hours, and staying at home when it is his or her duty. and in the winter, when it is very cold outside, the inhabitants, having no fires, keep themselves warm within the city by clustering together, and never venturing out of doors. one single queen reigns over the whole of this numerous population, and you might perhaps fancy that, having so many subjects to work for her and wait upon her, she would do nothing but amuse herself. on the contrary, she too obeys the laws laid down for her guidance, and never, except on one or two state occasions, goes out of the city, but works as hard as the rest in performing her own royal duties. from sunrise to sunset, whenever the weather is fine, all is life, activity, and bustle in this busy city. though the gates are so narrow that two inhabitants can only just pass each other on their way through them, yet thousands go in and out every hour of the day; some bringing in materials to build new houses, others food and provisions to store up for the winter; and while all appears confusion and disorder among this rapidly moving throng, yet in reality each has her own work to do, and perfect order reigns over the whole. even if you did not already know from the title of the lecture what city this is that i am describing, you would no doubt guess that it is a beehive. for where in the whole world, except indeed upon an anthill, can we find so busy, so industrious, or so orderly a community as among the bees? more than a hundred years ago, a blind naturalist, francois huber, set himself to study the habits of these wonderful insects and with the help of his wife and an intelligent manservant managed to learn most of their secrets. before his time all naturalists had failed in watching bees, because if they put them in hives with glass windows, the bees, not liking the light, closed up the windows with cement before they began to work. but huber invented a hive which he could open and close at will, putting a glass hive inside it, and by this means he was able to surprise the bees at their work. thanks to his studies, and to those of other naturalists who have followed in his steps, we now know almost as much about the home of bees as we do about our own; and if we follow out to-day the building of a bee-city and the life of its inhabitants, i think you will acknowledge that they are a wonderful community, and that it is a great compliment to anyone to say that he or she is "as busy as a bee." in order to begin at the beginning of the story, let us suppose that we go into a country garden one fine morning in may when the sun is shining brightly overhead, and that we see hanging from the bough of an old apple-tree a black object which looks very much like a large plum-pudding. on approaching it, however, we see that it is a large cluster or swarm of bees clinging to each other by their legs; each bee with its two fore-legs clinging to the two hinder legs of the one above it. in this way as many as 20,000 bees may be clinging together, and yet they hang so freely that a bee, even from quite the centre of the swarm, can disengage herself from her neighbours and pass through to the outside of the cluster whenever she wishes. if these bees were left to themselves, they would find a home after a time in a hollow tree, or under the roof of a house, or in some other cavity, and begin to build their honeycomb there. but as we do not wish to lose their honey we will bring a hive, and, holding it under the swarm, shake the bough gently so that the bees fall into it, and cling to the sides as we turn it over on a piece of clean linen, on the stand where the hive is to be. and now let us suppose that we are able to watch what is going on in the hive. before five minutes are over the industrious little insects have begun to disperse and to make arrangements in their new home. a number (perhaps about two thousand) of large, lumbering bees of a darker colour than the rest, will it is true, wander aimlessly about the hive, and wait for the others to feed them and house them; but these are the drones, or male bees (3, fig. 54), who never do any work except during one or two days in their whole lives. but the smaller working bees (1, fig. 54) begin to be busy at once. some fly off in search of honey. others walk carefully all round the inside of the hive to see if there are any cracks in it; and if there are, they go off to the horse-chestnut trees, poplars, hollyhocks, or other plants which have sticky buds, and gather a kind of gum called "propolis," with which they cement the cracks and make them air-tight. others again, cluster round one bee (2, fig. 54) blacker than the rest and having a longer body and shorter wings; for this is the queen-bee, the mother of the hive, and she must be watched and tended. but the largest number begin to hang in a cluster from the roof just as they did from the bough of the apple tree. what are they doing there? watch for a little while and you will soon see one bee come out from among its companions and settle on the top of the inside of the hive, turning herself round and round, so as to push the other bees back, and to make a space in which she can work. then she will begin to pick at the under part of her body with her fore-legs, and will bring a scale of wax from a curious sort of pocket under her abdomen. holding this wax in her claws, she will bite it with her hard, pointed upper jaws, which move to and fro sideways like a pair of pincers, then, moistening it with her tongue into a kind of paste, she will draw it out like a ribbon and plaster it on the top of the hive. after that she will take another piece; for she has eight of these little wax-pockets, and she will go on till they are all exhausted. then she will fly away out of the hive, leaving a small lump on the hive ceiling or on the bar stretched across it; then her place will be taken by another bee who will go through the same manoeuvres. this bee will be followed by another, and another, till a large wall of wax has been built, hanging from the bar of the hive as in fig. 55, only that it will not yet have cells fashioned in it. meanwhile the bees which have been gathering honey out of doors begin to come back laden. but they cannot store their honey, for there are no cells made yet to put it in; neither can they build combs with the rest, for they have no wax in their wax-pockets. so they just go and hang quietly on to the other bees, and there they remain for twenty-four hours, during which time they digest the honey they have gathered, and part of it forms wax and oozes out from the scales under their body. then they are prepared to join the others at work and plaster wax on to the hive. week 26 and now, as soon as a rough lump of wax is ready, another set of bees come to do their work. these are called the nursing bees, because they prepare the cells and feed the young ones. one of these bees, standing on the roof of the hive, begins to force her head into the wax, biting with her jaws and moving her head to and fro. soon she has made the beginning of a round hollow, and then she passes on to make another, while a second bee takes her place and enlarges the first one. as many as twenty bees will be employed in this way, one after another, upon each hole before it is large enough for the base of a cell. meanwhile another set of nursing bees have been working just in the same way on the other side of the wax, and so a series of hollows are made back to back all over the comb. then the bees form the walls of the cells and soon a number of six-sided tubes, about half an inch deep, stand all along each side of the comb ready to receive honey or bee-eggs. you can see the shape of these cells in c,d, fig. 56, and notice how closely they fit into each other. even the ends are so shaped that, as they lie back to back, the bottom of one cell (b, fig. 56) fits into the space between the ends of three cells meeting it from the opposite side (a, fig. 56), while they fit into the spaces around it. upon this plan the clever little bees fill every atom of space, use the least possible quantity of wax, and make the cells lie so closely together that the whole comb is kept warm when the young bees are in it. there are some kinds of bees who do not live in hives, but each one builds a home of its own. these bees such as the upholsterer bee, which digs a hole in the earth and lines it with flowers and leaves, and the mason bee, which builds in walls do not make six-sided cells, but round ones, for room is no object to them. but nature has gradually taught the little hive-bee to build its cells more and more closely, till they fit perfectly within each other. if you make a number of round holes close together in a soft substance, and then squeeze the substance evenly from all sides, the rounds will gradually take a six-sided form, showing that this is the closest shape into which they can be compressed. although the bee does not know this, yet as gnaws away every bit of wax that can be spared she brings the holes into this shape. as soon as one comb is finished, the bees begin another by the side of it, leaving a narrow lane between, just broad enough for two bees to pass back to back as they crawl along, and so the work goes on till the hive is full of combs. as soon, however, as a length of about five or six inches of the first comb has been made into cells, the bees which are bringing home honey no longer hang to make it into wax, but begin to store it in the cells. we all know where the bees go to fetch their honey, and how, when a bee settles on a flower, she thrusts into it her small tongue-like proboscis, which is really a lengthened under-lip, and sucks out the drop of honey. this she swallows, passing it down her throat into a honey-bag or first stomach, which lies between her throat and her real stomach, and when she gets back to the hive she can empty this bag and pass honey back through her mouth again into the honey-cells. but if you watch bees carefully, especially in the spring-time, you will find that they carry off something else besides honey. early in the morning, when the dew is on the ground, or later in the day, in moist shady places, you may see a bee rubbing itself against a flower, or biting those bags of yellow dust or pollen which we mentioned in lecture vii. when she has covered herself with pollen, she will brush it off with her feet, and, bringing it to her mouth, she will moisten and roll it into a little ball, and then pass it back from the first pair of legs to the second and so to the third or hinder pair. here she will pack it into a little hairy groove called a "basket" in the joint of one of the hind legs, where you may see it, looking like a swelled joint, as she hovers among the flowers. she often fills both hind legs in this way, and when she arrives back at the hive the nursing bees take the lumps form her, and eat it themselves, or mix it with honey to feed the young bees; or, when they have any to spare, store it away in old honey-cells to be used by-and-by. this is the dark, bitter stuff called "beebread" which you often find in a honeycomb, especially in a comb which has been filled late in the summer. when the bee has been relieved of the bee-bread she goes off to one of the clean cells in the new comb, and, standing on the edge, throws up the honey from the honey-bag into the cell. one cell will hold the contents of many honey-bags, and so the busy little workers have to work all day filling cell after cell, in which the honey lies uncovered, being too thick and sticky to flow out, and is used for daily food unless there is any to spare, and then they close up the cells with wax to keep for the winter. meanwhile, a day or two after the bees have settled in the hive, the queen-bee begins to get very restless. she goes outside the hive and hovers about a little while, and then comes in again, and though generally the bees all look very closely after her to keep her indoors, yet now they let her do as she likes. again she goes out, and again back, and then, at last, she soars up into the air and flies away. but she is not allowed to go alone. all the drones of the hive rise up after her, forming a guard of honour to follow her wherever she goes. in about half-an-hour she comes back again, and then the working bees all gather round her, knowing that now she will remain quietly in the hive and spend all her time in laying eggs; for it is the queen-bee who lays all the eggs in the hive. this she begins to do about two days after her flight. there are now many cells ready besides those filled with honey; and, escorted by several bees, the queen-bee goes to one of these, and, putting her head into it remains there a second as if she were examining whether it would make a good home for the young bee. then, coming out, she turns round and lays a small, oval, bluish-white egg in the cell. after this she takes no more notice of it, but goes on to the next cell and the next, doing the same thing, and laying eggs in all the empty cells equally on both sides of the comb. she goes on so quickly that she sometimes lays as many as 200 eggs in one day. then the work of the nursing bees begins. in two or three days each egg has become a tiny maggot or larva, and the nursing bees put into its cell a mixture of pollen and honey which they have prepared in their own mouths, thus making a kind of sweet bath in which the larva lies. in five or six days the larva grows so fat upon this that it nearly fills the cell, and then the bees seal up the mouth of the cell with a thin cover of wax, made of little rings and with a tiny hole in the centre. as soon as the larva is covered in, it begins to give out from its under-lip a whitish, silken film, made of two threads of silk glued together, and with this it spins a covering or cocoon all round itself, and so it remains for about ten days more. at last, just twenty-one days after the egg was laid, the young bee is quite perfect, lying in the cell as in fig. 57, and she begins to eat her way through the cocoon and through the waxen lid, and scrambles out of her cell. then the nurses come again to her, stroke her wings and feed her for twenty-four hours, and after that she is quite ready to begin work, and flies out to gather honey and pollen like the rest of the workers. by this time the number of working bees in the hive is becoming very great, and the storing of honey and pollen-dust goes on very quickly. even the empty cells which the young bees have left are cleaned out by the nurses and filled with honey; and this honey is darker than that stored in clean cells, and which we always call "virgin honey" because it is so pure and clear. at last, after six weeks, the queen leaves off laying workereggs, and begins to lay, in some rather larger cells, eggs from which drones, or male bees, will grow up in about twenty days. meanwhile the worker-bees have been building on the edge of the cones some very curious cells (q, fig. 57) which look like thimbles hanging with the open side upwards, and about every three days the queen stops in laying drone-eggs and goes to put an egg in one of these cells. notice that she waits three days between each of these peculiar layings, because we shall see presently that there is a good reason for her doing so. the nursing bees take great care of these eggs, and instead of putting ordinary food into the cell, they fill it with a sweet, pungent jelly, for this larva is to become a princess and a future queen bee. curiously enough, it seems to be the peculiar food and the size of the cell which makes the larva grow into a mother-bee which can lay eggs, for if a hive has the misfortune to lose its queen, they take one of the ordinary worker-larvae and put it into a royal cell and feed it with jelly, and it becomes a queen-bee. as soon as the princess is shut in like the others, she begins to spin her cocoon, but she does not quite close it as the other bees do, but leaves a hole at the top. week 27 at the end of sixteen days after the first royal egg was laid, the eldest princess begins to try to eat her way out of her cell, and about this time the old queen becomes very uneasy, and wanders about distractedly. the reason of this is that there can never be two queen-bees in one hive, and the queen knows that her daughter will soon be coming out of her cradle and will try to turn her off her throne. so, not wishing to have to fight for her kingdom, she makes up her mind to seek a new home and take a number of her subjects with her. if you watch the hive about this time you will notice many of the bees clustering together after they have brought in their honey, and hanging patiently, in order to have plenty of wax ready to use when they start, while the queen keeps a sharp look-out for a bright, sunny day, on which they can swarm: for bees will never swarm on a wet or doubtful day if they can possibly help it, and we can easily understand why, when we consider how the rain would clog their wings and spoil the wax under their bodies. meanwhile the young princess grows very impatient, and tries to get out of her cell, but the worker-bees drive her back, for they know there would be a terrible fight if the two queens met. so they close up the hole she has made with fresh wax after having put in some food for her to live upon till she is released. at last a suitable day arrives, and about ten or eleven o'clock in the morning the old queen leaves the hive, taking with her about 2000 drones and from 12,000 to 20,000 worker-bees, which fly a little way clustering round her till she alights on the bough of some tree, and then they form a compact swarm ready for a new hive or to find a home of their own. leaving them to go their way, we will now return to the old hive. here the liberated princess is reigning in all her glory; the worker-bees crowd round her, watch over her, and feed her as though they could not do enough to show her honour. but still she is not happy. she is restless, and runs about as if looking for an enemy, and she tries to get at the remaining royal cells where the other young princesses are still shut in. but the workers will not let her touch them, and at last she stands still and begins to beat the air with her wings and to tremble all over, moving more and more quickly, till she makes quite a loud, piping noise. hark! what is that note answering her? it is a low, hoarse sound, and it comes from the cell of the next eldest princess. now we see why the young queen has been so restless. she knows her sister will soon come out, and the louder and stronger the sound becomes within the cell, the sooner she knows the fight will have to begin. and so she makes up her mind to follow her mother's example and to lead off a second swarm. but she cannot always stop to choose a fine day, for her sister is growing very strong and may come out of her cell before she is off. and so the second, or after swarm, gets ready and goes away. and this explains why princesses' eggs are laid a few days apart, for if they were laid all on the same day, there would be no time for one princess to go off with a swarm before the other came out of her cell. sometimes, when the workers are not watchful enough, two queens do meet, and then they fight till one is killed; or sometimes they both go off with the same swarm without finding each other out. but this only delays the fight till they get into the new hive; sooner or later one must be killed. and now a third queen begins to reign in the old hive, and she is just as restless as the preceding ones, for there are still more princesses to be born. but this time, if no new swarm wants to start, the workers do not try to protect the royal cells. the young queen darts at the first she sees, gnaws a hole with her jaws, and, thrusting in her sting through the hole in the cocoon, kills the young bee while it is still a prisoner. she then goes to the next, and the next, and never rests till all the young princesses are destroyed. then she is contented, for she knows no other queen will come to dethrone her. after a few days she takes her flight in the air with the drones, and comes home to settle down in the hive for the winter. then a very curious scene takes place. the drones are no more use, for the queen will not fly out again, and these idle bees will never do any work in the hive. so the worker-bees begin to kill them, falling upon them, and stinging them to death, and as the drones have no stings they cannot defend themselves, and in a few days there is not a drone, nor even a drone-egg, left in the hive. this massacre seems very sad to us, since the poor drones have never done any harm beyond being hopelessly idle. but it is less sad when we know that they could not live many weeks, even if they were not attacked, and, with winter coming, the bees cannot afford to feed useless mouths, so a quick death is probably happier for them than starvation. and now all the remaining inhabitants of the hive settle down to feeding the young bees and laying in the winter's store. it is at this time, after they have been toiling and saving, that we come and take their honey; and from a well-stocked hive we may even take 30 lbs. without starving the industrious little inhabitants. but then we must often feed them in return and give them sweet syrup in the late autumn and the next early spring when they cannot find any flowers. although the hive has now become comparatively quiet and the work goes on without excitement, yet every single bee is employed in some way, either out of doors or about the hive. besides the honey collectors and the nurses, a certain number of bees are told off to ventilate the hive. you will easily understand that where so many insects are packed closely together the heat will become very great, and the air impure and unwholesome. and the bees have no windows that they can open to let in fresh air, so they are obliged to fan it in from the one opening of the hive. the way in which they do this is very interesting. some of the bees stand close to the entrance, with their faces towards it, and opening their wings, so as to make them into fans, they wave them to and fro, producing a current of air. behind these bees, and all over the floor of the hive, there stand others, this time with their backs towards the entrance, and fan in the same manner, and in this way air is sent into all the passages. another set of bees clean out the cells after the young bees are born, and make them fit to receive honey, while others guard the entrance of the hive to keep away the destructive wax-moth, which tries to lay its eggs in the comb so that its young ones may feed on the honey. all industrious people have to guard their property against thieves and vagabonds, and the bees have many intruders, such as wasps and snails and slugs, which creep in whenever they get a chance. if they succeed in escaping the sentinel bees, then a fight takes place within the hive, and the invader is stung to death. sometimes, however, after they have killed the enemy, the bees cannot get rid of his body, for a snail or slug is too heavy to be easily moved, and yet it would make the hive very unhealthy to allow it to remain. in this dilemma the ingenious little bees fetch the gummy "propolis" from the plant-buds and cement the intruder all over, thus embalming his body and preventing it from decaying. and so the life of this wonderful city goes on. building, harvesting, storing, nursing, ventilating and cleaning from morn till night, the little worker-bee lives for about eight months, and in that time has done quite her share of work in the world. only the young bees, born late in the season, live on till the next year to work in the spring. the queen-bee lives longer, probably about two years, and then she too dies, after having had a family of many thousands of children. we have already pointed out that in our fairy-land of nature all things work together so as to bring order out of apparent confusion. but though we should naturally expect winds and currents, rivers and clouds, and even plants to follow fixed laws, we should scarcely have looked for such regularity in the life of the active, independent busy bee. yet we see that she, too, has her own appointed work to do, and does it regularly and in an orderly manner. in this lecture we have been speaking entirely of the bee within the hive, and noticing how marvellously her instincts guide her in her daily life. but within the last few years we have learnt that she performs a most curious and wonderful work in the world outside her home and that we owe to her not only the sweet honey to eat, but even in a great degree the beauty and gay colours of the flowers which she visits when collecting it. this work will form the subject of our next lecture, and while we love the little bee for her constant industry, patience, and order within the hive, we shall, i think, marvel at the wonderful law of nature which guides her in her unconscious mission of love among the flowers which grow around it. week 28 lecture x bees and flowers whatever thoughts each one of you may have brought to the lecture to-day, i want you to throw them all aside and fancy yourself to be in a pretty country garden on a hot summer's morning. perhaps you have been walking, or reading, or playing, but it is getting too hot now to do anything; and so you have chosen the shadiest nook under the old walnut-tree, close to the flower-bed on the lawn, and would almost like to go to sleep if it were not too early in the day. as you lie there thinking of nothing in particular, except how pleasant it is to be idle now and then, you notice a gentle buzzing close to you, and you see that on the flower-bed close by, several bees are working busily among the flowers. they do not seem to mind the heat, nor to wish to rest; and they fly so lightly and look so happy over their work that it does not tire you to look at them. that great humble-bee takes it leisurely enough as she goes lumbering along, poking her head into the larkspurs, and remaining so long in each you might almost think she had fallen asleep. the brown hive-bee on the other hand, moves busily and quickly among the stocks, sweet peas, and mignonette. she is evidently out on active duty, and means to get all she can from each flower, so as to carry a good load back to the hive. in some blossoms she does not stay a moment, but draws her head back directly she has popped it in, as if to say "no honey there." but over the full blossoms she lingers a little, and then scrambles out again with her drop of honey, and goes off to seek more in the next flower. let us watch her a little more closely. there are plenty of different plants growing in the flower-bed, but, curiously enough, she does not go first to one kind and then to another; but keeps to one, perhaps the mignonette, the whole time till she flies away. rouse yourself up to follow her, and you will see she takes her way back to the hive. she may perhaps stop to visit a stray plant of mignonette on her way, but no other flower will tempt her till she has taken her load home. then when she comes back again she may perhaps go to another kind of flower, such as the sweet peas, for instance, and keep to them during the next journey, but it is more likely that she will be true to her old friend the mignonette for the whole day. we all know why she makes so many journeys between the garden and the hive, and that she is collecting drops of honey from each flower, and carrying it to be stored up in the honeycomb for winter's food. how she stores it, and how she also gathers pollen-dust for her bee-bread, we saw in the last lecture; to-day we will follow her in her work among the flowers, and see, while they are so useful to her, what she is doing for them in return. we have already learnt from the life of a primrose that plants can make better and stronger seeds when they can get pollen-dust from another plant, than when they are obliged to use that which grows in the same flower; but i am sure you will be very much surprised to hear that the more we study flowers the more we find that their colours, their scent, and their curious shapes are all so many baits and traps set by nature to entice insects to come to the flowers, and carry this pollen-dust from one to the other. so far as we know, it is entirely for this purpose that the plants form honey in different parts of the flower, sometimes in little bags or glands, as in the petals of the buttercup flower, sometimes in clear drops, as in the tube of the honeysuckle. this food they prepare for the insects, and then they have all sorts of contrivances to entice them to come and fetch it. you will remember that the plants of the coal had no bright or conspicuous flowers. now we can understand why this was, for there were no flying insects at that time to carry the pollendust from flower to flower, and therefore there was no need of coloured flowers to attract them. but little by little, as flies, butterflies, moths and bees began to live in the world, flowers too began to appear, and plants hung out these gaycoloured signs, as much as to say, "come to me, and i will give you honey if you will bring me pollen-dust in exchange, so that my seeds may grow healthy and strong." we cannot stop to inquire to-day how this all gradually came about, and how the flowers gradually put on gay colours and curious shapes to tempt the insects to visit them; but we will learn something about the way they attract them now, and how you may see it for yourselves if you keep your eyes open. for example, if you watch the different kinds of grasses, sedges and rushes, which have such tiny flowers that you can scarcely see them, you will find that no insects visit them. neither will you ever find bees buzzing round oak-trees, nut-trees, willows, elms or birches. but on the pretty and sweet-smelling appleblossoms, or the strongly scented lime-trees, you will find bees, wasps, and plenty of other insects. the reason of this is that grasses, sedges, rushes, nut-trees, willow, and the others we have mentioned, have all of them a great deal of pollen-dust, and as the wind blows them to and fro, it wafts the dust from one flower to another, and so these plants do not want the insects, and it is not worth their while to give out honey, or to have gaudy or sweet-scented flowers to attract them. but wherever you see bright or conspicuous flowers you may be quite sure that the plants want the bees or some other winged insect to come and carry their pollen for them. snowdrops hanging their white heads among their green leaves, crocuses with their violet and yellow flowers, the gaudy poppy, the largeflowered hollyhock or the sunflower, the flaunting dandelion, the pretty pink willow-herb, the clustered blossoms of the mustard and turnip flowers, the bright blue forget-me-not and the delicate little yellow trefoil, all these are visited by insects, which easily catch sight of them as they pass by and hasten to sip their honey. sir john lubbock has shown that bees are not only attracted by bright colours, but that they even know one colour from another. he put some honey on slips of glass with coloured papers under them, and when he had accustomed the bees to find the honey always on the blue glass, he washed this glass clean, and put the honey on the red glass instead. now if the bees had followed only the smell of the honey, they would have flown to the red glass, but they did not. they went first to the blue glass, expecting to find the honey on the usual colour, and it was only when they were disappointed that they went off to the red. is it not beautiful to think that the bright pleasant colours we love so much in flowers, are not only ornamental, but that they are useful and doing their part in keeping up healthy life in our world? neither must we forget what sweet scents can do. have you never noticed the delicious smell which comes from beds of mignonette, thyme, rosemary, mint, or sweet alyssum, from the small hidden bunches of laurustinus blossom, or from the tiny flowers of the privet? these plants have found another way of attracting the insects; they have no need of bright colours, for their scent is quite as true and certain a guide. you will be surprised if you once begin to count them up, how many white and dull or darklooking flowers are sweet-scented, while gaudy flowers, such as tulip, foxglove and hollyhock, have little or no scent. and then, just as in the world we find some people who have everything to attract others to them, beauty and gentleness, cleverness, kindliness, and loving sympathy, so we find some flowers, like the beautiful lily, the lovely rose, and the delicate hyacinth, which have colour and scent and graceful shapes all combined. but we are not yet nearly at an end of the contrivances of flowers to secure the visits of insects. have you not observed that different flowers open and close at different times? the daisy receives its name day's eye, because it opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, while the evening primrose (aenothera biennis) and the night campion (silene noctiflora) spread out their flowers just as the daisy is going to bed. what do you think is the reason of this? if you go near a bed of evening primroses just when the sun is setting, you will soon be able to guess, for they will then give out such a sweet scent that you will not doubt for a moment that they are calling the evening moths to come and visit them. the daisy opens by day, because it is visited by day insects, but those particular moths which can carry the pollen-dust of the evening primrose, fly only by night, and if this flower opened by day other insects might steal its honey, while they would not be the right size or shape to touch its pollen-bags and carry the dust. it is the same if you pass by a honeysuckle in the evening; you will be surprised how much stronger its scent is than in the daytime. this is because the sphinx hawk-moth is the favourite visitor of that flower, and comes at nightfall, guided by the strong scent, to suck out the honey with its long proboscis, and carry the pollen-dust. again, some flowers close whenever rain is coming. the pimpernel (anagallis arvensis) is one of these, hence its name of the "shepherd's weather-glass." this little flower closes, no doubt, to prevent its pollen-dust being washed away, for it has no honey; while other flowers do it to protect the drop of honey at the bottom of their corolla. look at the daisies for example when a storm is coming on; as the sky grows dark and heavy, you will see them shrink up and close till the sun shines again. they do this because in each of the little yellow florets in the centre of the flower there is a drop of honey which would be quite spoiled if it were washed by the rain. and now you will see why cup-shaped flowers so often droop their heads think of the harebell, the snowdrop, the lily-of-thevalley, the campanula, and a host of others; how pretty they look with their bells hanging so modestly from the slender stalk! they are bending down to protect the honey-glands within them, for if the cup became full of rain or dew the honey would be useless, and the insects would cease to visit them. week 29 but it is not only necessary that the flowers should keep their honey for the insects, they also have to take care and keep it for the right kind of insect. ants are in many cases great enemies to them, for they like honey as much as bees and butterflies do, yet you will easily see that they are so small that if they creep into a flower they pass the anthers without rubbing against them, and so take the honey without doing any good to the plant. therefore we find numberless contrivances for keeping the ants and other creeping insects away. look for example at the hairy stalk of the primrose flower; those little hairs are like a forest to a tiny ant, and they protect the flower from his visits. the spanish catchfly (silene otites), on the other hand, has a smooth, but very gummy stem, and on this the insects stick, if they try to climb. slugs and snails too will often attack and bite flowers, unless they are kept away by thorns and bristles, such as we find on the teazel and the burdock. and so we are gradually learning that everything which a plant does has its meaning, if we can only find it out, and that even very insignificant hair has its own proper use, and when we are once aware of this a flower-garden may become quite a new world to us if we open our eyes to all that is going on in it. but as we cannot wander among many plants to-day, let us take a few which the bees visit, and see how they contrive not to give up their honey without getting help in return. we will start with the blue wood-geranium, because from it we first began to learn the use of insects to flowers. more than a hundred years ago a young german botanist, christian conrad sprengel, noticed some soft hairs growing in the centre of this flower, just round the stamens, and he was so sure that every part of a plant is useful, that he set himself to find out what these hairs meant. he soon discovered that they protected some small honey-bags at the base of the stamens, and kept the rain from washing the honey away, just as our eyebrows prevent the perspiration on our faces from running into our eyes. this led him to notice that plants take great care to keep their honey for insects, and by degrees he proved that they did this in order to tempt the insects to visit them and carry off their pollen. the first thing to notice in this little geranium flower is that the purple lines which ornament it all point directly to the place where the honey lies at the bottom of the stamens, and actually serve to lead the bee to the honey; and this is true of the veins and marking of nearly all flowers except of those which open by night, and in these they would be useless, for the insects would not see them. when the geranium first opens, all its ten stamens are lying flat on the corolla or coloured crown, as in the left-hand flower in fig. 58, and then the bee cannot get at the honey. but in a short time five stamens begin to raise themselves and cling round the stigma or knob at the top of the seed-vessel, as in the middle flower. now you would think they would leave their dust there. but no! the stigma is closed up so tight that the dust cannot get on to the sticky part. now, however, the bee can get at the honey-glands on the outside of the raised stamens; and as he sucks it, his back touches the anthers or dust-bags, and he carries off the pollen. then, as soon as all their dust is gone, these five stamens fall down, and the other five spring up. still, however, the stigma remains closed, and the pollen of these stamens, too, may be carried away to another flower. at last these five also fall down, and then, and not till then, the stigma opens and lays out its five sticky points, as you may see in the right-hand flower, fig. 58. but its own pollen is all gone, how then will it get any? it will get it from some bee who has just taken it from another and younger flower; and thus you see the blossom is prevented from using its own pollen, and made to use that of another blossom, so that its seeds may grow healthy and strong. the garden nasturtium, into whose blossom we saw the humble-bee poling his head, takes still more care of its pollen-dust. it hides its honey down at the end of its long spur, and only sends out one stamen at a time instead of five like the geranium; and then, when all the stamens have had their turn, the sticky knob comes out last for pollen from another flower. all this you may see for yourselves if you find geraniums* in the hedges, and nasturtiums in you garden. but even if you have not these, you may learn the history of another flower quite as curious, and which you can find in any field or lane even near london. the common dead-nettle (fig. 59) takes a great deal of trouble in order that the bee may carry off its pollen. when you have found one of these plants, take a flower from the ring all round the stalk and tear it gently open, so that you can see down its throat. there, just at the very bottom, you will find a thick fringe of hairs, and you will guess at once that these are to protect a drop of honey below. little insects which would creep into the flower and rob it of its honey without touching the anthers of the stamens cannot get past these hairs, and so the drop is kept till the bee comes to fetch it. (*the scarlet and other bright geraniums of our flower-gardens are not true geraniums, but pelargoniums. you may, however, watch all these peculiarities in them if you cannot procure the true wild geranium.) now look for the stamens; there are four of them, two long and two short, and they are quite hidden under the hood which forms the top of the flower. how will the bee touch them? if you were to watch one, you would find that when the bee alights on the broad lip and thrusts her head down the tube, she first of all knows her back against the little forked tip. this is the sticky stigma, and she leaves there any dust she has brought from another flower; then, as she must push far in to reach the honey, before she comes out again has carried away the yellow powder on her back, ready to give it to the next flower. do you remember how we noticed at the beginning of the lecture that a bee always likes to visit the same kind of plant in one journey? you see now that this is very useful to the flowers. if the bee went from a dead-nettle to a geranium, the dust would be lost, for it would be of no use to any other plant but a deadnettle. but since the bee likes to get the same kind of honey each journey, she goes to the same kind of flowers, and places the pollen-dust just where it is wanted. there is another flower, called the salvia, which belongs to the same family as our dead-nettle, and i think you will agree with me that its way of dusting the bee's back is most clever. the salvia (fig. 60) is shaped just like the dead-nettle, with a hood and a broad lip, but instead of four stamens it has only two, the other two being shrivelled up. the two that are left have a very strange shape, for the stalk or filament of the stamen is very short, while the anther, which is in most flowers two little bags stuck together, has here grown out into a long thread, with a little dust-bag at one end only. in 1, fig. 60, you only see one of these stems, because the flower is cut in half, but in the whole flower, one stands on each side just within the lip. now, when the bee puts her head into the tube to reach the honey, she passes right between these two swinging anthers, and knocking against the end pushes it before her and so brings the dust-bag plump down on her back, scattering the dust there! you can easily try this by thrusting a pencil into any salvia flower, and you will see the anther fall. you will notice that all this time the be does not touch the sticky stigma which hangs high above her, but after the anthers are empty and shrivelled the stalk of the stigma grows longer, and it falls lower down. by-and-by another bee, having pollen on her back, comes to look for honey, and as she goes into no. 3, she rubs against the stigma and leaves upon it the dust from another flower. tell me, has not the salvia, while remaining so much the same shape as the dead-nettle, devised a wonderful contrivance to make use of the visits of the bee? the common sweet violet (viola odorata) or the dog violet (viola canina), which you can gather in any meadow, give up their pollen-dust in quite a different way from the salvia, and yet it is equally ingenious. everyone has noticed what an irregular shape this flower has, and that one of its purple petals has a curious spur sticking out behind. in the tip of this spur and in the spur of the stamen lying in it the violet hides its honey, and to reach it the bee must press past the curious ring of orange-tipped bodies in the middle of the flower. these bodies are the anthers, fig. 61, which fit tightly round the stigma, so that when the pollen-dust, which is very dry, comes out of the bags, it remains shut in by the tips as if in a box. two of these stamens have spurs which lie in the coloured spur of the flower, and have honey at the end of them. now, when the bee shakes the end of the stigma, it parts the ring of anthers, and the fine dust falls through upon the insect. let us see for a moment how wonderfully this flower is arranged to bring about the carrying of the pollen, as sprengel pointed out years ago. in the first place, it hangs on a thin stalk, and bends its head down so that the rain cannot come near the honey in the spur, and also so that the pollen-dust falls forward into the front of the little box made by the closed anthers. then the pollen is quite dry, instead of being sticky as in most plants. this is in order that it may fall easily through the cracks. then the style or stalk of the stigma is very thin and its tip very broad, so that it quivers easily when the bee touches it, and so shakes the anthers apart, while the anthers themselves fold over to make the box, and yet not so tightly but that the dust can fall through when they are shaken. lastly, if you look at the veins of the flower, you will find that they all point towards the spur where the honey is to be found, so that when the sweet smell of the flower has brought the bee, she cannot fail to go in at the right place. two more flowers still i want us to examine together, and then i hope you will care to look at every flower you meet, to try and see what insects visit it, and how its pollen-dust is carried. these two flowers are the common bird's-foot trefoil (lotus corniculatus), and the early orchis (orchis mascula), which you may find in almost any moist meadow in the spring and early summer. the bird's-foot trefoil, fig. 62, you will find almost anywhere all through the summer, and you will know it from other flowers very like it by its leaf, which is not a true trefoil, for behind the three usual leaflets of the clover and the shamrock leaf, it has two small leaflets near the stalk. the flower, you will notice, is shaped very like the flower of a pea, and indeed it belongs to the same family, called the papilionaceae or butterfly family, because the flowers look something like an insect flying. in all these flowers the top petal stands up like a flag to catch the eye of the insect, and for this reason botanists call it the "standard". below it are two side-petals called the "wings," and if you pick these off you will find that the remaining two petals are joined together at the tip in a shape like the keel of a boat. for this reason they are called the "keel". notice as we pass that these two last petals have in them a curious little hollow or depression, and if you look inside the "wings" you will notice a little knob that fits into this hollow, and so locks the two together. we shall see by-and-by that this is important. week 30 next let us look at the half-flower when it is cut open, and see what there is inside. there are ten stamens in all, enclosed with the stigma in the keel; nine are joined together and one is by itself. the anthers of five of these stamens burst open while the flower is still a bud, but the other stamens go on growing, and push the pollen-dust, which is very moist and sticky, right up into the tip of the keel. here you see it lies right round the stigma, but as we saw before in the geranium, the stigma is not ripe and sticky yet, and so it does not use the pollen grains. now suppose that a bee comes to the flower. the honey she has to fetch lies inside the tube, and the one stamen being loose she is able to get her proboscis in. but if she is to be of any use to the flower she must uncover the pollen-dust. see how cunningly the flower has contrived this. in order to put her head into the tube the bee must stand upon the wings, and her weight bends them down. but they are locked to the keel by the knob fitting in the hole, and so the keel is pushed down too, and the sticky pollendust is uncovered and comes right against the stomach of the bee and sticks there! as soon as she has done feeding and flies away, up go the wings and the keel with them, covering up any pollen that remains ready for next time. then when the bee goes to another flower, as she touches the stigma as well as the pollen, she leaves some of the foreign dust upon it, and the flower uses that rather than its own, because it is better for its seeds. if however no bee happens to come to one of these flowers, after a time the stigma becomes sticky and it uses its own pollen: and this is perhaps one reason why the bird's-foot trefoil is so very common, because it can do its own work if the bee does not help it. now we come lastly to the orchis flower. mr. darwin has written a whole book on the many curious and wonderful ways in which orchids tempt bees and other insects to fertilize them. we can only take the simplest, but i think you will say that even this blossom is more like a conjuror's box than you would have supposed it possible that a flower could be. let us examine it closely. it has sic deep-red covering leaves, fig. 62, three belonging to the calyx or outer cup, and three belonging to the corolla or crown of the flower; but all six are coloured alike, except that the large on in front, called the "lip", has spots and lines upon it which will suggest to you at once that they point to the honey. but where are the anthers, and where is the stigma? look just under the arch made by those three bending flower-leaves, and there you will see two small slits, and in these some little club-shaped bodies, which you can pick out with the point of a needle. one of these enlarged is shown. it is composed of sticky grains of pollen held together by fine threads on the top of a thin stalk; and at the bottom of the stalk there is a little round body. this is all that you will find to represent the stamens of the flower. when these masses of pollen, or pollinia as they are called, are within the flower, the knob at the bottom is covered by a little lid, shutting them in like the lid of a box, and just below this lid you will see two yellowish lumps, which are very sticky. these are the top of the stigma, and they are just above the seed-vessel, which you can see in the lowest flower in the picture. now let us see how this flower gives up its pollen. when a bee comes to look for honey in the orchis, she alights on the lip, and guided by the lines makes straight for the opening just in front of the stigmas. putting her head into this opening she pushes down into the spur, where by biting the inside skin she gets some juicy sap. notice that she has to bite, which takes time. you will see at once that she must touch the stigmas in going in, and so give them any pollen she has on her head. but she also touches the little lid and it flies instantly open, bringing the glands at the end of the pollen-masses against her head. these glands are moist and sticky, and while she is gnawing the inside of the spur they dry a little and cling to her head and she brings them out with her. darwin once caught a bee with as many as sixteen of these pollen-masses clinging to her head. but if the bee went into the next flower with these pollinia sticking upright, she would simply put them into the same slits in the next flower, she would not touch them against the stigma. nature, however, has provided against this. as the bee flies along, the glands sticking to its head dry more and more, and as they dry they curl up and drag the pollen-masses down, so that instead of standing upright, as in 1, fig. 63, they point forwards, as in 2. and now, when the bee goes into the next flower, she will thrust them right against the sticky stigmas, and as they cling there the fine threads which hold the grains together break away, and the flower is fertilized. if you will gather some of these orchids during your next spring walk in the woods, and will put a pencil down the tube to represent the head of the bee you may see the little box open, and the two pollen-masses cling to the pencil. then if you draw it out you may see them gradually bend forwards, and by thrusting your pencil into the next flower you may see the grains of pollen bread away, and you will have followed out the work of a bee. do not such wonderful contrivances as these make us long to know and understand all the hidden work that is going on around us among the flowers, the insects, and all forms of life? i have been able to tell you but very little, but i can promise you that the more you examine, the more you will find marvellous histories such as these in simple field-flowers. long as we have known how useful honey was to the bee, and how it could only get it from flowers, yet it was not till quite lately that we have learned to follow out sprengel's suggestion, and to trace the use which the bee is to the flower. but now that we have once had our eyes opened, every flower teaches us something new, and we find that each plant adapts itself in a most wonderful way to the insects which visit it, both so as to provide them with honey, and at the same time to make them unconsciously do it good service. and so we learn that even among insects and flowers, those who do most for others, receive most in return. the bee and the flower do not either of them reason about the matter, they only go on living their little lives as nature guides them, helping and improving each other. think for a moment how it would be, if a plant used up all its sap for its own life, and did not give up any to make the drop of honey in its flower. the bees would soon find out that these particular flowers were not worth visiting, and the flower would not get its pollen-dust carried, and would have to do its own work and grow weakly and small. or suppose on the other hand that the bee bit a hole in the bottom of the flower, and so got at the honey, as indeed they sometimes do; then she would not carry the pollen-dust, and so would not keep up the healthy strong flowers which make her daily food. but this, as you see, is not the rule. on the contrary, the flower feeds the bee, and the bee quite unconsciously helps the flower to make its healthy seed. nay more; when you are able to read all that has been written on this subject, you will find that we have good reason to think that the flowerless plants of the coal period have gradually put on the beautiful colours, sweet scent, and graceful shapes of our present flowers, in consequence of the necessity of attracting insects, and thus we owe our lovely flowers to the mutual kindliness of plants and insects. and is there nothing beyond this? surely there is. flowers and insects, as we have seen, act without thought or knowledge of what they are doing; but the law of mutual help which guides them is the same which bids you and me be kind and good to all those around us, if we would lead useful and happy lives. and when we see that the great power which rules over our universe makes each work for the good of all, even in such humble things as bees and flowers; and that beauty and loveliness come out of the struggle and striving of all living things; then, if our own life be sometimes difficult, and the struggle hard to bear, we learn from the flowers that the best way to meet our troubles is to lay up our little drop of honey for others, sure that when they come to sip it they will, even if unconsciously, give us new vigour and courage in return. and now we have arrived at the end of those subjects which we selected out of the fairy-land of science. you must not for a moment imagine, however, that we have in any way exhausted our fairy domain; on the contrary, we have scarcely explored even the outskirts of it. the "history of a grain of salt," "a butterfly's life," or "the labours of an ant," would introduce us to fairies and wonders quite as interesting as those of which we have spoken in these lectures. while "a flash of lightning," "an explosion in a coal-mine," or "the eruption of a volcano," would bring us into the presence of terrible giants known and dreaded from time immemorial. but at least we have passed through the gates, and have learnt that there is a world of wonder which we may visit if we will; and that it lies quite close to us, hidden in every dewdrop and gust of wind, in every brook and valley, in every little plant or animal. we have only to stretch out our hand and touch them with the wand of inquiry, and they will answer us and reveal the fairy forces which guide and govern them; and thus pleasant and happy thoughts may be conjured up at any time, wherever we find ourselves, by simply calling upon nature's fairies and asking them to speak to us. is it not strange, then, that people should pass them by so often without a thought, and be content to grow up ignorant of all the wonderful powers ever active in the world around them? neither is it pleasure alone which we gain by a study of nature. we cannot examine even a tiny sunbeam, and picture the minute waves of which it is composed, travelling incessantly from the sun, without being filled with wonder and awe at the marvellous activity and power displayed in the infinitely small as well as in the infinitely great things of the universe. we cannot become familiar with the facts of gravitation, cohesion, or crystallization, without realizing that the laws of nature are fixed, orderly, and constant, and will repay us with failure or success according as we act ignorantly or wisely; and thus we shall begin to be afraid of leading careless, useless, and idle lives. we cannot watch the working of the fairy "life" in the primrose or the bee, without learning that living beings as well as inanimate things are governed by these same laws of nature; nor can we contemplate the mutual adaptation of bees and flowers without acknowledging that it teaches the truth that those succeed best in life who, whether consciously or unconsciously, do their best for others. and so our wanderings in the fairy-land of science will not be wasted, for we shall learn how to guide our own lives, while we cannot fail to see that the forces of nature, whether they are apparently mechanical, as in gravitation or heat; or intelligent, as in living beings, are one and all the voice of the great creator, and speak to us of his nature and his will. available by internet archive (http://www.archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 37589-h.htm or 37589-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37589/37589-h/37589-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37589/37589-h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see http://www.archive.org/details/throughmagicglas00buck [illustration: for description see page 152 frontispiece the great nebula of orion from a photograph taken on february 4th, 1889 by mr isaac roberts.] through magic glasses and other lectures a sequel to the fairyland of science by arabella b. buckley (mrs. fisher) author of life and her children, winners in life's race, a short history of natural science, etc. with numerous illustrations new york d. appleton and company 1890 authorized edition. preface. the present volume is chiefly intended for those of my young friends who have read, and been interested in, the _fairyland of science_. it travels over a wide field, pointing out a few of the marvellous facts which can be studied and enjoyed by the help of optical instruments. it will be seen at a glance that any one of the subjects dealt with might be made the study of a lifetime, and that the little information given in each lecture is only enough to make the reader long for more. in these days, when moderate-priced instruments and good books and lectures are so easily accessible, i hope some eager minds may be thus led to take up one of the branches of science opened out to us by magic glasses; while those who go no further will at least understand something of the hitherto unseen world which is now being studied by their help. the two last lectures wander away from this path, and yet form a natural conclusion to the magician's lectures to his young devonshire lads. they have been published before, one in the _youth's companion_ of boston, u.s., and the other in _atalanta_, in which the essay on fungi also appeared in a shorter form. all three lectures have, however, been revised and fully illustrated, and i trust that the volume, as a whole, may prove a pleasant christmas companion. for the magnificent photograph of orion's nebula, forming the frontispiece, i am indebted to the courtesy of mr. isaac roberts, f.r.a.s., who most kindly lent me the plate for reproduction; and i have had the great good fortune to obtain permission from mm. henri of the paris observatory to copy the illustration of the lunar apennines from a most beautiful and perfect photograph of part of the moon, taken by them only last march. my cordial thanks are also due to mr. a. cottam, f.r.a.s., for preparing the plate of coloured double stars, and to my friend mr. knobel, hon. sec. of the r.a.s., for much valuable assistance; to mr. james geikie for the loan of some illustrations from his _geology_; and to messrs. longman for permission to copy herschel's fine drawing of copernicus. with the exception of these illustrations and a few others, three of which were kindly given me by messrs. macmillan, all the woodcuts have been drawn and executed under the superintendence of mr. carreras, jun., who has made my task easier by the skill and patience he has exercised under the difficulties incidental to receiving instructions from a distance. arabella b. buckley. upcott avenel, _oct. 1890_. table of contents chapter i page the magician's chamber by moonlight 1 chapter ii magic glasses and how to use them 27 chapter iii fairy rings and how they are made 55 chapter iv the life-history of lichens and mosses 75 chapter v the history of a lava stream 96 chapter vi an hour with the sun 117 chapter vii an evening among the stars 145 chapter viii little beings from a miniature ocean 172 chapter ix the dartmoor ponies 195 chapter x the magician's dream of ancient days 209 list of illustrations plates photograph of the nebula of orion _frontispiece_ table of coloured spectra plate i. _facing p._ 127 coloured double stars plate ii. _facing p._ 167 woodcuts in the text page partial eclipse of the moon _initial letter_ 1 a boy illustrating the phases of the moon 6 course of the moon in the heavens 8 chart of the moon 10 face of the full moon 11 tycho and his surroundings (from a photograph by de la rue) 13 plan of the peak of teneriffe 15 the crater copernicus 17 the lunar appennines (from a photograph by m.m. henri) 19 the crater plato seen soon after sunrise 20 diagram of total eclipse of the moon 23 boy and microscope _initial letter_ 27 eye-ball seen from the front 30 section of an eye looking at a pencil 31 image of a candle-flame thrown on paper by a lens 33 arrow magnified by a convex lens 35 student's microscope 36 skeleton of a microscope 37 fossil diatoms seen under the microscope 39 an astronomical telescope 41 two skeletons of telescopes 44 the photographic camera 47 kirchhoff's spectroscope 51 passage of rays through the spectroscope 52 a group of fairy-ring mushrooms _initial letter_ 55 three forms of vegetable mould magnified 61 _mucor mucedo_ greatly magnified 63 yeast cells growing under the microscope 65 early stages of the mushroom 67 later stages of the mushroom 68 microscopic structure of mushroom gills 69 a group of cup lichens _initial letter_ 75 examples of lichens from life 77 singe-celled plants growing 78 sections of lichens 81 fructification of a lichen 83 a stem of feathery moss from life 85 moss-leaf magnified 87 _polytrichum commune_, a large hair-moss 88 fructification of a moss 89 sphagnum moss from a devonshire bog 93 surface of a lava-flow _initial letter_ 96 vesuvius as seen in eruption 97 top of vesuvius in 1864 100 diagrammatic section of an active volcano 105 section of a lava-flow 108 volcanic glass with crystallites and microliths 109 volcanic glass with well-developed microliths 110 a piece of dartmoor granite 112 volcanic glass showing large included crystals 115 a total eclipse of the sun _initial letter_ 117 face of the sun projected on a piece of cardboard 120 photograph of the sun's face, taken by mr. selwyn (secchi, _le soleil_) 122 total eclipse of the sun, showing corona and prominences (guillemin, _le ciel_) 124 kirchhoff's experiment on the dark sodium line 128 the spectroscope attached to the telescope for solar work 132 sun-spectrum and prominence spectrum compared 134 red prominences, as drawn by mr. lockyer 1869 136 a quiet sun-spot 140 a tumultuous sun-spot 141 a star-cluster _initial letter_ 145 some constellations seen on looking south in march from six to nine o'clock 148 the chief stars of orion, with aldebaran 149 the trapezium [greek: th] orionis 150 spectrum of orion's nebula and sun-spectrum compared 151 some constellations seen on looking north in march from six to nine o'clock 156 the great bear, showing position of the binary star 157 drifting of the seven stars of charles's wain 159 cassiopeia and the heavenly bodies near 162 [greek: e] lyræ, a double-binary star 166 a seaside pool _initial letter_ 172 a group of seaweeds (natural size) 175 _ulva lactuca_, a piece greatly magnified 176 seaweeds, magnified to show fruits 177 a coralline and sertularian compared 179 _sertularia tenella_ hanging in water 180 _thuricolla folliculata_ and _chilomonas amygdalum_ 182 a group of living diatoms 184 a diatom growing 185 _cydippe pileus_, animal and structure 187 the sea-mat, _flustra foliacea_ 191 diagram of the flustra animal 192 dartmoor ponies _initial letter_ 195 _equus hemionus_, the horse-ass of tartary and tibet 201 przevalsky's wild horse 202 skeleton of an animal of the horse-tribe 206 palæolithic man chipping flint tools _initial letter_ 209 scene in palæolithic times 212 palæolithic relics--needle, tooth, implement 213 mammoth engraved on ivory 216 neolithic implements--hatchet, celt, spindle whorl 219 a burial in neolithic times 221 british relics--coin, bronze celt, and bracelet 223 britons taking refuge in the cave 224 through magic glasses chapter i the magician's chamber by moonlight [illustration] the full moon was shining in all its splendour one lovely august night, as the magician sat in his turret chamber bathed in her pure white beams, which streamed upon him through the open shutter in the wooden dome above. it is true a faint gleam of warmer light shone from below through the open door, for this room was but an offshoot at the top of the building, and on looking down the turret stairs a lecture-room might be seen below where a bright light was burning. very little, however, of this warm glow reached the magician, and the implements of his art around him looked like weird gaunt skeletons as they cast their long shadows across the floor in the moonlight. the small observatory, for such it was, was a circular building with four windows in the walls, and roofed with a wooden dome, so made that it could be shifted round and round by pulling certain cords. one section of this dome was a shutter, which now stood open, and the strip, thus laid bare to the night, was so turned as to face that part of the sky along which the moon was moving. in the centre of the room, with its long tube directed towards the opening, stood the largest magic glass, the telescope, and in the dead stillness of the night, could be heard distinctly the tick-tick of the clockwork, which kept the instrument pointing to the face of the moon, while the room, and all in it, was being carried slowly and steadily onwards by the earth's rotation on its axis. it was only a moderate-sized instrument, about six feet long, mounted on a solid iron pillar firmly fixed to the floor and fitted with the clockwork, the sound of which we have mentioned; yet it looked like a giant as the pale moonlight threw its huge shadow on the wall behind and the roof above. far away from this instrument in one of the windows, all of which were now closed with shutters, another instrument was dimly visible. this was a round iron table, with clawed feet, and upon it, fastened by screws, were three tubes, so arranged that they all pointed towards the centre of the table, where six glass prisms were arranged in a semicircle, each one fixed on a small brass tripod. a strange uncanny-looking instrument this, especially as the prisms caught the edge of the glow streaming up the turret stair, and shot forth faint beams of coloured light on the table below them. yet the magician's pupils thought it still more uncanny and mysterious when their master used it to read the alphabet of light, and to discover by vivid lines even the faintest trace of a metal otherwise invisible to mortal eye. for this instrument was the spectroscope, by which he could break up rays of light and make them tell him from what substances they came. lying around it were other curious prisms mounted in metal rims and fitted with tubes and many strange devices, not to be understood by the uninitiated, but magical in their effect when fixed on to the telescope and used to break up the light of distant stars and nebulæ. compared with these mysterious glasses the photographic camera, standing in the background, with its tall black covering cloth, like a hooded monk, looked comparatively natural and familiar, yet it, too, had puzzling plates and apparatus on the table near it, which could be fitted on to the telescope, so that by their means pictures might be taken even in the dark night, and stars, invisible with the strongest lens, might be forced to write their own story, and leave their image on the plate for after study. all these instruments told of the magician's power in unveiling the secrets of distant space and exploring realms unknown, but in another window, now almost hidden in the shadow, stood a fourth and highly-prized helpmate, which belonged in one sense more to our earth, since everything examined by it had to be brought near, and lie close under its magnifying-glass. yet the microscope too could carry its master into an unseen world, hidden to mortal eye by minuteness instead of by distance. if in the stillness of night the telescope was his most cherished servant and familiar friend, the microscope by day opened out to him the fairyland of nature. as he sat on his high pedestal stool on this summer night with the moonlight full upon him, his whole attention was centred on the telescope, and his mind was far away from that turret-room, wandering into the distant space brought so near to him; for he was waiting to watch an event which brought some new interest every time it took place--a total eclipse of the moon. to-night he looked forward to it eagerly, for it happened that, just as the moon would pass into the shadow of our earth, it would also cross directly in front of a star, causing what is known as an "occultation" of the star, which would disappear suddenly behind the rim of the dark moon, and after a short time flash out on the other side as the satellite went on its way. how he wished as he sat there that he could have shown this sight to all the eager lads whom he was teaching to handle and love his magic glasses. for this magician was not only a student himself, he was a rich man and the founder and principal of a large public school for boys of the artisan class. he had erected a well-planned and handsome building in the midst of the open country, and received there, on terms within the means of their parents, working-lads from all parts of england, who, besides the usual book-learning, received a good technical education in all its branches. and, while he left to other masters the regular school lessons, he kept for himself the intense pleasure of opening the minds of these lads to the wonders of god's universe around them. you had only to pass down the turret stairs, into the large science class-room below, to see at once that a loving hand and heart had furnished it. not only was there every implement necessary for scientific work, but numerous rough diagrams covering the walls showed that labour as well as money had been spent in decorating them. it was a large oblong room, with four windows to the north, and four to the south, in each of which stood a microscope with all the tubes, needles, forceps, knives, etc., necessary for dissecting and preparing objects; and between the windows were open shelves, on which were ranged chemicals of various kinds, besides many strange-looking objects in bottles, which would have amused a trained naturalist, for the lads collected and preserved whatever took their fancy. on some of the tables were photographic plates laid ready for printing off; on others might be seen drawings of the spectrum, made from the small spectroscope fixed at one end of the room; on others lay small direct spectroscopes which the lads could use for themselves. but nowhere was a telescope to be seen. this was not because there were none, for each table had its small hand-telescope, cheap but good. the truth is that each of these instruments had been spirited away into the dormitories that night, and many heads were lying awake on their pillows, listening for the strike of the clock to spring out and see the eclipse begin. [illustration: fig. 1. a boy illustrating the phases of the moon.] a mere glance round the room showed that the moon had been much studied lately. on the black-board was drawn a rough diagram, showing how a boy can illustrate for himself the moon's journey round the earth, by taking a ball and holding it a little above his head at arm's length, while he turns slowly round on his heel in a darkened room before a lighted lamp, or better still before the lens of a magic lantern (fig. 1). the lamp or lens then represents the sun, the ball is the moon, the boy's head is the earth. beginning with the ball between him and the source of light, but either a little above, or a little below the direct line between his eye and it, he will see only the dark side of the ball, and the moon will be on the point of being "new." then as he turns slowly, a thin crescent of light will creep over the side nearest the sun, and by degrees encroach more and more, so that when he has turned through one quarter of the round half the disc will be light. when he has turned another quarter, and has his back to the sun, a full moon will face him. then as he turns on through the third quarter a crescent of darkness creeps slowly over the side away from the sun, and gradually the bright disc is eaten away by shadow till at the end of the third quarter half the disc again only is light; then, when he has turned through another quarter and completed the circle, he faces the light again and has a dark moon before him. but he must take care to keep the moon a little above or a little below his eye at new and full moon. if he brings it exactly on a line with himself and the light at new moon, he will shut off the light from himself and see the dark body of the ball against the light, causing an _eclipse_ of the sun; while if he does the same at full moon his head will cast a shadow on the ball causing an _eclipse_ of the moon. there were other diagrams showing how and why such eclipses do really happen at different times in the moon's path round the earth; but perhaps the most interesting of all was one he had made to explain what so few people understand, namely, that though the moon describes a complete circle round our earth every month, yet she does not describe a circle in space, but a wavy line inwards and outwards across the earth's path round the sun. this is because the earth is moving on all the while, carrying the moon with it, and it is only by seeing it drawn before our eyes that we can realise how it happens. thus suppose, in order to make the dates as simple as possible, that there is a new moon on the 1st of some month. then by the 9th (or roughly speaking in 7¾ days) the moon will have described a quarter of a circle round the earth as shown by the dotted line (fig. 2), which marks her position night after night with regard to us. yet because she is carried onwards all the while by the earth, she will really have passed along the interrupted line between us and the sun. during the next week her quarter of a circle will carry her round behind the earth, so that we see her on the 17th as a full moon, yet her actual movement has been onwards along the interrupted line on the farther side of the earth. during the third week she creeps round another quarter of a circle so as to be in advance of the earth on its yearly journey round the sun, and reaches the end of her third quarter on the 24th. in her last quarter she gradually passes again between the earth and the sun; and though, as regards the earth, she appears to be going back round to the same place where she was at the beginning of the month, and on the 31st is again a dark new moon, yet she has travelled onwards exactly as much as we have, and therefore has really not described a circle in the _heavens_ but a wavy line. [illustration: fig. 2. diagram showing the moon's course during one month. the moon and the earth are both moving onwards in the direction of the arrows. the earth moves along the dark line, the moon along the interrupted line -. the dotted curved line .... shows the circle gradually described by the moon round the earth as they move onwards.] near to this last diagram hung another, well loved by the lads, for it was a large map of the _face_ of the moon, that is of the side which is _always_ turned towards us, because the moon turns once on her axis during the month that she is travelling round the earth. on this map were marked all the different craters, mountains, plains and shining streaks which appear on the moon's face; while round the chart were pictures of some of these at sunrise and sunset on the moon, or during the long day of nearly a fortnight which each part of the face enjoys in its turn. [illustration: fig. 3. chart of the moon. craters- 1 tycho. 4 aristarchus. 7 plato. 10 petavius. 2 copernicus. 5 eratosthenes. 8 eudoxus. 11 ptolemy. 3 kepler. 6 archimedes. 9 aristotle. grey plains formerly believed to be seas- a mare crisium. o mare imbrium. c ---frigoris. q oceanus procellarum. g ---tranquillitatis. x mare foecunditatis. h ---serenitatis. t ---humorum.] by studying this map, and the pictures, they were able, even in their small telescopes, to recognise tycho and copernicus, and the mountains of the moon, after they had once grown accustomed to the strange changes in their appearance which take place as daylight or darkness creeps over them. they could not however pick out more than some of the chief points. only the magician himself knew every crater and ridge under all its varying lights, and now, as he waited for the eclipse to begin, he turned to a lad who stood behind him, almost hidden in the dark shadow--the one fortunate boy who had earned the right to share this night's work. [illustration: fig. 3_a_. the full moon. (from ball's _starland_.)] "we have still half an hour, alwyn," said he, "before the eclipse will begin, and i can show you the moon's face well to-night. take my place here and look at her while i point out the chief features. see first, there are the grey plains (a, c, g, etc.) lying chiefly in the lower half of the moon. you can often see these on a clear night with the naked eye, but you must remember that then they appear more in the upper part, because in the telescope we see the moon's face inverted or upside down. "these plains were once thought to be oceans, but are now proved to be dry flat regions situated at different levels on the moon, and much like what deserts and prairies would appear on our earth if seen from the same distance. looking through the telescope, is it not difficult to imagine how people could ever have pictured them as a man's face? but not so difficult to understand how some ancient nations thought the moon was a kind of mirror, in which our earth was reflected as in a looking-glass, with its seas and rivers, mountains and valleys; for it does look something like a distant earth, and as the light upon it is really reflected from the sun it was very natural to compare it to a looking-glass. "next cast your eye over the hundreds of craters, some large, others quite small, which cover the moon's face with pitted marks, like a man with small-pox; while a few of the larger rings look like holes made in a window-pane, where a stone has passed through, for brilliant shining streaks radiate from them on all sides like the rays of a star, covering a large part of the moon. brightest of all these starred craters is tycho, which you will easily find near the top of the moon (i, fig. 3), for you have often seen it in the small telescope. how grand it looks to-night in the full moon (fig. 3_a_)! it is true you see all the craters better when the moon is in her quarters, because the light falls sideways upon them and the shadows are more sharply defined; yet even at the full the bright ray of light on tycho's rim marks out the huge cavity, and you can even see faintly the magnificent terraces which run round the cup within, one below the other." [illustration: fig. 4. tycho and his surroundings. (from a photograph of the moon taken by mr. de la rue, 1863.)] "this cavity measures fifty-four miles across, so that if it could be moved down to our earth it would cover by far the largest part of devonshire, or that portion from bideford on the north, to the sea on the south, and from the borders of cornwall on the east, to exeter on the west, and it is 17,000 feet or nearly three miles in depth. even in the brilliant light of the full moon this enormous cup is dark compared to the bright rim, but it is much better seen in about the middle of the second quarter, when the rising sun begins to light up one side while the other is in black night. the drawing on the wall (fig. 4), which is taken from an actual photograph of the moon's face, shows tycho at this time surrounded by the numerous other craters which cover this part of the moon. you may recognise him by the gleaming peak in the centre of the cup, and by his bright rim which is so much more perfect than those of his companions. the gleaming peak is the top of a steep cone or hill rising up 6000 feet, or more than a mile from the base of the crater, so that even the summit is about two miles below the rim. "there is one very interesting point in tycho, however, which is seen at its very best at full moon. look outside the bright rim and you will see that from the shadow which surrounds it there spring on all sides those strange brilliant streaks (see fig. 3_a_) which i spoke of just now. there are others quite as bright, or even brighter, round other craters, copernicus (fig. 6), kepler, and aristarchus, lower down on the right-hand side of the moon; but these of tycho are far the most widely spread, covering almost all the top of the face. "what are these streaks? we do not know. during the second quarter of the moon, when the sun is rising slowly upon tycho, lighting up his peak and showing the crater beautifully divided into a bright cup in the curve to the right, while a dense shadow lies in the left hollow, these streaks are only faint, and among the many craters around (see fig. 4) you might even have some difficulty at first in finding the well-known giant. but as the sun rises higher and higher they begin to appear, and go on increasing in brightness till they shine with that wonderfully silvery light you see now in the full moon." [illustration: fig. 5. plan of the peak of teneriffe, showing how it resembles a lunar crater. (a. geikie.)] "here is a problem for you young astronomers to solve, as we learn more and more how to use the telescope with all its new appliances." the crater itself is not so difficult to explain, for we have many like it on our earth, only not nearly so large. in fact, we might almost say that our earthly volcanoes differ from those in the moon only by their smaller size and by forming _mountains_ with the crater or cup on the top; while the lunar craters lie flat on the surface of the moon, the hollow of the cup forming a depression below it. the peak of teneriffe (fig. 5), which is a dormant volcano, is a good copy in miniature on our earth of many craters on the moon. the large plain surrounded by a high rocky wall, broken in places by lava streams, the smaller craters nestling in the cup, and the high peak or central crater rising up far above the others, are so like what we see on the moon that we cannot doubt that the same causes have been at work in both cases, even though the space enclosed in the rocky wall of teneriffe measures only eight miles across, while that of tycho measures fifty-four. "but of the streaks we have no satisfactory explanation. they pass alike over plain and valley and mountain, cutting even across other craters without swerving from their course. the astronomer nasmyth thought they were the remains of cracks made when the volcanoes were active, and filled with molten lava from below, as water oozes up through ice-cracks on a pond. but this explanation is not quite satisfactory, for the lava, forcing its way through, would cool in ridges which ought to cast a shadow in sunlight. these streaks, however, not only cast no shadow, as you can see at the full moon but when the sun shines sideways upon them in the new or waning moon they disappear as we have seen altogether. thus the streaks, so brilliant at full moon in tycho, copernicus, kepler, and aristarchus, remain a puzzle to astronomers still." [illustration: fig. 6. the crater copernicus. (as given in herschel's _astronomy_, from a drawing taken in a reflecting telescope of 20 feet focal length.)] "we cannot examine these three last-named craters well to-night with the full sun upon them; but mark their positions well, for copernicus, at least, you must examine on the first opportunity, when the sun is rising upon it in the moon's second quarter. it is larger even than tycho, measuring fifty-six miles across, and has a hill in the centre with many peaks; while outside, great spurs or ridges stretch in all directions sometimes for more than a hundred miles, and between these are scattered innumerable minute craters. but the most striking feature in it is the ring, which is composed inside the crater of magnificent terraces divided by deep ravines. these terraces are in some ways very like those of the great crater of teneriffe, and astronomers can best account for them by supposing that this immense crater was once filled with a lake of molten lava rising, cooling at the edges, and then falling again, leaving the solid ridge behind. the streaks are also beautifully shown in copernicus (see fig. 6), but, as in tycho, they fade away as the sun sets on the crater, and only reappear gradually as midday approaches. "and now, looking a little to the left of copernicus, you will see that grand range of mountains, the lunar apennines (fig. 7), which stretches 400 miles across the face of the moon. other mountain ranges we could find, but none so like mountains on our own globe as these, with their gentle sunny slope down to a plain on the left, and steep perpendicular cliffs on the right. the highest peak in this range, called huyghens, rises to the height of 21,000 feet, higher than chimborazo in the andes. other mountains on the moon, such as those called the caucasus, south of the apennines, are composed of disconnected peaks, while others again stand as solitary pyramids upon the plains." [illustration: fig. 7. the lunar apennines. (copied by kind permission of mm. henri from part of a magnificent photograph taken by them, march 29, 1890, at the paris observatory.)] "but we must hasten on, for i want you to observe those huge walled crater-plains which have no hill in the middle, but smooth steel-grey centres shining like mirrors in the moonlight. one of these, called archimedes, you will find just below the lunar apennines (figs. 3 and 7), and another called plato, which is sixty miles broad, is still lower down the moon's face (figs. 3 and 8). the centres of these broad circles are curiously smooth and shining like quicksilver, with minute dots here and there which are miniature craters, while the walls are rugged and crowned with turret-shaped peaks." [illustration: fig. 8. the crater plato as seen soon after sunrise. (after neison.)] "it is easy to picture to oneself how these may once have been vast seas of lava, not surging as in copernicus, and heaving up as it cooled into one great central cone, but seething as molten lead does in a crucible, little bubbles bursting here and there into minute craters; and this is the explanation given of them by astronomers. "and now that you have seen the curious rugged face of the moon and its craters and mountains, you will want to know how all this has come about. we can only form theories on the point, except that everything shows that heat and volcanoes have in some way done the work, though no one has ever yet clearly proved that volcanic eruptions have taken place in our time. we must look back to ages long gone by for those mighty volcanic eruptions which hurled out stones and ashes from the great crater of tycho, and formed the vast seas of lava in copernicus and plato. "and when these were over, and the globe was cooling down rapidly, so that mountain ranges were formed by the wrinkling and rending of the surface, was there then any life on the moon? who can tell? our magic glasses can reveal what now is, so far as distance will allow; but what has been, except where the rugged traces remain, we shall probably never know. what we now see is a dead worn-out planet, on which we cannot certainly trace any activity except that of heat in the past. that there is no life there now, at any rate of the kind on our own earth, we are almost certain; first, because we can nowhere find traces of water, clouds, nor even mist, and without moisture no life like ours is possible; and secondly, because even if there is, as perhaps there may be, a thin ocean of gas round the moon there is certainly no atmosphere such as surrounds our globe. "one fact which proves this is, that there are no half-shadows on the moon. if you look some night at the mountains and craters during her first and second quarters, you will be startled to see what heavy shadows they cast, not with faint edges dying away into light, but sharp and hard (see figs. 6-8), so that you pass, as it were by one step, from shadow to sunshine. this in itself is enough to show that there is no air to scatter the sunlight and spread it into the edges of the shade as happens on our earth; but there are other and better proofs. one of these is, that during an eclipse of the sun there is no reflection of his light round the dark moon as there would be if the moon had an atmosphere; another is that the spectroscope, that wonderful instrument which shows us invisible gases, gives no hint of air around the moon; and another is the sudden disappearance or _occultation_ of a star behind the moon, such as i hope to see in a few minutes. "see here! take the small hand telescope and turn it on to the moon's face while i take my place at the large one, and i will tell you what to look for. you know that at sunset we see the sun for some time after it has dipped below the horizon, because the rays of light which come from it are bent in our atmosphere and brought to our eyes, forming in them the image of the sun which is already gone. now in a short time the moon which we are watching will be darkened by our earth coming between it and the sun, and while it is quite dark it will pass over a little bright star. in fact to us the star will appear to set behind the dark moon as the sun sets below the horizon, and if the moon had an atmosphere like ours, the rays from the star would be bent in it and reach our eyes after the star was gone, so that it would only disappear gradually. astronomers have always observed, however, that the star is lost to sight quite suddenly, showing that there is no ocean of air round the moon to bend the light-rays." [illustration: fig. 9. diagram of total eclipse of the moon. s, sun. e, earth. m, moon passing into the earth's shadow and passing out at m´. r, r´, lines meeting at a point u, u´ behind the earth and enclosing a space within which all the direct rays of the sun are intercepted by the earth, causing a black darkness or _umbra_. r, p and r´, p´, lines marking a space within which, behind the earth, part of the sun's rays are cut off, causing a half-shadow or _penumbra_, p, p´. _a_, _a_, points where a few of the sun's rays are bent or refracted in the earth's atmosphere, so that they pass along the path marked by the dotted lines and shed a lurid light on the sun's face.] here the magician paused, for a slight dimness on the lower right-hand side of the moon warned him that she was entering into the _penumbra_ or half-shadow (see fig. 9) caused by the earth cutting off part of the sun's rays; and soon a deep black shadow creeping over aristarchus and plato showed that she was passing into that darker space or _umbra_ where the body of the earth is completely between her and the sun and cuts off all his rays. all, did i say? no! not all. for now was seen a beautiful sight, which would prove to any one who saw our earth from a great distance that it has a deep ocean of air round it. it was a clear night, with a cloudless sky, and as the deep shadow crept slowly over the moon's face, covering the lunar apennines and copernicus, and stealing gradually across the brilliant streaks of tycho till the crater itself was swallowed up in darkness, a strange lurid light began to appear. the part of the moon which was eclipsed was not wholly dark, but tinted with a very faint bluish-green light, which changed almost imperceptibly, as the eclipse went on, to rose-red, and then to a fiery copper-coloured glow as the moon crept entirely into the shadow and became all dark. the lad watching through his small telescope noted this weird light, and wondered, as he saw the outlines of the apennines and of several craters dimly visible by it, though the moon was totally eclipsed. he noted, but was silent. he would not disturb the principal, for the important moment was at hand, as this dark copper-coloured moon, now almost invisible, drew near to the star over which it was to pass. this little star, really a glorious sun billions of miles away behind the moon, was perhaps the centre of another system of worlds as unknown to us as we to them, and the fact of our tiny moon crossing between it and our earth would matter as little as if a grain of sand was blown across the heavens. yet to the watchers it was a great matter--would the star give any further clue to the question of an atmosphere round the moon? would its light linger even for a moment, like the light of the setting sun? nearer and nearer came the dark moon; the star shone brilliantly against its darkness; one second and it was gone. the long looked-for moment had passed, and the magician turned from his instrument with a sigh. "i have learnt nothing new, alwyn," said he, "but at least it is satisfactory to have seen for ourselves the proof that there is no perceptible atmosphere round the moon. we need wait no longer, for before the star reappears on the other side the eclipse will be passing away." "but, master," burst forth the lad, now the silence was broken, "tell me why did that strange light of many tints shine upon the dark moon?" "did you notice it, alwyn?" said the principal, with a pleased smile. "then our evening's work is not lost, for you have made a real observation for yourself. that light was caused by the few rays of the sun which grazed the edge of our earth passing through the ocean of air round it (see fig. 9). there they were refracted or bent, and so were thrown within the shadow cast by our earth, and fell upon the moon. if there were such a person as a 'man in the moon,' that lurid light would prove to him that our earth has an atmosphere. the cause of the tints is the same which gives us our sunset colours, because as the different coloured waves which make white light are absorbed one by one, passing through the denser atmosphere, the blue are cut off first, then the green, then the yellow, till only the orange and red rays reached the centre of the shadow, where the moon was darkest. but this is too difficult a subject to begin at midnight." so saying, he lighted his lamp, and covering the object-glass of his telescope with its pasteboard cap, detached the instrument from the clockwork, and the master and his pupil went down the turret stairs and past through the room below. as they did so they heard in the distance a scuffling noise like that of rats in the wall. a smile passed over the face of the principal, for he knew that his young pupils, who had been making their observations in the gallery above, were hurrying back to their beds. chapter ii magic glasses, and how to use them [illustration] the sun shone brightly into the science class-room at mid-day. no gaunt shadows nor ghostly moonlight now threw a spell on the magic chamber above. the instruments looked bright and business-like, and the principal, moving amongst them, heard the subdued hum of fifty or more voices rising from below. it was the lecture hour, and the subject for the day was, "magic glasses, and how to use them." as the large clock in the hall sounded twelve, the principal gathered up a few stray lenses and prisms he had selected, and passed down the turret stair to his platform. behind him were arranged his diagrams, before him on the table stood various instruments, and the rows of bright faces beyond looked up with one consent as the hum quieted down and he began his lecture. "i have often told you, boys, have i not? that i am a magician. in my chamber near the sky i work spells as did the magicians of old, and by the help of my magic glasses i peer into the secrets of nature. thus i read the secrets of the distant stars; i catch the light of wandering comets, and make it reveal its origin; i penetrate into the whirlpools of the sun; i map out the craters of the moon. nor can the tiniest being on earth hide itself from me. where others see only a drop of muddy water, that water brought into my magic chamber teems with thousands of active bodies, darting here and whirling there amid a meadow of tiny green plants floating in the water. nay, my inquisitive glass sees even farther than this, for with it i can watch the eddies of water and green atoms going on in each of these tiny beings as they feed and grow. again, if i want to break into the secrets of the rock at my feet, i have only to put a thin slice of it under my microscope to trace every crystal and grain; or, if i wish to learn still more, i subject it to fiery heat, and through the magic prisms of my spectroscope i read the history of the very substances of which it is composed. if i wish to study the treasures of the wide ocean, the slime from a rock-pool teems with fairy forms darting about in the live box imprisoned in a crystal home. if some distant stars are invisible even in the giant glasses of my telescope, i set another power to work, and make them print their own image on a photographic plate and so reveal their presence. "all these things you have seen through my magic glasses, and i promised you that one day i would explain to you how they work and do my bidding. but i must warn you that you must give all your attention; there is no royal road to my magician's power. every one can attain to it, but only by taking trouble. you must open your eyes and ears, and use your intelligence to test carefully what your senses show you. "we have only to consider a little to see that we depend entirely upon our senses for our knowledge of the outside world. all kinds of things are going on around us, about which we know nothing, because our eyes are not keen enough to see, and our ears not sharp enough to hear them. most of all we enjoy and study nature through our eyes, those windows which let in to us the light of heaven, and with it the lovely sights and scenes of earth; and which are no ordinary windows, but most wonderful structures adapted for conveying images to the brain. they are of very different power in different people, so that a long-sighted person sees a lovely landscape where a short-sighted one sees only a confused mist; while a short-sighted person can see minute things close to the eye better than a long-sighted one." [illustration: fig. 10. eye-ball seen from the front. (after le gros clark.) _w_, white of eye. _i_, iris. _p_, pupil.] "let us try to understand this before we go on to artificial glasses, for it will help us to explain how these glasses show us many things we could never see without them. here are two pictures of the human eyeball (figs. 10 and 11), one as it appears from the front, and the other as we should see the parts if we cut an eyeball across from the front to the back. from these drawings we see that the eyeball is round; it only looks oval, because it is seen through the oval slit of the eyelids. it is really a hard, shining, white ball with a thick nerve cord (_on_, fig. 11) passing out at the back, and a dark glassy mound _c_, _c_ in the centre of the white in front. in this mound we can easily distinguish two parts--first, the coloured _iris_ or elastic curtain (_i_, fig. 10); and secondly, the dark spot or pupil _p_ in the centre. the iris is the part which gives the eye its colour; it is composed of a number of fibres, the outer ones radiating towards the centre, the inner ones forming a ring round the pupil; and behind these fibres is a coat of dark pigment or colouring matter, blue in some people, grey, brown, or black in others. when the light is very strong, and would pain the nerves inside if too much entered the pupil or window of the eye, then the ring of the iris contracts so as partly to close the opening. when there is very little light, and it is necessary to let in as much as possible, the ring expands and the pupil grows large. the best way to observe this is to look at a cat's eyes in the dusk, and then bring her near to a bright light; for the iris of a cat's eye contracts and expands much more than ours does." [illustration: fig. 11. section of an eye looking at a pencil. (adapted from kirke.) _c_, _c_, cornea. _w_, white of eye. _cm_, ciliary muscle. _a_, _a_, aqueous humour. _i_, _i_, iris. _l_, _l_, lens. _r_, _r_, retina. _on_, optic nerve. 1, 2, pencil. 1´, 2´, image of pencil on the retina.] "now look at the second diagram (fig. 11) and notice the chief points necessary in seeing. first you will observe that the pupil is not a mere hole; it is protected by a curved covering _c_. this is the cornea, a hard, perfectly transparent membrane, looking much like a curved watch-glass. behind this is a small chamber filled with a watery fluid _a_, called the aqueous humour, and near the back of this chamber is the dark ring or iris _i_, which you saw from the front through the cornea and fluid. close behind the iris again is the natural 'magic glass' of our eye, the crystalline lens _l_, which is composed of perfectly transparent fibres and has two rounded or convex surfaces like an ordinary magnifying glass. this lens rests on a cushion of a soft jelly-like substance _v_, called the vitreous humour, which fills the dark chamber or cavity of the eyeball and keeps it in shape, so that the retina _r_, which lines the chamber, is kept at a proper distance from the lens. this retina is a transparent film of very sensitive nerves; it forms a screen at the back of the chamber, and has a coating of very dark pigment or colouring matter behind it. lastly, the nerves of the retina all meet in a bundle, called the optic nerve, and passing out of the eyeball at a point _on_, go to the brain. these are the chief parts we use in seeing; now how do we use them? "suppose that a pencil is held in front of the eye at the distance at which we see small objects comfortably. light is reflected from all parts of the surface of the pencil, and as the rays spread, a certain number enter the pupil of the eye. we will follow only two cones of light coming from the points 1 and 2 on the diagram fig. 11. these you see enter the eye, each widely spread over the cornea _c_. they are bent in a little by this curved covering, and by the liquid behind it, while the iris cuts off the rays near the edges of the lens, which would be too much bent to form a clear image. the rest of the rays fall upon the lens _l_. in passing through this lens they are very much bent (or _refracted_) towards each other, so much so that by the time they reach the end of the dark chamber _v_, each cone of light has come to a point or focus 1´, 2´, and as rays of this kind have come from every point all over the pencil, exactly similar points are formed on the retina, and a real picture of the pencil is formed there between 1´ and 2´." [illustration: fig. 12. image of a candle-flame thrown on paper by a lens.] "we will make a very simple and pretty experiment to illustrate this. darkening the room i light a candle, take a square of white paper in my hand, and hold a simple magnifying glass between the two (see fig. 12) about three inches away from the candle. then i shift the paper nearer and farther behind the lens, till we get a clear image of the candle-flame upon it. this is exactly what happens in our eye. i have drawn a dotted line _c_ round the lens and the paper on the diagram to represent the eyeball in which the image of the candle-flame would be on the retina instead of on the piece of paper. the first point you will notice is that the candle-flame is upside down on the paper, and if you turn back to fig. 11 you will see why, for it is plain that the cones of light _cross_ in the lens _l_, 1 going to 1´ and 2 to 2´. every picture made on our retina is upside down. "but it is not there that we see it. as soon as the points of light from the pencil strike upon the retina, the thrill passes on along the optic nerve _on_, through the back of the eye to the brain; and our mind, following back the rays exactly as they have come through the lens, sees a pencil, outside the eye, right way upwards. "this is how we see with our eyes, which adjust themselves most beautifully to our needs. for example, not only is the iris always ready to expand or contract according as we need more or less light, but there is a special muscle, called the ciliary muscle (_cm_, fig. 11), which alters the lens for us to see things far or near. in all, or nearly all, perfect eyes the lens is flatter in front than behind, and this enables us to see things far off by bringing the rays from them exactly to a focus on the retina. but when we look at nearer things the rays require to be more bent or refracted, so without any conscious effort on our part this ciliary muscle contracts and allows the lens to bulge out slightly in front. instantly we have a stronger magnifier, and the rays are brought to the right focus on the retina, so that a clear and full-size image of the near object is formed. how little we think, as we turn our eyes from one thing to another, and observe, now the distant hills, now the sheep feeding close by; or, as night draws on, gaze into limitless space and see the stars millions upon millions of miles away, that at every moment the focus of our eye is altering, the iris is contracting or expanding, and myriads of images are being formed one after the other in that little dark chamber, through which pass all the scenes of the outer world! "yet even this wonderful eye cannot show us everything. some see farther than others, some see more minutely than others, according as the lens of the eye is flatter in one person and more rounded in another. but the most long-sighted person could never have discovered the planet neptune, more than 2700 millions of miles distant from us, nor could the keenest-sighted have known of the existence of those minute and beautiful little plants, called diatoms, which live around us wherever water is found, and form delicate flint skeletons so infinitesimally small that thousands of millions go to form one cubic inch of the stone called tripoli, found at bilin in bohemia." [illustration: fig. 13. arrow magnified by a convex lens. _a_, _b_, real arrow. c, d, magnifying-glass. a, b, enlarged image of the arrow.] "it is here that our 'magic glasses' come to our assistance, and reveal to us what was before invisible. we learnt just now that we see near things by the lens of our eye becoming more rounded in front; but there comes a point beyond which the lens cannot bulge any more, so that when a thing is very tiny, and would have to be held very close to the eye for us to see it, the lens can no longer collect the rays to a focus, so we see nothing but a blur. more than 800 years ago an arabian, named alhazen, explained why rounded or convex glasses make things appear larger when placed before the eye. this glass which i hold in my hand is a simple magnifying-glass, such as we used for focusing the candle-flame. it bends the rays inwards from any small object (see the arrow _a_, _b_, fig. 13) so that the lens of our eye can use them, and then, as we follow out the rays in straight lines to the place where we see clearly (at a, b), every point of the object is magnified, and we not only see it much larger, but every mark upon it is much more distinct. you all know how the little shilling magnifying-glasses you carry show the most lovely and delicate structures in flowers, on the wings of butterflies, on the head of a bee or fly, and, in fact, in all minute living things." [illustration: fig. 14. student's microscope. _ep_, eye-piece. _o_, _g_, object-glass.] [illustration: fig. 15. skeleton of a microscope, showing how an object is magnified. _o_, _l_, object-lens. _e_, _g_, eye-glass. _s_, _s_, spicule. _s´_, _s´_, magnified image of same in the tube. s, s, image again enlarged by the lens of the eye-piece.] "but this is only our first step. those diatoms we spoke of just now will only look like minute specks under even the strongest magnifying-glass. so we pass on to use two extra lenses to assist our eyes, and come to this compound microscope (fig. 14) through which i have before now shown you the delicate markings on shells which were themselves so minute that you could not see them with the naked eye. now we have to discover how the microscope performs this feat. going back again for a minute to our candle and magnifying-glass (fig. 12), you will find that the nearer you put the lens to the candle the farther away you will have to put the paper to get a clear image. when in a microscope we put a powerful lens _o_, _l_ close down to a very minute object, say a spicule of a flint sponge _s_, _s_, quite invisible to the unaided eye, the rays from this spicule are brought to a focus a long way behind it at _s´_, _s´_, making an enlarged image because the lines of light have been diverging ever since they crossed in the lens. if you could put a piece of paper at _s´_ _s´_, as you did in the candle experiment, you would see the actual image of the magnified spicule upon it. but as these points of light are only in an empty tube, they pass on, spreading out again from the image, as they did before from the spicule. then another convex lens or eye-glass _e_, _g_ is put at the top of the microscope at the proper distance to bend these rays so that they enter our eye in nearly parallel lines, exactly as we saw in the ordinary magnifying-glass (fig. 13), and our crystalline lens can then bring them to a focus on our retina. "by this time the spicule has been twice magnified; or, in other words, the rays of light coming from it have been twice bent towards each other, so that when our eye follows them out in straight lines they are widely spread, and we see every point of light so clearly that all the spots and markings on this minute spicule are as clear as if it were really as large as it looks to us. "this is simply the principle of the microscope. when you come to look at your own instruments, though they are very ordinary ones, you will find that the object-glass _o_, _l_ is made of three lenses, flat on the side nearest the tube, and each lens is composed of two kinds of glass in order to correct the unequal refraction of the rays, and prevent fringes of colour appearing at the edge of the lens. then again the eye-piece will be a short tube with a lens at each end, and halfway between them a black ledge will be seen inside the tube which acts like the iris of our eye (_i_, fig. 11) and cuts off the rays passing through the edges of the lens. all these are devices to correct faults in the microscope which our eye corrects for itself, and they have enabled opticians to make very powerful lenses. "look now at the diagram (fig. 16) showing a group of diatoms which you can see under the microscope after the lecture. notice the lovely patterns, the delicate tracery, and the fine lines on the diatoms shown there. yet each of these minute flint skeletons, if laid on a piece of glass by itself, would be quite invisible to the naked eye, while hundreds of them together only look like a faint mist on the slide on which they lie. nor are they even here shown as much magnified as they might be; under a stronger power we should see those delicate lines on the diatoms broken up into minute round cups." [illustration: fig. 16. fossil diatoms seen under the microscope. the largest of these is an almost imperceptible speck to the naked eye.] "is it not wonderful and delightful to think that we are able to add in this way to the power of our eyes, till it seems as if there were no limit to the hidden beauties of the minute forms of our earth, if only we can discover them? "but our globe does not stand alone in the universe, and we want not only to learn all about everything we find upon it, but also to look out into the vast space around us and discover as much as we can about the myriads of suns and planets, comets and meteorites, star-mists and nebulæ, which are to be found there. even with the naked eye we can admire the grand planet saturn, which is more than 800 millions of miles away, and this in itself is very marvellous. who would have thought that our tiny crystalline lens would be able to catch and focus rays, sent all this enormous distance, so as actually to make a picture on our retina of a planet, which, like the moon, is only sending back to us the light of the sun? for, remember, the rays which come to us from saturn must have travelled twice 800 millions of miles--884 millions from the sun to the planet, and less or more from the planet back to us, according to our position at the time. but this is as nothing when compared to the enormous distances over which light travels from the stars to us. even the nearest star we know of, is at least twenty _millions_ of _millions_ of miles away, and the light from it, though travelling at the rate of 186,300 miles in a second, takes four years and four months to reach us, while the light from others, which we can see without a telescope, is between twenty and thirty years on its road. does not the thought fill us with awe, that our little eye should be able to span such vast distances? "but we are not yet nearly at the end of our wonder, for the same power which devised our eye gave us also the mind capable of inventing an instrument which increases the strength of that eye till we can actually see stars so far off that their light takes _two thousand years_ coming to our globe. if the microscope delights us in helping us to see things invisible without it, because they are so small, surely the telescope is fascinating beyond all other magic glasses when we think that it brings heavenly bodies, thousands of billions of miles away, so close to us that we can examine them." [illustration: fig. 17. an astronomical telescope. _ep_, eye-piece. _og_, object-glass. _f_, finder.] "a telescope (fig. 17) can, like the microscope, be made of only two glasses: an object-glass to form an image in the tube and a magnifying eye-piece to enlarge it. but there is this difference, that the object lens of a microscope is put close down to a minute object, so that the rays fall upon it at a wide angle, and the image formed in the tube is very much larger than the object outside. in the telescope, on the contrary, the thing we look at is far off, so that the rays fall on the object-glass at such a very narrow angle as to be practically parallel, and the image in the tube is of course _very, very_ much smaller than the house, or church, or planet it pictures. what the object-glass of the telescope does for us, is to bring a small _real image_ of an object very far off close to us in the tube of the telescope so that we can examine it. "think for a moment what this means. imagine that star we spoke of (p. 41), whose light, travelling 186,300 miles in one second, still takes 2000 years to reach us. picture the tiny waves of light crossing the countless billions of miles of space during those two thousand years, and reaching us so widely spread out that the few faint rays which strike our eye are quite useless, and for us that star has no existence; we cannot see it. then go and ask the giant telescope, by turning the object-glass in the direction where that star lies in infinite space. the widespread rays are collected and come to a minute bright image in the dark tube. you put the eye-piece to this image, and there, under your eye, is a shining point: this is the image of the star, which otherwise would be lost to you in the mighty distance. "can any magic tale be more marvellous, or any thought grander, or more sublime than this? from my little chamber, by making use of the laws of light, which are the same wherever we turn, we can penetrate into depths so vast that we are not able even to measure them, and bring back unseen stars to tell us the secrets of the mighty universe. as far as the stars are concerned, whether we see them or not depends entirely upon the number of rays collected by the object-glass; for at such enormous distances the rays have no angle that we can measure, and magnify as you will, the brightest star only remains a point of light. it is in order to collect enough rays that astronomers have tried to have larger and larger object-glasses; so that while a small good hand telescope, such as you use, may have an object-glass measuring only an inch and a quarter across, some of the giant telescopes have lenses of two and a half feet, or thirty inches, diameter. these enormous lenses are very difficult to make and manage, and have many faults, therefore astronomical telescopes are often made with curved mirrors to _reflect_ the rays, and bring them to a focus instead of _refracting_ them as curved lenses do. "we see, then, that one very important use of the telescope is to bring objects into view which otherwise we would never see; for, as i have already said, though we bring the stars into sight, we cannot magnify them. but whenever an object is near enough for the rays to fall even at a very small perceptible angle on the object-glass, then we can magnify them; and the longer the telescope, and the stronger the eye-piece, the more the object is magnified. [illustration: fig. 18. skeletons of telescopes. a, a one-foot telescope with a three-inch eye-piece. b, a two-foot telescope with a three-inch eye-piece. _e_, _p_, eye-piece. _o_, _g_, object-glass. _r_, _r_, rays which enter the telescopes and crossing at _x_ form an image at _i_, _i_, which is magnified by the lens _e_, _p_. the angles _r_, _x_, _r_ and _i_, _x_, _i_ are the same. in a the angle _i_, _o_, _i_ is four times greater than that of _i_, _x_, _i_. in b it is eight times greater.] "i want you to understand the meaning of this, for it is really very simple, only it requires a little thought. here are skeleton drawings of two telescopes (fig. 18), one double the length of the other. let us suppose that two people are using them to look at an arrow on a weathercock a long distance off. the rays of light _r_, _r_ from the two ends of the arrow will enter both telescopes at the same angle _r_, _x_, _r_, cross in the lens, and pass on at _exactly the same angle_ into the tubes. so far all is alike, but now comes the difference. in the short telescope a the object-glass must be of such a curve as to bring the cones of light in each ray to a focus at a distance of _one foot_ behind it,[1] and there a small image _i_, _i_ of the arrow is formed. but b being twice the length, allows the lens to be less curved, and the image to be formed _two feet_ behind the object-glass; and as the rays _r_, _r_ have been _diverging_ ever since they crossed at _x_, the real image of the arrow formed at _i_, _i_ is twice the size of the same image in a. nevertheless, if you could put a piece of paper at _i_, _i_ in both telescopes, and look through the _object-glass_ (which you cannot actually do, because your head would block out the rays), the arrow would appear the same size in both telescopes, because one would be twice as far off from you as the other, and the angle _i_, _x_, _i_ is the same in both." [1] in our fig. 18 the distances are inches instead of feet, but the proportions are the same. "but by going to the proper end of the telescope you can get quite near the image, and can see and magnify it, if you put a strong lens to collect the rays from it to a focus. this is the use of the eye-piece, which in our diagram is placed at a quarter of a foot or three inches from the image in both telescopes. now that we are close to the images, the divergence of the points _i_, _i_ makes a great difference. in the small telescope, in which the image is only _one foot_ behind the object-glass, the eye-piece being a quarter of a foot from it, is four times nearer, so the angle _i_, _o_, _i_ is four times the angle _i_, _x_, _i_, and the man looking through it sees the image magnified _four times_. but in the longer telescope the image is _two feet_ behind the lens, while the eye-piece is, as before, a quarter of a foot from it. thus the eyepiece is now eight times nearer, so the angle _i_, _o_, _i_ is eight times the angle _i_, _x_, _i_, and the observer sees the image magnified _eight times_. "in real telescopes, where the difference between the focal length of the object-glass and that of the eye-glass can be made enormously greater, the magnifying power is quite startling, only the object-glass must be large, so as to collect enough rays to bear spreading widely. even in your small telescopes, with a focus of eighteen inches, and an object-glass measuring one and a quarter inch across, we can put on a quarter of an inch eye-piece, and so magnify seventy-two times; while in my observatory telescope, eight feet or ninety-six inches long, an eye-piece of half an inch magnifies 192 times, and i can put on a 1/8-inch eye-piece and magnify 768 times! and so we can go on lengthening the focus of the object-glass and shortening the focus of the eye-piece, till in lord rosse's gigantic fifty-six-foot telescope, in which the image is fifty-four feet (648 inches) behind the object-glass, an eye-piece one-eighth of an inch from the image magnifies 5184 times! these giant telescopes, however, require an enormous object-glass or mirror, for the points of light are so spread out in making the large image that it is very faint unless an enormous number of rays are collected. lord rosse's telescope has a reflecting mirror measuring six feet across, and a man can walk upright in the telescope tube. the most powerful telescope yet made is that at the lick observatory, on mount hamilton, in california. it is fifty-six and a half feet long, the object-lens measures thirty-six inches across. a star seen through this telescope appears 2000 times as bright as when seen with the naked eye. "you need not, however, wait for an opportunity to look through giant telescopes, for my small student's telescope, only four feet long, which we carry out on to the lawn, will show you endless unseen wonders; while your hand telescopes, and even a common opera-glass, will show many features on the face of the moon, and enable you to see the crescent of venus, jupiter's moons, and saturn's rings, besides hundreds of stars unseen by the naked eye. "of course you will understand that fig. 18 only shows the _principle_ of the telescope. in all good instruments the lenses and other parts are more complicated; and in a terrestrial telescope, for looking at objects on the earth, another lens has to be put in to turn them right way up again. in looking at the sky it does not matter which way up we see a planet or a star, so the second glass is not needed, and we lose light by using it. "we have now three magic glasses to work for us--the magnifying-glass, the microscope, and the telescope. besides these, however, we have two other helpers, if possible even more wonderful. these are the photographic camera and the spectroscope." [illustration: fig. 19. photographic camera. _l_, _l_, lenses. _s_, _s_, screen cutting off diverging rays. _c_, _c_, sliding box. _p_, _p_, picture formed.] "now that we thoroughly understand the use of lenses, i need scarcely explain this photographic camera (fig. 19), for it is clearly an artificial eye. in place of the _crystalline lens_ (compare with fig. 11) the photographer uses one, or generally two lenses _l_, _l_, with a black ledge or stop _s_ between them, which acts like the iris in cutting off the rays too near the edge of the lens. the dark camera _c_ answers to the _dark chamber_ of the eyeball, and the plate _p_, _p_ at the back of the chamber, which is made sensitive by chemicals, answers our _retina_. the box is formed of two parts, sliding one within the other at _c_, so as to place the plate at a proper distance from the lens, and then a screw adjusts the focus more exactly by bringing the front lens back or forward, instead of altering the curve as the _ciliary muscle_ does in our eye. the difference between the two instruments is that in our eye the message goes to the brain, and the image disappears when we turn our eyes away from the object; but in the camera the waves of light work upon the chemicals, and the image can be fixed and remain for ever. "but the camera has at least one weak point. the screen at the back is not curved like our retina, but must be flat because of printing off the pictures, and therefore the parts of the photograph near the edge are a little out of proportion. "in many ways, however, this photographic eye is a more faithful observer than our own, and helps us to make more accurate pictures. for instance, instantaneous photographs have been taken of a galloping horse, and we find that the movements are very different from what we thought we saw with our eye, because our retina does not throw off one impression after another quickly enough to be quite certain we see each curve truly in succession. again, the photograph of a face gives minute curves and lines, lights and shadows, far more perfectly than even the best artist can see them, and when the picture is magnified we see more and more details which escaped us before. "but it is especially when attached to the microscope or the telescope that the photographic apparatus tells us such marvellous secrets; giving us, for instance, an accurate picture of the most minute water-animal quite invisible to the naked eye, so that when we enlarge the photograph any one can see the beautiful markings, the finest fibre, or the tiniest granule; or affording us accurate pictures, such as the one at p. 19 of the face of the moon, and bringing stars into view which we cannot otherwise see even with the strongest telescope. "our own eye has many weaknesses. for example, when we look through the telescope at the sky we can only fix our attention on one part at once, and afterwards on another; and the picture which we see in this way, bit by bit, we must draw as best we can. but if we put a sensitive photographic plate into the telescope just at the point (_i_, _i_, fig. 18), where the _image_ of the sky is focused, this plate gives attention, so to speak, to the whole picture at once, and registers every point exactly as it is; and this picture can be kept and enlarged so that every detail can be seen. "then, again, if we look at faint stars, they do not grow any brighter as we look. each ray sends its message to the brain, and that is all; we cannot heap them up in our eye, and, indeed, after a time we see less, because our nerves grow tired. but on a photographic plate in a telescope, each ray in its turn does a little work upon the chemicals, and the longer the plate remains, the stronger the picture becomes. when wet plates were used they could not be left long, but since dry plates have been invented, with a film of chemically prepared gelatine, they can be left for hours in the telescope, which is kept by clockwork accurately opposite to the same objects. in this way thousands of faint stars, which we cannot see with the strongest telescope, creep into view as their feeble rays work over and over again on the same spot; and, as the brighter stars as well as the faint ones are all the time making their impression stronger, when the plate comes out each one appears in its proper strength. on the other hand, very bright objects often become blurred by a long exposure, so that we have sometimes to sacrifice the clearness of a bright object in order to print faint objects clearly. "we now come to our last magic glass--the spectroscope; and the hour has slipped by so fast that i have very little time left to speak of it. but this matters less as we have studied it before.[1] i need now only remind you of some of the facts. you will remember that when we passed sunlight through a three-sided piece of glass called a prism, we broke up a ray of white light into a line of beautiful colours gradually passing from red, through orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, to violet, and that these follow in the same order as we see them in the rainbow or in the thin film of a soap-bubble. by various experiments we proved that these colours are separated from each other because the many waves which make up white light are of different sizes, so that because the waves, of red light are slow and heavy, they lag behind when bent in the three-sided glass, while the rapid violet waves are bent more out of their road and run to the farther end of the line, the other colours ranging themselves between." [1] _fairyland of science_, lecture ii.; and _short history of natural science_, chapter xxxiv. "now when the light falls through the open window, or through a round hole or _large_ slit, the images of the hole made by each coloured wave overlap each other very much, and the colours in the spectrum or coloured band are crowded together. but when in the spectroscope we pass the ray of light through a very narrow slit, each coloured image of the upright slit overlaps the next upright image only very little. by using several prisms one after the other (see fig. 21), these upright coloured lines are separated more and more till we get a very long band or spectrum. yet, as you know from our experiments with the light of a glowing wire or of molten iron, however much you spread out the light given by a solid or liquid, you can never separate these coloured lines from each other. it is only when you throw the light of a glowing gas or vapour into the slit that you get a few bright lines standing out alone. this is because _all_ the rays of white light are present in glowing solids and liquids, and they follow each other too closely to be separated. but a gas, such as glowing hydrogen for example, gives out only a few separate rays, which, pouring through the slit, throw red, greenish-blue, and dark blue lines on the screen. thus you have seen the double, orange-yellow sodium line (3, plate i.) which starts out at once when salt is held in a flame and its light thrown into the spectroscope, and the red line of potassium vapour under the same treatment; and we shall observe these again when we study the coloured lights of the sun and stars." [illustration: fig. 20. kirchhoff's spectroscope. a, the telescope which receives the ray of light through the slit in o.] [illustration: fig. 21. passage of rays through the spectroscope. s, s´, slit through which the light falls on the prisms. 1, 2, 3, 4, prisms in which the rays are dispersed more and more. _a_, _b_, screen receiving the spectrum, of which the seven principal colours are marked.] "we see, then, that the work of our magic glass, the spectroscope, is simply to sift the waves of light, and that these waves, from their colour and their position in the long spectrum, actually tell us what glowing gases have started them on their road. is not this like magic? i take a substance made of i know not what; i break it up, and, melting it in the intense heat of an electric spark, throw its light into the spectroscope. then, as i examine this light after it has been spread out by the prisms, i can actually read by unmistakable lines what metals or non-metals it contains. nay, more; when i catch the light of a star, or even of a faint nebula, in my telescope, and pass it through these prisms, there, written up on the magic-coloured band, i read off the gases which are glowing in that star-sun or star-dust billions of miles away. "now, boys, i have let you into the secrets of my five magic glasses--the magnifying-glass, the microscope, the telescope, the photographic camera, and the spectroscope. with these and the help of chemistry you can learn to work all my spells. you can peep into the mysteries of the life of the tiniest being which moves unseen under your feet; you can peer into that vast universe, which we can never visit so long as our bodies hold us down to our little earth; you can make the unseen stars print their spots of light on the paper you hold in your hand, by means of light-waves, which left them hundreds of years ago; or you can sift this light in your spectroscope, and make it tell you what substances were glowing in that star when they were started on their road. all this you can do on one condition, namely, that you seek patiently to know the truth. "stories of days long gone by tell us of true magicians and false magicians, and the good or evil they wrought. of these i know nothing, but i do know this, that the value of the spells you can work with my magic glasses depends entirely upon whether you work patiently, accurately, and honestly. if you make careless, inaccurate experiments, and draw hasty conclusions, you will only do bad work, which it may take others years to undo; but if you question your instruments honestly and carefully, they will answer truly and faithfully. you may make many mistakes, but one experiment will correct the other; and while you are storing up in your own mind knowledge which lifts you far above this little world, or enables you to look deep below the outward surface of life, you may add your little group of facts to the general store, and help to pave the way to such grand discoveries as those of newton in astronomy, bunsen and kirchhoff in spectrum analysis, and darwin in the world of life." chapter iii fairy rings and how they are made [illustration] it was a lovely warm day in september, the golden corn had been cut and carted, and the waggons of the farmers around were free for the use of the college lads in their yearly autumn holiday. there they stood in a long row, one behind the other in the drive round the grounds, each with a pair of sleek, powerful farm-horses, and the waggoners beside them with their long whips ornamented with coloured ribbons; and as each waggon drew up before the door, it filled rapidly with its merry load and went on its way. they had a long drive of seven miles before them, for they were going to cross the wild moor, and then descend gradually along a fairly good road to the more wooded and fertile country. their object that day was to reach a certain fairy dell known to a few only among the party as one of the loveliest spots in devon. it was a perfect day for a picnic. as they drove over the wide stretches of moorland, with tors to right and tors to the left, the stunted furze bushes growing here and there glistened with spiders' webs from which the dew had not yet disappeared, and mosses in great variety carpeted the ground, from the lovely thread-mosses, with their scarlet caps, to the pale sphagnum of the bogs, where a halt was made for some of the botanists of the party to search for the little sundew (_drosera rotundifolia_). though this little plant had now almost ceased to flower, it was not difficult to recognise by its rosette of leaves glistening with sticky glands which it spreads out in many of the dartmoor bogs to catch the tiny flies and suck out their life's blood, and several specimens were uprooted and carefully packed away to plant in moist moss at home. from this bog onwards the road ran near by one of the lovely streams which feed the rivers below, and, passing across a bridge covered with ivy, led through a small forest of stunted trees round which the woodbine clung, hanging down its crimson berries, and the bracken fern, already putting on its brown and yellow tints, grew tall and thick on either side. then, as they passed out of the wood, they came upon the dell, a piece of wild moorland lying in a hollow between two granite ridges, with large blocks of granite strewn over it here and there, and furze bushes growing under their shelter, still covered with yellow blossoms together with countless seed-bearing pods, which the youngsters soon gathered for the shiny-black seeds within them. here the waggons were unspanned, the horses tethered out, the food unpacked, and preparations for the picnic soon in full swing. just at this moment, however, a loud shout from one part of the dell called every one's attention. "the fairy rings! the fairy rings! we have found the fairy rings!" and there truly on the brown sward might be seen three delicate green rings, the fresh sprouting grass growing young and tender in perfect circles measuring from six feet to nearly three yards across. "what are they?" the question came from many voices at once, but it was the principal who answered. "why, do you not know that they are pixie circles, where the 'elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves' hold their revels, whirling in giddy round, and making the rings, 'whereof the ewe not bites'? have you forgotten how mrs. quickly, in the _merry wives of windsor_, tells us that "'nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, like to the garter's compass, in a ring: the expressure that it bears, green let it be, more fertile-fresh than all the field to see'? "if we are magicians and work spells under magic glasses, why should not the pixies work spells on the grass? i brought you here to-day on purpose to see them. which of you now can name the pixie who makes them?" a deep silence followed. if any knew or guessed the truth of the matter, they were too shy to risk making a mistake. "be off with you then," said the principal, "and keep well away from these rings all day, that you may not disturb the spell. but come back to me before we return at night, and perhaps i may show you the wonder-working pixie, and we may take him home to examine under the microscope." the day passed as such happy days do, and the glorious harvest moon had risen over the distant tors before the horses were spanned and the waggons ready. but the principal was not at the starting place, and looking round they saw him at the farther end of the dell. "gently, gently," he cried, as there was one general rush towards him; "look where you tread, for i stand within a ring of fairies!" and then they saw that just outside the green circle in which he stood, forming here and there a broken ring, were patches of a beautiful tiny mushroom, each of which raised its pale brown umbrella in the bright moonlight. "here are our fairies, boys. i am going to take a few home where they can be spared from the ring, and to-morrow we will learn their history." * * * * * the following day saw the class-room full, and from the benches eager eyes were turned to the eight windows, in each of which stood one of the elder boys at his microscope ready for work. for under those microscopes the principal always arranged some object referred to in his lecture and figured in diagrams on the walls, and it was the duty of each boy, after the lecture was over, to show and explain to the class all the points of the specimen under his care. these boys were always specially envied, for though the others could, it is true, follow all the descriptions from the diagrams, yet these had the plant or animal always under their eye. discussion was at this moment running high, for there was a great uncertainty of opinion as to whether a mushroom could be really called a plant when it had no leaves or flowers. all at once the hush came, as the principal stepped into his desk and began:-"life is hard work, boys, and there is no being in this world which has not to work for its living. you all know that a plant grows by taking in gases and water, and working them up into sap and living tissue by the help of the sunshine and the green matter in their leaves; and you know, too, that the world is so full of green plants that hundreds and thousands of young seedlings can never get a living, but are stifled in their babyhood or destroyed before they can grow up. "now there are many dark, dank places in the world where plants cannot get enough sunlight and air to make green colouring matter and manufacture their own food. and so it comes to pass that a certain class of plants have found another way of living, by taking their food ready made from other decaying plants and animals, and so avoiding the necessity of manufacturing it for themselves. these plants can live hidden away in dark cellars and damp cupboards, in drains and pipes where no light ever enters, under a thick covering of dead leaves in the forest, under fallen trunks and mossy stones; in fact, wherever decaying matter, whether of plant or animal, can be found for them to feed upon. "it is to this class, called _fungi_, which includes all mushrooms and moulds, mildews, smuts, and ferments, that the mushroom belongs which we found yesterday making the fairy rings. and, in truth, we were not so far wrong when we called them pixies or imps, for many of them are indeed imps of mischief, which play sorry pranks in our stores at home and in the fields and forest abroad. they grow on our damp bread, or cheese, or pickles; they destroy fruit and corn, hop and vine, and even take the life of insects and other animals. yet, on the other hand, they are useful in clearing out unhealthy nooks and corners, and purifying the air; and they can be made to do good work by those who know how to use them; for without ferments we could have neither wine, beer, nor vinegar, nor even the yeast which lightens our bread. "i am going to-day to introduce you to this large vagabond class of plants, that we may see how they live, grow, and spread, what good and bad work they do, and how they do it. and before we come to the mushrooms, which you know so well, we must look at the smaller forms, which do all their work above ground, so that we can observe them. for the _fungi_ are to be found almost everywhere. the film growing over manure-heaps, the yeast plant, the wine fungus, and the vinegar plant; the moulds and mildews covering our cellar-walls and cupboards, or growing on decayed leaves and wood, on stale fruit, bread, or jam, or making black spots on the leaves of the rose, the hop, or the vine; the potato fungus, eating into the potato in the dark ground and producing disease; the smut filling the grains of wheat and oats with disease, the ergot feeding on the rye, the rust which destroys beetroot, the rank toadstools and puffballs, the mushroom we eat, and the truffles which form even their fruit underground,--all these are _fungi_, or lowly plants which have given up making their own food in the sunlight, and take it ready made from the dung, the decaying mould, the root, the leaf, the fruit, or the germ on which they grow. lastly, the diseases which kill the silkworm and the common house-fly, and even some of the worst skin diseases in man, are caused by minute plants of this class feeding upon their hosts." [illustration: fig. 22. three forms of vegetable mould magnified. 1, _mucor mucedo_. 2, _aspergillus glaucus_. 3, _penicillium glaucum_.] "in fact, the _fungi_ are so widely spread over all things living and dead, that there is scarcely anything free from them in one shape or another. the minute spores, now of one kind, now of another, float in the air, and settling down wherever they find suitable food, have nothing more to do than to feed, fatten, and increase, which they do with wonderful rapidity. let us take as an example one of the moulds which covers damp leaves, and even the paste and jam in our cupboard. i have some here growing upon a basin of paste, and you see it forms a kind of dense white fur all over the surface, with here and there a bluish-green tinge upon it. this white fur is the common mould, _mucor mucedo_ (1, fig. 22), and the green mould happens in this case to be another mould, _penicillium glaucum_ (3, fig. 22); but i must warn you that these minute moulds look very much alike until you examine them under the microscope, and though they are called white, blue, or green moulds, yet any one of them may be coloured at different times of its growth. another very common and beautiful mould, _aspergillus glaucus_ (2, fig. 22), often grows with mucor on the top of jam. "all these plants begin with a spore or minute colourless cell of living matter (_s_, fig. 23), which spends its energy in sending out tubes in all directions into the leaves, fruit, or paste on which it feeds. the living matter, flowing now this way now that, lays down the walls of its tubes as it flows, and by and by, here and there, a tube, instead of working into the paste, grows upwards into the air and swells at the tip into a colourless ball in which a number of minute seed-like bodies called spores are formed. the ball bursts, the spores fall out, and each one begins to form fresh tubes, and so little by little the mould grows denser and thicker by new plants starting in all directions. "under the first microscope you will see a slide showing the tubes which spread through the paste, and which are called the _mycelium_ (_m_, fig. 23), and amongst it are three upright tubes, one just starting _a_, another with the fruit ball forming _b_, and a third _c_, which is bursting and throwing out the spores. the _aspergillus_ and the _penicillium_ differ from the _mucor_ in having their spores naked and not enclosed in a spore-case. in _penicillium_ they grow like the beads of a necklace one above the other on the top of the upright tube, and can very easily be separated (see fig. 22); while _aspergillus_, a most lovely silvery mould, is more complicated in the growth of its spores, for it bears them on many rows branching out from the top of the tube like the rays of a star." [illustration: fig. 23. _mucor mucedo_, greatly magnified. (after sachs and brefeld.) _m_, mycelium, or tangle of threads. _a_, _b_, _c_, upright tubes in different stages. _c_, spore-case bursting and sending out spores. _s_, 1, 2, 3, a growing spore, in different stages, starting a new mycelium.] "i want you to look at each of these moulds carefully under the microscope, for few people who hastily scrape a mould away, vexed to find it on food or damp clothing, have any idea what a delicate and beautiful structure lies under their hand. these moulds live on decaying matter, but many of the mildews, rusts, and other kinds of fungus, prey upon living plants such as the _smut_ of oats (_ustilago carbo_), and the _bunt_ (_tilletia caria_) which eats away the inside of the grains of wheat, while another fungus attacks its leaves. there is scarcely a tree or herb which has not one fungus to prey upon it, and many have several, as, for example, the common lime-tree, which is infested by seventy-four different fungi, and the oak by no less than 200. "so these colourless food-taking plants prey upon their neighbours, while they take their oxygen for breathing from air. the 'ferments,' however, which live _inside_ plants or fluids, take even their oxygen for breathing from their hosts. "if you go into the garden in summer and pluck an overripe gooseberry, which is bursting like this one i have here, you will probably find that the pulp looks unhealthy and rotten near the split, and the gooseberry will taste tart and disagreeable. this is because a small fungus has grown inside, and worked a change in the juice of the fruit. at first this fungus spread its tubes outside and merely _fed_ upon the fruit, using oxygen from the air in breathing; but by and by the skin gave way, and the fungus crept inside the gooseberry where it could no longer get any fresh air. in this dilemma it was forced to break up the sugar in the fruit and take the oxygen out of it, leaving behind only alcohol and carbonic acid which give the fermented taste to the fruit. "so the fungus-imp feeds and grows in nature, and when man gets hold of it he forces it to do the same work for a useful purpose, for the grape-fungus grows in the vats in which grapes are crushed and kept away from air, and tearing up the sugar, leaves alcohol behind in the grape-juice, which in this way becomes wine. so, too, the yeast-fungus grows in the malt and hop liquor, turning it into beer; its spores floating in the fluid and increasing at a marvellous rate, as any housewife knows who, getting yeast for her bread, tries to keep it in a corked bottle. "the yeast plant has never been found wild. it is only known as a cultivated plant, growing on prepared liquor. the brewer has to sow it by taking some yeast from other beer, or by leaving the liquor exposed to air in which yeast spores are floating; or it will sow itself in the same way in a mixture of water, hops, sugar, and salt, to which a handful of flour is added. it increases at a marvellous rate, one cell budding out of another, while from time to time the living matter in a cell will break up into four parts instead of two, and so four new cells will start and bud. a drop of yeast will very soon cover a glass slide with this tiny plant, as you will see under the second microscope, where they are now at work (fig. 24)." [illustration: fig. 24. yeast cells growing under the microscope. _a_, single cells. _b_, two cells forming by division. _c_, a group of cells where division is going on in all directions.] "but perhaps the most curious of all the minute fungi are those which grow inside insects and destroy them. at this time of year you may often see a dead fly sticking to the window-pane with a cloudy white ring round it; this poor fly has been killed by a little fungus called _empusa muscæ_. a spore from a former plant has fallen perhaps on the window-pane, or some other spot over which the fly has crawled, and being sticky has fixed itself under the fly's body. once settled on a favourable spot it sends out a tube, and piercing the skin of the fly, begins to grow rapidly inside. there it forms little round cells one after the other, something like the yeast-cells, till it fills the whole body, feeding on its juices; then each cell sends a tube, like the upright tubes of the _mucor_ (fig. 23) out again through the fly's skin, and this tube bursts at the end, and so new spores are set free. it is these tubes, and the spores thrown from them, which you see forming a kind of halo round the dead fly as it clings to the pane. other fungi in the same way kill the silkworm and the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly. nor is it only the lower animals which suffer. when we once realise that fungus spores are floating everywhere in the air, we can understand how the terrible microscopic fungi called _bacteria_ will settle on an open wound and cause it to fester if it is not properly dressed. "thus we see that these minute fungi are almost everywhere. the larger ones, on the contrary, are confined to the fields and forests, damp walls and hollow trees; or wherever rotting wood, leaves, or manure provide them with sufficient nourishment. few people have any clear ideas about the growth of a mushroom, except that the part we pick springs up in a single night. the real fact is, that a whole mushroom plant is nothing more than a gigantic mould or mildew, only that it is formed of many different shaped cells, and spreads its tubes _underground_ or through the trunks of trees instead of in paste or jam, as in the case of the mould." [illustration: fig. 25. early stages of the mushroom. (after sachs.) _m_, mycelium. _b1-3_, mushroom buds of different ages. _b4_, button mushroom. _g_, gills forming inside before lower attachment of the cap gives way at _v_.] "the part which we gather and call a mushroom, a toadstool, or a puffball is only the fruit, answering to the round balls of the mould. the rest of the plant is a thick network of tubes, which you will see under the third microscope. these tubes spread underground and suck in decayed matter from the earth; they form the _mycelium_ (_m_, fig. 25) such as we found in the mould. the mushroom-growers call it 'mushroom spawn' because they use it to spread over the ground for new crops. out of these underground tubes there springs up from time to time a swollen round body no bigger at first than a mustard seed (_b1_, fig. 25). as it increases in size it comes above ground and grows into the mushroom or spore-case, answering to the round balls which contain the spores of the mould. at first this swollen body is egg-shaped, the top half being largest and broadest, and the fruit is then called a 'button-mushroom' _b4_. inside this ball are now formed a series of folds made of long cells, some of which are soon to bear spores just as the tubes in the mould did, and while these are forming and ripening, a way out is preparing for them. for as the mushroom grows, the skin of the lower part of the ball (_v_, _b4_) is stretched more and more, till it can bear the strain no longer and breaks away from the stalk; then the ball expands into an umbrella, leaving a piece of torn skin, called the veil (_v_, fig. 26), clinging to the stalk." [illustration: fig. 26. later stages of the mushroom. (after gautier.) 1, button mushroom stage. _c_, cap. _v_, veil. _g_, gills. 2, full-grown mushroom, showing veil v after the cap is quite free, and the gills or lamellæ _g_, of which the structure is shown in fig. 27.] "all this happens in a single night, and the mushroom is complete, with a stem up the centre and a broad cap, under which are the folds which bear the spores. thus much you can see for yourselves at any time by finding a place where mushrooms grow and looking for them late at night and early in the morning so as to get the different stages. but now we must turn to the microscope, and cutting off one of the folds, which branch out under the cap like the spokes of a wheel, take a slice across it (1, fig. 27) and examine." [illustration: fig. 27. 1, one of the gills or lamellæ of the mushroom slightly magnified, showing the cells round the edge. _c_, cells which do not bear spores. _fc_, fertile cells. 2, a piece of the edge of the same powerfully magnified, showing how the spores _s_ grow out of the tip of the fertile cells _fc_.] "first, under a moderate power, you will see the cells forming the centre of the fold and the layer of long cells (_c_ and _fc_) which are closely packed all round the edge. some of these cells project beyond the others, and it is they which bear the spores. we see this plainly under a very strong power when you can distinguish the sterile cells _c_ and the fertile cells _fc_ projecting beyond them, and each bearing four spore-cells _s_ on four little horns at its tip. "these spores fall off very easily, and you can make a pretty experiment by cutting off a large mushroom head in the early morning and putting it flat upon a piece of paper. in a few hours, if you lift it very carefully, you will find a number of dark lines on the paper, radiating from a centre like the spokes of a wheel, each line being composed of the spores which have fallen from a fold as it grew ripe. they are so minute that many thousands would be required to make up the size of the head of an ordinary pin, yet if you gather the spores of the several kinds of mushroom, and examine them under a strong microscope, you will find that even these specks of matter assume different shapes in the various species. "you will be astonished too at the immense number of spores contained in a single mushroom head, for they are reckoned by millions; and when we remember that each one of these is the starting point of a new plant, it reminds us forcibly of the wholesale destruction of spores and seeds which must go on in nature, otherwise the mushrooms and their companions would soon cover every inch of the whole world. "as it is, they are spread abroad by the wind, and wherever they escape destruction they lie waiting in every nook and corner till, after the hot summer, showers of rain hasten the decay of plants and leaves, and then the mushrooms, toadstools, and puffballs, grow at an astounding pace. if you go into the woods at this season you may see the enormous deep-red liver fungus (_fistulina hepatica_) growing on the oak-trees, in patches which weigh from twenty to thirty pounds; or the glorious orange-coloured fungus (_tremella mesenterica_) growing on bare sticks or stumps of furze; or among dead leaves you may easily chance on the little caps of the crimson, scarlet, snowy white, or orange-coloured fungi which grow in almost every wood. from white to yellow, yellow to red, red to crimson and purple black, there is hardly any colour you may not find among this gaily-decked tribe; and who can wonder that the small bright-coloured caps have been supposed to cover tiny imps or elves, who used the large mushrooms to serve for their stools and tables? "there they work, thrusting their tubes into twigs and dead branches, rotting trunks and decaying leaves, breaking up the hard wood and tough fibres, and building them up into delicate cells, which by and by die and leave their remains as food for the early growing plants in the spring. so we see that in their way the mushrooms and toadstools are good imps after all, for the tender shoot of a young seedling plant could take no food out of a hard tree-trunk, but it finds the work done for it by the fungus, the rich nourishment being spread around its young roots ready to be imbibed. "to find our fairy-ring mushrooms, however, we must leave the wood and go out into the open country, especially on the downs and moors and rough meadows, where the land is poor and the grass coarse and spare. there grow the nourishing kinds, most of which we can eat, and among these is the delicate little champignon or 'scotch-bonnet' mushroom, _marasmius oreades_,[1] which makes the fairy-rings. when a spore of this mushroom begins to grow, it sucks up vegetable food out of the earth and spreads its tubes underground, in all directions from the centre, so that the mycelium forms a round patch like a thick underground circular cobweb. in the summer and autumn, when the weather is suitable, it sends up its delicate pale-brown caps, which we may gather and eat without stopping the growth of the plant. [1] shown in initial letter of this chapter. "this goes on year after year underground, new tubes always travelling outwards till the circle widens and widens like the rings of water on a pond, only that it spreads very slowly, making a new ring each year, which is often composed of a mass of tubes as much as a foot thick in the ground, and the tender tubes in the centre die away as the new ones form a larger hoop outside. "but all this is below ground; where then are our fairy rings? here is the secret. the tubes, as we have seen, take up food from the earth and build it up into delicate cells, which decay very soon, and as they die make a rich manure at the roots of the grass. so each season the cells of last year's ring make a rich feeding-ground for the young grass, which springs up fresh and green in a fairy ring, while _outside_ this emerald circle the mushroom tubes are still growing and increasing underneath the grass, so that next year, when the present ring is no longer richly fed, and has become faded and brown like the rest of the moor, another ring will spring up outside it, feeding on the prepared food below." "in bad seasons, though the tubes go on spreading and growing below, the mushroom fruit does not always appear above ground. the plant will only fruit freely when the ground has been well warmed by the summer sun, followed by damp weather to moisten it. this gives us a rich crop of mushrooms all over the country, and it is then you can best see the ring of fairy mushrooms circling outside the green hoop of fresh grass. in any case the early morning is the time to find them; it is only in very sheltered spots that they sometimes last through the day, or come up towards evening, as i found them last night on the warm damp side of the dell. "this is the true history of fairy rings, and now go and look for yourselves under the microscopes. under the first three you will find the three different kinds of mould of our diagram (fig. 22). under the fourth the spores of the mould are shown in their first growth putting out the tubes to form the mycelium. the fifth shows the mould itself with its fruit-bearing tubes, one of which is bursting. under the sixth the yeast plant is growing; the seventh shows a slice of one of the folds of the common mushroom with its spore-bearing horns; and under the eighth i have put some spores from different mushrooms, that you may see what curious shapes they assume. "lastly, let me remind you, now that the autumn and winter are coming, that you will find mushrooms, toadstools, puffballs, and moulds in plenty wherever you go. learn to know them, their different shapes and colours, and above all the special nooks each one chooses for its home. look around in the fields and woods and take note of the decaying plants and trees, leaves and bark, insects and dead remains of all kinds. upon each of these you will find some fungus growing, breaking up their tissues and devouring the nourishing food they provide. watch these spots, and note the soft spongy soil which will collect there, and then when the spring comes, notice what tender plants flourish upon these rich feeding grounds. you will thus see for yourselves that the fungi, though they feed upon others, are not entirely mischief-workers, but also perform their part in the general work of life." chapter iv the life-history of lichens and mosses [illustration] the autumn has passed away and we are in the midst of winter. in the long winter evenings the stars shine bright and clear, and tempt us to work with the telescope and its helpmates the spectroscope and photographic plates. but at first sight it would seem as though our microscopes would have to stand idle so far at least as plants are concerned, or be used only to examine dried specimens and mounted sections. yet this is not the fact, as i remembered last week when walking through the bare and leafless wood. a startled pheasant rising with a whirr at the sound of my footsteps among the dead leaves roused me from my thoughts, and as a young rabbit scudded across the path and i watched it disappear among the bushes, i was suddenly struck with the great mass of plant life flourishing underfoot and overhead. can you guess what plants these were? i do not mean the evergreen pines and firs, nor the few hardy ferns, nor the lovely ivy clothing the trunks of the trees. such plants as these live and remain green in the winter, but they do not grow. if you wish to find plant life revelling in the cold damp days of winter, fearing neither frost nor snow and welcoming mist and rain, you must go to the mosses, which as autumn passes away begin to cover the wood-paths, to creep over the roots of the trees, to suck up the water in the bogs, and even to clothe dead walls and stones with a soft green carpet. and with the mosses come the lichens, those curious grey and greenish oddities which no one but a botanist would think of classing among plants. the wood is full of them now: the hairy lichens hang from the branches of many of the trees, making them look like old greybearded men; the leafy lichens encircle the branches, their pale gray, green, and yellow patches looking as if they were made of crumpled paper cut into wavy plates; and the crusty lichens, scarcely distinguishable from the bark of the trees, cover every available space which the mosses have left free. as i looked at these lichens and thought of their curious history i determined that we would study them to-day, and gathered a basketful of specimens (see fig. 28). but when i had collected these i found i had not the heart to leave the mosses behind. i could not even break off a piece of bark with lichen upon it without some little moss coming too, especially the small thread-mosses (_bryum_) which make a home for themselves in every nook and corner of the branches; while the feather-mosses, hair-mosses, cord-mosses, and many others made such a lovely carpet under my feet that each seemed too beautiful to pass by, and they found their way into my basket, crowned at the top with a large mass of the pale-green sphagnum, or bog-moss, into which i sank more than ankle-deep as i crossed the bog in the centre of the wood on my way home. [illustration: fig. 28. examples of lichens. (from life.) 1, a hairy lichen. 2, a leafy lichen. 3, a crustaceous lichen. _f_, _f_, the fruit.] so here they all are, and i hope by the help of our magic glass to let you into some of the secrets of their lives. it is true we must study the structure of lichens chiefly by diagrams, for it is too minute for beginners to follow under the microscope, so we must trust to drawings made by men more skilful in microscopic botany, at any rate for the present. but the mosses we can examine for ourselves and admire their delicate leaves and wonderful tiny spore-cases. now the first question which i hope you want to ask is, how it is that these lowly plants flourish so well in the depth of winter when their larger and stronger companions die down to the ground. we will answer this first as to the lichens, which are such strange uncanny-looking plants that it is almost difficult to imagine they are alive at all; and indeed they have been a great puzzle to botanists. [illustration: fig. 29. single-celled green plants growing and dividing (_pleurococcus_). (after thuret and bornet.)] before we examine them, however, look for a minute at a small drop of this greenish film which i have taken from the rain-water taken outside. i have put some under each microscope, and those who can look into them will see the slide almost covered with small round green cells very much like the yeast cells we saw when studying the fungi, only that instead of being colourless they are a bright green. some of these cells will i suspect be longer than others, and these long cells will be moving over the slide very rapidly, swimming hither and thither, and you will see, perhaps for the first time, that very low plants can swim about in water. these green cells are, indeed, the simplest of all plants, and are merely bags of living matter which, by the help of the green granules in them, are able to work up water and gases into nourishing food, and so to live, grow, and multiply. there are many kinds of these single-celled plants in the world. you may find them on damp paths, in almost any rain-water butt, in ponds and ditches, in sparkling waterfalls, along the banks of flowing rivers, and in the cold clear springs on the bleak mountains. some of them take the form of tangled threads[1] composed of long strings of cells, and these sometimes form long streamers in flowing water, and at other times are gathered together in a shapeless film only to be disentangled under a microscope. other kinds[2] wave to and fro on the water, forming dense patches of violet, orange-brown, or glossy green scum shining in the bright sunlight, and these flourish equally in the ponds of our gardens and in pools in the himalaya mountains, 18,000 feet above the sea. others again[3] seize on every damp patch on tree trunks, rocks, or moist walls, covering them with a green powder formed of single plant cells. other species of this family turn a bright red colour when the cells are still; and one, under the name of gory dew,[4] has often frightened the peasants of italy, by growing very rapidly over damp walls and then turning the colour of blood. another[5] forms the "red snow" of the arctic regions, where it covers wide surfaces of snow with a deep red colour. others[6] form a shiny jelly over rocks and stones, and these may be found almost everywhere, from the garden path to the warm springs of india, from the marshes of new zealand up to the shores of the arctic ocean, and even on the surface of floating icebergs. [1] _confervæ._ [2] _oscillariæ._ [3] _protococcus._ [4] _palmella cruenta._ [5] _protococcus nivalis._ [6] _nostoc._ the reason why these plants can live in such very different regions is that they do not take their food through roots out of the ground, but suck in water and gases through the thin membrane which covers their cell, and each cell does its own work. so it matters very little to them where they lie, so long as they have moisture and sunlight to help them in their work. wherever they are, if they have these, they can take in carbonic acid from the air and work up the carbon with other gases which they imbibe with the water, and so make living material. in this way they grow, and as a cell grows larger the covering is stretched and part of the digested food goes to build up more covering membrane, and by and by the cell divides into two and each membrane closes up, so that there are two single-celled plants where there was only one before. this will sometimes go on so fast that a small pond may be covered in a few hours with a green film formed of new cells. now we have seen, when studying mushrooms, that the one difference between these green plants and the single-celled fungi is that while the green cells make their own food, colourless cells can only take it in ready-made, and therefore prey upon all kinds of living matter. this is just what happens in the lichens; and botanists have discovered that these curious growths are really the result of a _partnership_ between single-celled green plants and single-celled fungi. the grey part is a fungus; but when it is examined under the microscope we find it is not a fungus only; a number of green cells can be seen scattered through it, which, when carefully studied, prove to be some species of the green single-celled plants. here are two drawings of sections cut through two different lichens, and enormously magnified so that the cells are clearly seen. 1, fig. 30 is part of a hairy lichen (1, fig. 28), and 2 is part of a leafy lichen (2, fig. 28). the hairy lichen as you see has a row of green cells all round the tiny branch, with fungus cells on all sides of them. the leafy lichen, which only presents one surface to the sun and air while the other side is against the tree, has only one layer of green cells near the surface, but protected by the fungus above. [illustration: fig. 30. sections of lichens. (sachs.) 1, section of a hairy lichen, _usnea barbata_. 2, section of a leafy lichen, _sticta fuliginosa_. 3, early growth of a lichen. _gc_, green cells. _f_, fungus.] the way the lichen has grown is this. a green cell (_gc_ 3, fig. 30) falling on some damp spot has begun to grow and spread, working up food in the sunlight. to it comes the spore of the fungus _f_, first thrusting its tubes into the tree-bark, or wall, and then spreading round the green cells, which remain always in such a position that sunlight, air, and moisture can reach them. from this time the two classes of plants live as friends, the fungus using part of the food made by the green cells, and giving them in return the advantage of being spread out to the sunlight, while they are also protected in frosty or sultry weather when they would dry up on a bare surface. on the whole, however, the fungus probably gains the most, for it has been found, as we should expect, that the green cells can live and grow if separated out of the lichen, but the fungus cells die when their industrious companions are taken from them. at any rate the partnership succeeds, as you will see if you go into the wood, or into an orchard where the apple-trees are neglected, for every inch of the branches is covered by lichens if not already taken up by mosses or toadstools. there is hardly any part of the world except the tropics where lichens do not abound. in the alps of scandinavia close to the limits of perpetual snow, in the sandy wastes of arctic america, and over the dreary tundras of arctic siberia, where the ground is frozen hard during the greater part of the year, they flourish where nothing else can live. the little green cells multiply by dividing, as we saw them doing in the green film from the water-butt. the fungus, however, has many different modes of seeding itself. one of these is by forming little pockets in the lichen, out of which, when they burst, small round bodies are thrown, which cover the lichen with a minute green powder. there is plenty of this powder on the leafy lichen which you have by you. you can see it with the magnifying-glass, without putting it under the microscope. as long as the lichen is dry these round bodies do not grow, but as soon as moisture reaches them they start away and become new plants. [illustration: fig. 31. fructification of a lichen. (from sachs and oliver.) apothecium or spore-chamber of a lichen. 1, closed. 2, open. 3, the spore-cases and filaments enlarged, showing the spores. _f_, filaments. _sc_, spore-cases. _s_, spores.] a more complicated and beautiful process is shown in this diagram (fig. 31). if you look carefully at the leafy lichen (2, fig. 28) you will find here and there some little cups _f_, while others grow upon the tips of the hairy lichen. these cups, or fruits, were once closed, flask-shaped chambers (1, fig. 31) inside which are formed a number of oval cells _sc_, which are spore-cases, with from four to eight spores or seed-like bodies _s3_ inside them. when these chambers, which are called _apothecia_, are ripe, moist or rainy weather causes them to swell at the top, and they burst open and the spore-cases throw out the spores to grow into new fungi. in some lichens the chambers remain closed and the spores escape through a hole in the top, and they are then called _perithecia_, while in others, as these which we have here, they open out into a cup-shape. this, then, is the curious history of lichens; the green cells and fungi flourishing together in the damp winter and bearing the hardest frost far better than the summer drought, so that they have their good time when most other plants are dead or asleep. yet though some of them, such as the hairy lichens, almost disappear in the summer, they are by no means dead, for, like all these very low plants, they can bear being dried up for a long time, and then, when moisture visits them again, each green cell sets to work, and they revive. there is much more to be learnt about them, but this will be sufficient to make you feel an interest in their simple lives, and when you look for them in the wood you will be surprised to find how many different kinds there are, for it is most wonderful that such lowly plants should build up such an immense variety of curious and grotesque forms. * * * * * and yet, when we turn to the mosses, i am half afraid they will soon attract you away from the dull grey lichens, for of all plant histories it appears to me that the history of the moss-plant is most fascinating. as this history is complicated by the moss having, as it were, two lives, you must give me your whole attention, and i will explain it first from diagrams, though you can see all the steps under the microscope. take in your hands, in the first place, a piece of this green moss which i have brought. how thick it is, like a rich felted carpet! and yet, if you pull it apart carefully, you will find that each leafy stem is separate, and can be taken away from the others without breaking anything. in this dense moss each stem is single and clothed with leaves wrapped closely round it (see fig. 33); in some mosses the stem is branched, and in others the leaves grow on side stalks, as in this feathery moss (fig. 32). but in each case every stem is like a separate plant, with its own tuft of tender roots _r_. [illustration: fig. 32. a stem of feathery moss. (from life.) _l_, leaves. _s_, stem. _r_, roots.] what a delicate growth it is! the stem is scarcely more than a fine thread, the leaves minute, transparent, and tender. in this pale sphagnum or bog-moss (fig. 36, p. 93), which is much larger and stouter, you can see better how each one of these leaves, though they are so thickly packed, is placed so that it can get the utmost light, air, and moisture. yet so closely are the leaves of each stem entangled in those of the next that the whole forms a thick springy green carpet under our feet. how is it, then, that these moss stems, though each independent, grow in such a dense mass? partly because moss multiplies so rapidly that new stems are always thrusting themselves up to the light, but chiefly because the stems were not always separate, but in very early life sprang from a common source. if, instead of bringing the moss home and tearing it apart, you went to a spot in the wood where fresh moss was growing, and looked very carefully on the surface of the ground or among the water of a marsh, you would find a spongy green mass below the growing moss, very much like the green scum on a pond. this film, some of which i have brought home, is seen under the microscope to be a mass of tangled green threads (_t_, fig. 34, p. 88) like those of the _confervæ_ (see p. 79), composed of rows of cells, while here and there upon these threads you would find a bud (_mb_, fig. 34) rising up into the air. this tangled mass of green threads, called the _protonema_, is the first growth, from which the moss stems spring. it has itself originated from a moss-spore; as we shall see by and by. as soon as it has started it grows and spreads very rapidly, drinking in water and air through all its cells and sending up the moss buds which swell and grow, giving out roots below and fine stems above, which soon become crowded with leaves, forming the velvety carpet we call moss. meanwhile the soft threads below die away, giving up all their nourishment to the moss-stems, and this is why, when you take up the moss, you find each stem separate. but now comes the question, how does each stem live after the nourishing threads below have died? it is true each stem has a few hairy roots, but these are very feeble, and not at all like the roots of higher plants. the fact is, the moss is built up entirely of tender cells, like the green cells in the lichen, or in the film upon the pond. these cells are not shut in behind a thick skin as in the leaves of higher plants, but have every one of them the power to take in water and gases through their tender membrane. i made last night a rough drawing of the leaf of the feathery moss put under the microscope, but you will see it far better by putting a leaf with a little water on a glass slide under the covering glass and examining it for yourself. you will see that it is composed of a number of oval-shaped cells packed closely together (_c_ fig. 33), with a few long narrow ones _mr_ in the middle of the leaf forming the midrib. every cell is as clear and distinct as if it were floating in the water, and the tiny green grains which help it to work up its food are clearly visible. [illustration: fig. 33. moss-leaf magnified. (from life.) showing the cells _c_, each of which can take in and work up its own food. _mr_, long cells of the mid-rib.] each of these cells can act as a separate plant, drinking in the water and air it needs, and feeding and growing quite independently of the roots below. yet at the same time the moss stem has a great advantage over single-celled plants in having root-hairs, and being able to grow upright and expose its leaves to the sun and air. now you will no longer wonder that moss grows so fast and so thick, and another curious fact follows from the independence of each cell, namely, that new growths can start from almost any part of the plant. for example, pieces will often break off from the tangled mass or protonema below, and, starting on their own account, form other thread masses. then, after the moss stems have grown, a new mass of threads may grow from one of the tiny root-hairs of a stem and make a fresh tangle; nay, a thread will sometimes even spring out of a damp moss leaf and make a new beginning, while the moss stems themselves often put forth buds and branches, which grow root-hairs and settle down on their own account. [illustration: fig. 34. polytrichum commune. a large hair-moss. _t_, _t_, threads of green cells forming the _protonema_ out of which moss-buds spring. _mb_, buds of moss-stems. _a_, minute green flower in which the antherozoids are formed (enlarged in fig. 35). _p_, _p1_, _p2_, _p3_, minute green flower in which the ovules are formed, and urn-plant springing out of it (enlarged in fig. 35). _us_, urn stems. _c_, cap. _u_, urn after cap has fallen off, still protected by its lid.] all this comes from the simple nature of the plants, each cell doing its own work. nor are the mosses in any difficulty as to soil, for as the matted threads decay they form a rich manure, and the dying moss-stems themselves, being so fragile, turn back very readily into food. this is why mosses can spread over the poorest soil where even tough grasses cannot live, and clothe walls and roofs with a rich green. [illustration: fig. 35. fructification of a moss. a, male moss-flower stripped of its outer leaves, showing jointed filaments and oval sacs os and antherozoid cells _zc_ swarming out of a sac. _zc´_, antherozoid cell enlarged. _z_, free antherozoid. p, female flower with bottle-shaped sacs _bs_. _bs-c_, bottle-shaped sac, with cap being pushed up. _u_, urn of _funaria hygrometrica_, with small cap. _u´_, urn, from which the cap has fallen, showing the teeth _t_ which keep in the spores.] so far, then, we now understand the growth of the mossy-leaf stems, but this is only half the life of the plant. after the moss has gone on through the damp winter spreading and growing, there appear in the spring or summer tiny moss flowers at the tip of some of the stems. these flowers (_a_, _p_, fig. 34) are formed merely of a few green leaves shorter and stouter than the rest, enclosing some oval sacs surrounded by jointed hairs or filaments (see a and p, fig. 35). these sacs are of two different kinds, one set being short and stout _os_, the others having long necks like bottles _bs_. sometimes these two kinds of sac are in one flower, but more often they are in separate flowers, as in the hair-moss, _polytrichum commune_ (_a_ and _p_, fig. 34). now when the flowers are ripe the short sacs in the flower a open and fling out myriads of cells _zc_, and these cells burst, and forth come tiny wriggling bodies _z_, called by botanists _antherozoids_, one out of each cell. these find their way along the damp moss to the flower p, and entering the neck of one of the bottle-shaped sacs _bs_, find out each another cell or _ovule_ inside. the two cells together then form a _plant-egg_, which answers to the germ in the seeds of higher plants. now let us be sure we understand where we are in the life of the plant. we have had its green-growing time, its flowering, and the formation of what we may roughly call its seed, which last in ordinary higher plants would fall down and grow into a new green plant. but with the moss there is more to come. the egg does not shake out of the bottle-necked sac, but begins to grow inside it, sending down a little tube into the moss stem, and using it as other plants use the ground to grow in. as soon as it is rooted it begins to form a delicate stem, and as this grows it pushes up the sac _bs_, stretching the neck tighter and tighter till at last it tears away below, and the sac is carried up and hangs like an extinguisher or cap (_c_ figs. 34, 35) over the top of the stem. meanwhile, under this cap the top of the stalk swells into a knob which, by degrees, becomes a lovely little covered urn _u_, something like a poppy head, which has within it a number of spores. the growth of this tiny urn-plant often occupies several months, for you must remember that it is not merely a fruit, though it is often called so, but a real plant, taking in food through its tubes below and working for its living. when it is finished it is a most lovely little object (_us_, fig. 34), the fine hairlike stalk being covered with a green, yellow, or brilliant red fool's cap on the top, yet the whole in most mosses is not bigger than an ordinary pin. you may easily see them in the spring or summer, or even sometimes in the winter. i have only been able to bring you one very little one to-day, the _funaria hygrometrica_, which fruits early in the year. this moss has only a short cap, but in many mosses they are very conspicuous. i have often pulled them off as you would pull a cap from a boy's head. in nature they fall off after a time, leaving the urn, which, though so small, is a most complicated structure. first it has an outer skin, with holes or mouths in it which open and close to let moisture in and out. then come two layers of cells, then an open space full of air, in which are the green chlorophyll grains which are working up food for the tiny plant as the moisture comes in to them. lastly, within this again is a mass of tissue, round which grow the spores which are soon to be sown, and which in _polytrichum commune_ are protected by a lid. even after the extinguisher and the lid have both fallen off, the spores cannot fall out, for a thick row of teeth (_t_, fig. 35) is closed over them like the tentacles of an anemone. so long as the air is damp these teeth remain closed; it is only in fine dry weather that they open and the spores are scattered on the ground. _funaria hygrometrica_ has no lid under its cap, and after the cap falls the spores are only protected by the teeth. when the spores are gone, the life of the tiny urn-plant is over. it shrivels and dies, leaving ten, fifteen, or even more spores, which, after lying for some time on the ground, sprout and grow into a fresh mass of soft threads. so now we have completed the life-history of the moss and come back to the point at which we started. i am afraid it has been rather a difficult history to follow step by step, and yet it is perfectly clear when once we master the succession of growths. starting from a spore, the thread-mass or protonema gives rise to the moss-stems forming the dense green carpet, then the green flowers on some of the leaf-stems give rise to a plant-egg, which roots itself in the stem, and grows into a perfect plant without leaves, bearing merely the urn in which fresh spores are formed, and so the round goes on from year to year. there are a great number of different varieties of moss, and they differ in the shape and arrangement of their stems and leaves, and very much in the formation of their urns, yet this sketch will enable you to study them with understanding, and when you find in the wood the nodding caps of the fruiting plants, some red, some green, some yellow, and some a brilliant orange, you will feel that they are acquaintances, and by the help of the microscope may soon become friends. among them one of the most interesting is the sphagnum or bog-moss (fig. 36), which spreads its thick carpet over all the bogs in the woods. you cannot miss its little orange-coloured spore-cases if you look closely, for they contrast strongly with its pale green leaves, out of which they stand on very short stalks. i wish we could examine it, for it differs much from other mosses, both in leaves and fruit, but it would take us too long. at least, however, you must put one of its lovely transparent leaves under the microscope, that you may see the large air-cells which lie between the growing cells, and admire the lovely glistening bands which run across and across their covering membrane, for the sphagnum leaf is so extremely beautiful that you will never forget it when once seen. it is through these large cells in the edge of the stem and leaf that the water rises up from the swamp, so that the whole moss is like a wet sponge. [illustration: fig. 36. sphagnum moss from a devonshire bog. (from life.)] and now, before we part, we had better sum up the history of lichens and mosses. with the lichens we have seen that the secret of success seems to be mutual help. the green cells provide the food, the fungus cells form a surface over which the green cells can spread to find sunlight and moisture, and protection from extremes of heat or cold. with the mosses the secret lies in their standing on the borderland between two classes of plant life. on the one hand, they are still tender-celled plants, each cell being able to live its own life and make its own food; on the other hand, they have risen into shapely plants with the beginnings of feeble roots, and having stems along which their leaves are arranged so that they are spread to the light and air. both lichens and mosses keep one great advantage common to all tender-celled plants; they can be dried up so that you would think them dead, and yet, because they can work all over their surface whenever heat and moisture reach them, each cell drinks in food again and the plant revives. so when a scorching sun, or a dry season, or a biting frost kills other plants, the mosses and lichens bide their time till moisture comes again. in our own country they grow almost everywhere--on walls, on broken ground, on sand-heaps, on roofs and walls, on trees living and dead, and over all pastures which are allowed to grow poor and worn out. they grow, too, in all damp, marshy spots; especially the bog-mosses forming the peat-bogs which cover a large part of ireland and many regions in scotland; and these same bog-mosses occur in america, new zealand, and australia. in the tropics mosses are less abundant, probably because other plants flourish so luxuriantly; but in arctic siberia and arctic america both lichens and mosses live on the vast tundras. there, during the three short months of summer, when the surface of the ground is soft, the lichens spread far and wide where all else is lifeless, while in moister parts the polytrichums or hair-mosses cover the ground, and in swampy regions stunted sphagnums form peat-bogs only a few inches in depth over the frozen soil beneath. if, then, the lichens and mosses can flourish even in such dreary latitudes as these, we can understand how they defy even our coldest winters, appearing fresh and green when the snow melts away from over them, and leave their cells bathed in water, so that these lowly plants clothe the wood with their beauty when otherwise all would be bare and lifeless. chapter v the history of a lava stream [illustration] it is now just twenty-two years ago, boys, since i saw a wonderful sight, which is still so fresh in my mind that i have to look round and remember that it was before any of you were born, in order to persuade myself that it can be nearly a quarter of a century since i stood with my feet close to a flowing stream of red-hot lava. it happened in this way. i was spending the winter with friends in naples, and we were walking quietly one lovely afternoon in november along the villa reale, the public garden on the sea-shore, when one of our party exclaimed, "look at vesuvius!" we did so, and saw in the bright sunlight a dense dark cloud rising up out of the cone. the mountain had been sending out puffs of smoke, with a booming noise, for several days, but we thought nothing of that, for it had been common enough for slight eruptions to take place at intervals ever since the great eruption of 1867. this cloud, however, was far larger and wider-spread than usual, and as we were looking at it we saw a thin red line begin some way down the side of the mountain and creep onwards toward the valley which lies behind the hermitage near where the observatory is built (see fig. 37). "a crater has broken out on the slope," said our host; "it will be a grand sight to-night. shall we go up and see it?" no sooner proposed than settled, and one of the party started off at once to secure horses and men before others engaged them. [illustration: fig. 37. somma. vesuvius. vesuvius, as seen in eruption by the author, november 1868.] it was about eight o'clock in the evening when we started in a carriage for resina, and alighting there, with buried herculaneum under our feet, mounted our horses and set forward with the guides. then followed a long ascent of about two hours and a half through the dark night. silently and carefully we travelled on over the broad masses of slaggy lava of former years, along which a narrow horse-path had been worn; and ever and anon we heard the distant booming in the crater at the summit, and caught sight of fresh gleams of light as we took some turning which brought the glowing peak into view. our object was to get as close as possible to the newly-opened crater in the mountain-side, and when we arrived on a small rugged plain not far from the spot, we alighted from our horses, which were growing frightened with the glare, and walked some distance on foot till we came to a ridge running down the slope, and upon this ridge the lava stream was flowing. above our heads hung a vast cloud of vapour which reflected the bright light from the red-hot stream, and threw a pink glow all around, so that, where the cloud was broken and we could see the dark sky, the stars looked white as silver in contrast. we could now trace clearly the outline of the summit towering above us, and even watch the showers of ashes and dust which burst forth from time to time, falling back into the crater, or on to the steep slopes of the cone. if the night had not been calm, and such a breeze as there was blowing away from us, our position would scarcely have been safe; and indeed we were afterwards told we had been rash. but i would have faced even a greater risk to see so grand a spectacle, and when the guide helped me to scramble up on to the ledge, so that i stood with my feet within a few yards of the lava flow, my heart bounded with excitement. i could not stay more than a few seconds, for the gases and vapour choked me; but for that short time it felt like a dream to be standing close to a river of molten rock, which a few hours before had been lying deep in the bowels of the earth. glancing upwards to where this river issued from the cone in the mountain-side, i saw it first white-hot, then gradually fading to a glowing red as it crept past my feet; and then looking down the slope i saw it turn black and gloomy as it cooled rapidly at the top, while through the cracks which opened here and there as it moved on, puffs of gas and vapour rose into the air, and the red lava beneath gleamed through the chinks. we did not stay long, for the air was suffocating, but took our way back to the hermitage, where another glorious sight awaited us. some way above and behind the hill on which the observatory stands there is, or was, a steep cliff, and over this the lava stream, now densely black, fell in its way to the valley below, and as it fell it broke into huge masses, which heeling over exposed the red-hot lava under the crust, thus forming a magnificent fiery cascade in which black and red were mingled in wild confusion. this is how i saw a fresh red-hot lava stream. i had ascended the mountain some years before, when it was comparatively quiet, with only two small cones in its central crater sending out miniature flows of lava (see fig. 38). but the crater was too hot for me to cross over to these cones, and i could only marvel at the mass of ashes of which the top of the mountain was composed, and plunge a stick into an old lava stream to see how hot it still remained below. peaceful and quiet as the mountain seemed then, i could never have imagined such a glorious outburst as that of november 1868 unless i had seen it, and yet this was quite a small eruption compared to those of 1867 and 1872, which in their turn were nothing to some of the older eruptions in earlier centuries. [illustration: fig. 38. the top of vesuvius in 1864. (after nasmyth.)] now it is the history of this lava stream which i saw, that we are going to consider to-day, and you will first want to know where it came from, and what caused it to break out on the mountain-side. the truth is, that though we know now a good deal about volcanoes themselves, we know very little about the mighty cauldrons deep down in the earth from which they come. our deepest mines only reach to a depth of a little more than half a mile, and no borings even have been made beyond three-quarters of a mile, so that after this depth we are left very much to guesswork. we do know that the temperature increases as we go farther down from the surface, but the increase is very different in different districts--in some places being five times greater than it is in others at an equal depth, and it is always greatest in localities where volcanoes have been active not long before. now if there were an ocean of melted rock at a certain distance down below the crust all over the globe, there could scarcely be such a great difference between one place and another, and for this and many other reasons geologists are inclined to think that, from some unknown cause, great heat is developed at special points below the surface at different times. this would account for our finding volcanic rocks in almost all parts of the world, even very far away from where there are any active volcanoes now. but, as i have said, we do not clearly know why great reservoirs of melted rock occur from time to time deep under our feet. we may perhaps one day find the clue from the fact that nearly all, if not all, volcanoes occur near to the water's edge, either on the coast of the great oceans or of some enormous inland sea or lake. but at present all we can say is, that in certain parts of the globe there must be from time to time great masses of rock heated till they are white-hot, and having white-hot water mingled with them. these great masses need not, however, be liquid, for we know that under enormous pressure white-hot metals remain solid, and water instead of flashing into steam is kept liquid, pressing with tremendous force upon whatever keeps it confined. but now suppose that for some reason the mass of solid rock and ground above one of these heated spots should crack and become weak, or that the pressure from below should become so great as to be more powerful than the weight above, then the white-hot rock and water quivering and panting to expand, would upheave and burst the walls of their prison. cannot you picture to yourselves how when this happened the rock would swell into a liquid state, and how the water would force its way upwards into cracks and fissures expanding into steam as it went. then would be heard strange rumbling noises underground, as all these heavily oppressed white-hot substances upheaved and rent the crust above them. and after a time the country round, or the ground at the bottom of the sea, would quake and tremble, till by and by a way out would be found, and the water flashing into vapour would break and fling up the masses of rock immediately above the passage it had made for itself, and following after these would come the molten rock pouring out at the new opening. such outbursts as these have been seen at sea many times near volcanic islands. in 1811 a new island called sabrina was thrown up off st. michael's in the azores, and after remaining a short time was washed away by the waves. in the same way graham's island appeared off the coast of sicily in 1831, and as late as 1885 mr. shipley saw a magnificent eruption in the pacific near the tonga islands when an island about three miles long was formed. another very extraordinary outburst, this time on land, took place in 1538 on the opposite side of the bay of naples to where vesuvius stands. there, on the shores of the bay of baiæ, a mountain 440 feet high was built up in one week, where all had before been quiet in the memory of man. for two years before the outburst came, rumblings and earthquakes had alarmed the people, and at last one day the sea drew back from the shore and the ground sank about fourteen feet, and then on the night of sunday, september 29, 1538, it was hurled up again, and steam, fiery gases, stones, and mud burst forth, driving away the frightened people from the village of puzzuoli about two miles distant. for a whole week jets of lava, fragments of rock, and showers of ashes were poured out, till they formed the hill now called monte nuovo, 440 feet high and measuring a mile and a half round the base. and there it has remained till the present day, perfectly quiet after the one great outburst had calmed down, and is now covered with thickets of stone-pine trees. these sudden outbursts show that some great change must occur in the state of the earth's crust under the spots where they take place, and we know that eruptions may cease for centuries in any particular place and then begin afresh quite unexpectedly. vesuvius was a peaceable mountain overgrown with trees and vines in the time of the greeks till in the year a.d. 79 occurred the terrific outburst which destroyed herculaneum and pompeii, shattering old vesuvius to pieces, so that only the cliffs on the northwest remain and are called somma (see fig. 37), while the new vesuvius has grown up in the lap, as it were, of its old self. yet when we visit the cliffs of somma, and examine the old lava streams in them, we see that the ancient peaceful mountain was itself built up by volcanic outbursts of molten rock, and showers of clinkers or scoriæ, long before man lived to record it. meanwhile, when once an opening is made, we can understand how after an eruption is over, and the steam and lava are exhausted, all quiets down for awhile, and the melted rock in the crater of the mountain cools and hardens, shutting in once more the seething mass below. this was the state of the crater when i saw it in 1864, though small streams still flowed out of two minute cones; but since then at least one great outburst had taken place in 1867, and now on this november night, 1868, the imprisoned gases rebelled once more and forced their way through the mountain-side. at this point we can leave off forming conjectures and really study what happens; for we do know a great deal about the structure of volcanoes themselves, and the history of a lava-flow has been made very clear during the last few years, chiefly by the help of the microscope and chemical experiments. if we imagine then that on the day of the eruption we could have seen the inside of the mountain, the diagram (fig. 39) will fairly represent what was taking place there. [illustration: fig. 39. diagrammatic section of an active volcano. _a_, central pipe or funnel. _b_, _b_, walls of the crater or cup. _c_, _c_, dark turbid cloud formed by the ascending globular clouds _d_, _d_. _e_, rain-shower from escaped vapour. _f_, _f_, shower of blocks, cooled bombs, stones, and ashes falling back on to the cone. _g_, lava escaping through a fissure, and pouring out of a cone opened in the mountain side.] in the funnel _a_ which passes down from the crater or cup _b_, _b_, white-hot lava was surging up, having a large quantity of water and steam entangled in it. the lava, or melted rock, would be in much the same state as melted iron-slag is, in the huge blast-furnaces in which iron-rock is fused, only it would have floating in it great blocks of solid rock, and rounded stones called bombs which have been formed from pieces of half-melted rock whirled in air and falling back into the crater, together with clinkers or scoriæ, dust and sand, all torn off and ground down from the walls of the funnel up which the rush was coming. and in the pipe of melted rock, forcing the lava upwards, enormous bubbles of steam and gas _d_, _d_ would be rising up one after another as bubbles rise in any thick boiling substances, such as boiling sugar or tar. in the morning before the eruption, when only a little smoke was issuing from the crater, these bubbles rose very slowly through the loaded funnel and the half-cooled lava in the basin, and the booming noise, like that of heavy cannon, heard from time to time, was caused by the bursting of one of these globes of steam at the top of the funnel, as it brought up with it a feeble shower of stones, dust, and scoriæ. meanwhile the lava surging below was forcing a passage _g_ for itself in a weak part of the mountain-side and, just at the time when our attention was called to vesuvius, the violent pressure from below rent open a mouth or crater at _h_, so that the lava began to flow down the mountain in a steady stream. this, relieving the funnel, enabled the huge steam bubbles _d_, _d_ to rise more quickly, and to form the large whitish-grey cloud _c_, into which from time to time the red-hot blocks, scoriæ, and pumice were thrown up by the escaping steam and gases. these blocks and fragments then fell back again in a fiery shower _f_, _f_ either into the cup, to be thrown up again by the bursting of the next bubble, or on to the sides of the cone, making it both broader and higher. only one feature in the diagram was fortunately absent the evening we went up, namely, the rain-shower _e_. the night, as i said, was calm, and the air dry, and the steam floated peacefully away. the next night, however, when many people hurried down from rome to see the sight they were woefully disappointed, for rain-showers fell heavily from the cloud, bringing down with them the dust and ashes, which covered the unfortunate sight-seers. this was what happened during the eruption, and the result after a few days was that the cone was a little higher, with a fresh layer of rough slaggy scoriæ on its slopes, and that on the side of the mountain behind the hermitage a new lava stream was added to the many which have flowed there of late years. what then can we learn from this stream about the materials which come up out of the depths of the earth, and of the manner in which volcanic rocks are formed? the lava as i saw it when coming first out of the newly-opened crater is, as i have said, like white-hot iron slag, but very soon the top becomes black and solid, a hard cindery mass full of holes and cavities with rough edges, caused by the steam and sulphur and other gases breaking through it.[1] in fact, there are so many holes and bubbles in it that it is very light and floats on the top of the heavier lava below, falling over it on to the mountain-side when it comes to the end of the stream. still, however, the great mass moves on, so that the stream slides over these fallen clinkers or scoriæ. thus after an eruption a new flow consists of three layers; at the top the cooled and broken crust of clinkers, then the more solid lava, which often remains hot for years, and lastly another cindery layer beneath, formed of the scoriæ which have fallen from above (see fig. 40). [1] for the cindery nature of the surface of such a stream see the initial letter of this chapter. [illustration: fig. 40. section of a lava-flow. (j. geikie.) 1, slaggy crust, formed chiefly of scoriæ of a glassy nature. 2, middle portion where crystals form. 3, slaggy crust which has slipped down and been covered by the flow.] you would be surprised to see how quickly the top hardens, so that you can actually walk across a stream of lava a day or two after it comes out from the mountain. but you must not stand still or your shoes would soon be burnt, and if you break the crust with a stick you will at once see the red-hot lava below; while after a few days the cavities become filled with crystals of common salt, sulphur or soda, as the vapour and gases escape. then as time goes on the harder minerals gradually crystallise out of the melted mass, and iron-pyrites, copper-sulphate, and numerous other forms of crystal appear in the lower part of the stream. in the clinkers above, where the cooling goes on very rapidly, the lavas formed are semi-transparent and look much like common bottle-glass. in fact, if you take this piece of obsidian or volcanic glass in your hand, you might think that it had come out of an ordinary glass manufactory and had nothing remarkable in it. [illustration: fig. 41. a slice of volcanic glass showing the lines of crystallites and microliths which are the beginnings of crystals.[1] (j. geikie.)] [1] this arrangement in lines is called _fluidal structure_ in lava. but the microscope tells another tale. i have put a thin slice under the first microscope, and this diagram (fig. 41) shows what you will see. nothing, you say, but a few black specks and some tiny dark rods. true, but these specks and rods are the first beginnings of crystals forming out of the ground-mass of glassy lava as it cools down. they are not real crystals, but the first step toward them, and by a careful examination of glassy lavas which have cooled at different rates, they have been seen under the microscope in all stages of growth, gradually building up different crystalline forms. when we remember how rapidly the top of many glassy lavas cool down we can understand that they have often only time to grow very small. [illustration: fig. 42. a slice of volcanic glass under the microscope, showing well-developed microliths. (after cohen.)] the smaller specks are called _crystallites_, the rods are called _microliths_.[1] under the next microscope you can see the microliths much more distinctly (fig. 42) and observe that they grow in very regular shapes. [1] _micros_, little; _lithos_, stone. our first slice, however (fig. 41), tells us something more of their history, for the fact that they are arranged in lines shows that they have grown while the lava was flowing and carrying them along in streams. you will notice that each one has its greatest length in the direction of the lines, just as pieces of stick are carried along lengthways in a river. in the second specimen (fig. 42) the microliths are much larger and the stream has evidently not been flowing fast, for they lie in all directions. this is what we find in the upper part of the stream, but if we look at a piece of underlying lava we find that it is much more coarse-grained, and the magnifying-glass shows many crystals in it, as well as a number of microliths. for this lava, covered by the crust above, has remained very hot for a long time, and the crystals have had time to build themselves up out of the microliths and crystallites. still there is much glassy groundwork even in these lavas. if we want to find really stony masses such as porphyry and granite made up entirely of crystals we must look inside the mountain where the molten rock is kept intensely hot for long periods, as for example in the fissure _g_, fig. 39. such fissures sometimes open out on the surface like the one i saw, and sometimes only penetrate part of the way through the hill; but in either case when the lava in them cools down, it forms solid walls called dykes which help to bind the loose materials of the mountain together. we cannot, of course, examine these in an active volcano, but there are many extinct volcanoes which have been worn and washed by the weather for centuries, so that we can see the inside. the dykes laid bare in the cliffs of somma are old fissures filled with molten rock which has cooled down, and they show us many stony lavas; and mr. judd tells us of one beautiful example of a ruined volcano which composes the whole island of mull in the hebrides, where such dykes can be traced right back to a centre. this centre must once have been a mass of melted matter far down in the earth, and as you trace the dykes back deeper and deeper into it, the rocks grow more and more stony, till at last they are composed entirely of large crystals closely crowded together without any glassy matter between them. you know this crystalline structure well, for we have plenty of blocks of granite scattered about on dartmoor, showing that at some time long ago molten matter must have been at work in the depths under devonshire. we see then that we can trace the melted rock of volcanoes right back--from the surface of the lava stream which cools quickly at the top, hurrying the crystallites and microliths along with it--down through the volcano to the depths of the earth, where the perfect crystals form slowly and deliberately in the underground lakes of white-hot rock which are kept in a melted state at an intense heat. [illustration: fig. 43. a piece of dartmoor granite, drawn from a specimen.] but i promised you that we would have no guesswork here, and you will perhaps ask how i can be certain what was going on in the depths when these crystals were formed. a few years ago i could not have answered you, but now chemists, and especially two eminent french chemists, mm. fouqué and levy, have actually _made_ lavas and shown us how it is done in nature. by using powerful furnaces and bellows they have succeeded in getting temperatures of all degrees, from a dazzling white heat down to a dull red, and to keep any temperature they like for a long time, so as to imitate the state of a mass of melted rock at different depths in the earth, and in this way they have actually _made_ lavas in their crucibles. for example, there is a certain whitish rock common in vesuvius called _leucotephrite_,[1] which is made up chiefly of crystals of the minerals called leucite, labrador felspar, and augite. this they proposed to make artificially, so they took proper quantities of silica, alumina, oxide of iron, lime, potash, and soda, and putting them in a crucible, melted them by keeping them at a white heat. then they lowered the temperature to an orange-heat, that is a heat sufficient to melt steel. they kept this heat for forty-eight hours, after which they took out some of the mixture and, letting it cool, examined a slice under the microscope. within it they found crystals of _leucite_ already formed, showing that these are the first to grow while the melted rock is still intensely hot. the rest of the mixture they kept red-hot, or at the melting-point of copper, for another forty-eight hours, and when they took it out and examined it they found that the whole of it had been transformed into microliths of the two other forms of crystals, labrador felspar and augite, except some small eight-sided crystals of magnetite and picotite which are also found in the natural rock. [1] _leucos_, white; _tephra_, ashes. there is no need for you to remember all these names. what i do want you to remember is, that, at the different temperatures, the right crystals and beginnings of crystals grew up to form the rock which is found in vesuvius. and what is still more interesting, they grew exactly to the same stages as in the natural rock, which is composed of _crystals_ of leucite and _microliths_ of the two other minerals. this is only one among numerous experiments by which we have learnt how volcanic rocks are formed and at what heat the crystals of different substances grow. we are only as yet at the beginning of this new study, and there is plenty for you boys to do by and by when you grow up. many experiments have failed as yet to imitate certain rocks, and it is remarkable that these are usually rocks of very ancient eruptions, when _perhaps_ our globe may have been in a different state to what it is now; but this remains for us to find out. meanwhile i have still another very interesting slide to show you which tells us something of what is going on below the volcano. under the third microscope i have put a slice of volcanic glass (fig. 44) in which you will see really large crystals with dark bands curving round them. these crystals have clearly not been formed in the glass while the lava was flowing, first because they are too large to have grown up so rapidly, and secondly because they are broken at the edges in places and sometimes partly melted. they have evidently come up with the lava as it flowed out of the mountain, and the dark bands curving round them are composed of microliths which have been formed in the flow and have swept round them, as floating straws gather round a block of wood in a stream. such crystals as these are often found in lava streams, and in fact they make a great difference in the rate at which a stream flows, for a thoroughly melted lava shoots along at a great pace and often travels several miles in a very short time; but an imperfectly melted lava full of crystals creeps slowly along, and often does not travel far from the crater out of which it flows. [illustration: fig. 44. slice of volcanic glass under the microscope, showing large included crystals brought up from inside the volcano in the fluid lava. the dark bands are lines of microliths formed as the lava cooled. (j. geikie.)] so you see we have proof in this slice of volcanic glass of two separate periods of crystallisation--the period when the large crystals grew in the liquid mass under the mountain, and the period when the microliths were formed after it was poured out above ground. and as we know that different substances form their crystals at very different temperatures, it is not surprising that some should be able to take up the material they require and grow in the underground lakes of melted matter, even though the rest of the lava was sufficiently fluid to be forced up out of the mountain. and here we must leave our lava stream. the microscope can tell us yet more, of marvellous tiny cavities inside the crystals, millions in a single inch, and of other crystals inside these, all of which have their history; but this would lead us too far. we must be content for the present with having roughly traced a flow of lava from the depths below, where large crystals form in subterranean darkness, to the open air above, where we catch the tiny beginnings of crystals hardened into glassy lava before they have time to grow further. if you will think a little for yourselves about these wonderful discoveries made with the magic-glass, you will see how many questions they suggest to us about the minerals which we find buried in the earth and running through it in veins, and you will want to know something about the more precious crystals, such as rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and garnets, and many others which nature forms far away out of our sight. all these depend, though indirectly, upon the strange effects of underground heat, and if you have once formed a picture in your minds of what must have been going on before that magnificent lava stream crept down the mountain-side and added its small contribution to the surface of the earth, you will study eagerly all that comes in your way about crystals and minerals, and while you ask questions with the spectroscope about what is going on in the sun and stars millions of miles away, you will also ask the microscope what it has to tell of the work going on at depths many miles under your feet. chapter vi an hour with the sun [illustration] before beginning upon the subject of our lecture to-day i want to tell you the story of a great puzzle which presented itself to me when i was a very young child. i happened to come across a little book--i can see it now as though it were yesterday--a small square green book called _world without end_, which had upon the cover a little gilt picture of a stile with trees on each side of it. that was all. i do not know what the book was about, indeed i am almost sure i never opened it or saw it again, but that stile and the title "world without end" puzzled me terribly. what was on the other side of the stile? if i could cross over it and go on and on should i be in a world which had no ending, and what would be on the other side? but then there could be no other side if it was a world without any end. i was very young, you must remember, and i grew confused and bewildered as i imagined myself reaching onwards and onwards beyond that stile and never, never resting. at last i consulted my greatest friend, an old man who did the weeding in my father's garden, and whom i believed to be very wise. he looked at first almost as bewildered as i was, but at last light dawned upon him. "i tell you what it is, master arthur," said he, "i do not rightly know what happens when there is no end, but i do know that there is a mighty lot to be found out in this world, and i'm thinking we had better learn first all about that, and perhaps it may teach us something which will help us to understand the other." i daresay you will wonder what this anecdote can have to do with a lecture on the sun--i will tell you. last night i stood on the balcony and looked out far and farther away into the star-depths of the midnight sky, marvelling what could be the history of those countless suns of which we see ever more and more as we increase the power of our telescopes, or catch the faint beams of those we cannot see and make them print their image on the photographic plate. and, as i grew oppressed at the thought of this never-ending expanse of suns and at my own littleness, i remembered all at once the little square book of my childish days with its gilt stile, and my old friend's advice to learn first all we can of that which lies nearest. so to-day, before we travel away to the stars, we had better inquire what is known about the one star in the heavens which is comparatively near to us, our own glorious sun, which sends us all our light and heat, causes all the movements of our atmosphere, draws up the moisture from the ground to return in refreshing rain, ripens our harvests, awakens the seeds and sleeping plants into vigorous growth, and in a word sustains all the energy and life upon our earth. yet even this star, which is more than a million times as large as our earth, and bound so closely to us that a convulsion on its surface sends a thrill right through our atmosphere, is still so far off that it is only by questioning the sunbeams it sends to us, that we can know anything about it. you have already learnt[1] a good deal as to the size, the intense heat and light, and the photographic power of the sun, and also how his white beams of light are composed of countless coloured rays which we can separate in a prism. now let us pass on to the more difficult problem of the nature of the sun itself, and what we know of the changes and commotions going on in that blazing globe of light. [1] _fairyland of science_, chapter ii. we will try first what we can see for ourselves. if you take a card and make a pin-hole in it, you can look through this hole straight at the sun without injuring your eye, and you will see a round shining disc on which, perhaps, you may detect a few dark spots. then if you take your hand telescopes, which i have shaded by putting a piece of smoked glass inside the eye-piece, you will find that this shining disc is really a round globe, and moreover, although the object-glass of your telescopes measures only two-and-a-half inches across, you will be able to see the dark spots very distinctly and to observe that they are shaded, having a deep spot in the centre with a paler shadow round it. [illustration: fig. 45. face of the sun projected on a sheet of cardboard c. t, telescope. _f_, finder. _og_, object-glass. _ep_, eye-piece. s, screen shutting off the diffused light from the window.] as, however, you cannot all use the telescopes, and those who can will find it difficult to point them truly on to the sun, we will adopt still another plan. i will turn the object-glass of my portable telescope full upon the sun's face, and bringing a large piece of cardboard on an easel near to the other end, draw it slowly backward till the eye-piece forms a clear sharp image upon it (see fig. 45). this you can all see clearly, especially as i have passed the eye-piece of the telescope through a large screen _s_, which shuts off the light from the window. you have now an exact image of the face of the sun and the few dark spots which are upon it, and we have brought, as it were, into our room that great globe of light and heat which sustains all the life and vigour upon our earth. this small image can, however, tell us very little. let us next see what photography can show us. the diagram (fig. 46) shows a photograph of the sun taken by mr. selwyn in october 1860. let me describe how this is done. you will remember that there is a point in the telescope tube where the rays of light form a real image of the object at which the telescope is pointed (see p. 44). now an astronomer who wishes to take a photograph of the sun takes away the eye-piece of his telescope and puts a photographic plate in the tube exactly at the place where this real image is formed. he takes care to blacken the frame of the plate and shuts up this end of the telescope and the plate in a completely dark box, so that no diffused light from outside can reach it. then he turns his telescope upon the sun that it may print its image. but the sun's light is so strong that even in a second of time it would print a great deal too much, and all would be black and confused. to prevent this he has a strip of metal which slides across the tube of the telescope in front of the plate, and in the upper part of this strip a very fine slit is cut. before he begins, he draws the metal up so that the slit is outside the tube and the solid portion within, and he fastens it in this position by a thread drawn through and tied to a bar outside. then he turns his telescope on the sun, and as soon as he wishes to take the photograph he cuts the thread. the metal slides across the tube with a flash, the slit passing across it and out again below in the hundredth part of a second, and in that time the sun has printed through the slit the picture before you. [illustration: fig. 46. photograph of the face of the sun, taken by mr. selwyn, october 1860, showing spots, faculæ, and mottled surface.] in it you will observe at least two things not visible on our card-image. the spots, though in a different position from where we see them to-day, look much the same, but round them we see also some bright streaks called _faculæ_, or torches, which often appear in any region where a spot is forming, while the whole face of the sun appears mottled with bright and darker spaces intermixed. those of you who have the telescopes can see this mottling quite distinctly through them if you look at the sun. the bright points have been called by many names, and are now generally known as "light granules," as good a name, perhaps, as any other. this is all our photograph can tell us, but the round disc there shown, which is called the _photosphere_, or light-giving sphere, is by no means the whole of the sun, though it is all we see daily with the naked eye. whenever a total eclipse of the sun takes place--by the dark body of the moon coming between us and it, so as to shut out the whole of this disc--a brilliant white halo, called the crown or _corona_, is seen to extend for many thousands of miles all round the darkened globe. it varies very much in shape, sometimes forming a kind of irregular square, sometimes a circle with off-shoots, as in fig. 47, which shows what major tennant saw in india during the total eclipse of august 18, 1868, and at other times it shoots out in long pearly white jets and sheets of light with dark spaces between. on the whole it varies periodically. at the time of few sun-spots its extensions are equatorial; but when the sun's face is much covered with spots, they are diagonal, stretching away from the spot-zones, but not nearly so far. [illustration: fig. 47. total eclipse of the sun, as drawn by major tennant at guntoor in india, august 18, 1868, showing corona and the protuberances seen at the beginning of totality.] and besides this corona there are seen very curious flaming projections on the edge of the sun, which begin to appear as soon as the moon covers the bright disc. in our diagram (fig. 47) you see them on the left side where the moon is just creeping over the limits of the photosphere and shutting out the strong light of the sun as the eclipse becomes total. a very little later they are better seen on the other side just before the bright edge of the sun is uncovered as the moon passes on its way. these projections in the real sun are of a bright red colour, and they take on all manners of strange shapes, sometimes looking like ranges of fiery hills, sometimes like gigantic spikes and scimitars, sometimes even like branching fiery trees. they were called _prominences_ before their nature was well understood, and will probably always keep that name. it would be far better, however, if some other name such as "glowing clouds" or "red jets" could be used, for there is now no doubt that they are jets of gases, chiefly hydrogen, constantly playing over the face of the sun, though only seen when his brighter light is quenched. they have been found to shoot up 20,000, 80,000, and even as much as 350,000 miles beyond the edge of the shining disc; and this last means that the flames were so gigantic that if they had started from our earth they would have reached beyond the moon. we shall see presently that astronomers are now able by the help of the spectroscope to see the prominences even when there is no eclipse, and we know them to be permanent parts of the bright globe. this gives us at last the whole of the sun, so far as we know. there is, indeed, a strange faint zodiacal light, a kind of pearly glow seen after sunset or before sunrise extending far beyond the region of the corona; but we understand so little about this that we cannot be sure that it actually belongs to the sun. and now how shall i best give you an idea of what little we do know about this great surging monster of light and heat which shines down upon us? you must give me all your attention, for i want to make the facts quite clear, that you may take a firm hold upon them. our first step is to question the sunlight which comes to us; and this we do with the spectroscope. let me remind you how we read the story of light through this instrument. taking in a narrow beam of light through a fine slit, we pass the beam through a lens to make the rays parallel, and then throw it upon a prism or row of prisms, so that each set of waves of coloured light coming through the slit is bent on its own road and makes an upright image of the slit on any screen or telescope put to receive it (see fig. 21, p. 52). now when the light we examine comes from a glowing solid, like white-hot iron, or a glowing liquid, or a gas under such enormous pressure that it behaves like a liquid, then the images of the slit always overlap each other, so that we see a continuous unbroken band of colour. however much you spread out the light you can never break up or separate the spectrum in any part.[1] but when you send the light, of a glowing gas such as hydrogen through the spectroscope, or of a substance melted into gas or vapour, such as sodium or iron vaporised by great heat, then it is a different story. such gases give only a certain number of bright lines quite separate from each other on the dark background, and each kind of gas gives its own peculiar lines; so that even when several are glowing together there is no confusion, but when you look at them through the spectroscope you can detect the presence of each gas by its own lines in the spectrum. [1] two rare earths, erbia and didymium, form an exception to this, but they do not concern us here. [illustration: table of spectra. plate i.] to make quite sure of this we will close the shutters and put a pinch of salt in a spirit-flame. salt is chloride of sodium, and in the flame the sodium glows with a bright yellow light. look at this light through your small direct-vision spectroscopes[1] and you see at once the bright yellow double-line of sodium (no. 3, plate i.) start into view across the faint continuous spectrum given by the spirit-flame. next i will show you glowing hydrogen. i have here a glass tube containing hydrogen, so arranged that by connecting two wires fastened to it with the induction coil of our electric battery it will soon glow with a bright red colour. look at this through your spectroscopes and you will see three bright lines, one red, one greenish blue, and one indigo blue, standing out on the dark background (no. 4, plate i.) [1] a direct-vision spectroscope is like a small telescope with prisms arranged inside the tube. the object-glass end is covered by two pieces of metal, which slide backwards and forwards by means of a screw, so that a narrow or broad slit can be opened. think for a moment what a grand power this gives you of reading as in a book the different gases which are glowing in the sky even billions of miles away. you would never mistake the lines of hydrogen for the line of sodium, but when looking at a nebula or any mass of glowing gas you could say at once "sodium is glowing there," or "that cloud must be composed of hydrogen." now, opening the shutters, look at the sunlight through your spectroscopes. here you have something different from either the continuous spectrum of solids, or the bright separate lines of gases, for while you have a bright-coloured band you have also some dark lines crossing it (no. 2, plate i.) it is those dark lines which enable us to guess what is going on in the sun before the light comes to us. in 1859 professor kirchhoff made an experiment which explained those dark lines, and we will repeat it now. take a good look at the sunlight spectrum, to fix the lines in your memory, and then close the shutters again. [illustration: fig. 48. kirchhoff's experiment, explaining the dark lines in sunlight. a, limelight dispersed through a prism. _s_, slit through which the beam of light comes. _l_, lens bringing it to a focus on the prism _p_. _sp_, continuous spectrum thrown on the wall. b, the same light, with the flame _f_ containing glowing sodium placed in front of it. d, dark sodium line appearing in the spectrum.] i have here our magic-lantern with its lime-light, in which the solid lime glows with a white heat, in consequence of the jets of oxygen and hydrogen burning round it. this was the light kirchhoff used, and you know it will give a continuous bright band in the spectroscope. i put a cap with a narrow slit in it over the lantern tube, so as to get a narrow beam of light; in front of this i put a lens _l_, and in front of this again the prism _p_. the slit and the prism act exactly like your spectroscopes, and you can all see the continuous spectrum on the screen (_sp_, a, fig. 48). next i put a lighted lamp of very weak spirit in front of the slit, and find that it makes no difference, for whatever light it gives only strengthens the spectrum. but now notice carefully. i am going to put a little salt into the flame, and you would expect that the sodium in it, when turned to glowing vapour, causing it to look yellow, would strengthen the yellow part of the spectrum and give a bright line. this is what kirchhoff expected, but to his intense surprise he saw as you do now a _dark line_ d start out where the bright line should have been. what can have happened? it is this. the oxyhydrogen light is very hot indeed, the spirit flame with the sodium is comparatively weak and cool. so when those special coloured waves of the oxyhydrogen light which agree with those of the sodium light reached the flame, they spent all their energy in heating up those waves to their own temperature, and while all the other coloured rays travelled on and reached the screen, these waves were stopped or _absorbed_ on the way, and consequently there was a blank, black space in the spectrum where they should have been. if i could put a hydrogen flame cooler than the original light in the road, then there would be three dark lines where the bright hydrogen lines should be, and so with every other gas. _the cool vapour in front of the hot light cuts off from the white ray exactly those waves which it gives out itself when burning._ thus each black line of the sun-spectrum (no. 2, plate i.), tells us that some particular ray of sunlight has been absorbed by a cooler vapour _of its own kind_ somewhere between the sun and us, and it must be in the sun itself, for when we examine other stars we often find dark lines in their spectrum different from those in the sun, and this shows that the missing rays must have been stopped close at home, for if they were stopped in our atmosphere they would all be alike. there are, by the bye, some lines which we know are caused by our atmosphere, especially when it is full of invisible water vapour, and these we easily detect, because they show more distinctly when the sun is low and shines through a thicker layer of air than when he is high up and shines through less. but to return to the sun. in your small spectroscopes you see very few dark lines, but in larger and more perfect ones they can be counted by thousands, and can be compared with the bright lines of glowing gases burnt here on earth. in the spectrum of glowing iron vapour 460 lines are found to agree with dark lines in the sun-spectrum, and other gases have nearly as many. still, though thousands of lines can now be explained, by matching them with the bright lines of known gases, the whole secret of sunlight is not yet solved, for the larger number of lines still remain a riddle to be read. we see then that the spectroscope teaches us that the round light-giving disc or photosphere of the sun consists of a bright and intensely hot light shining behind a layer of cooler though still very hot vapours, which form a kind of shell of luminous clouds around it, and in this shell, or _reversing layer_--as it is often called, because it turns light to darkness--we have proved that iron, lead, copper, zinc, aluminum, magnesium, potassium, sodium, carbon, hydrogen, and many other substances common to our earth, exist in a state of vapour for a depth of perhaps 1000 miles. you will easily understand that when the spectroscope had told so much, astronomers were eager to learn what it would reveal about the prominences or red jets seen during eclipses, and they got an answer in india during that same eclipse of august 1868 which is shown in our diagram (fig. 47). making use of the time during which the prominences were seen, they turned the telescope upon them with a spectroscope attached to it, and saw a number of bright lines start out, of which the chief were the three bright lines of hydrogen, showing that these curious appearances are really flames of glowing gas. in the same year professor jannsen and mr. lockyer succeeded in seeing the bright lines of the prominences in full sunlight. this was done in a very simple way, when once it was discovered to be possible, and though my apparatus (fig. 49) is very primitive compared with some now made, it will serve to explain the method. [illustration: fig. 49. the spectroscope attached to the telescope for the examination of the sun. (lockyer.) p, pillar of telescope. t, telescope. s, finder or small telescope for pointing the telescope in position. _a_, _a_, _b_, supports fastening the spectroscope to the telescope. _d_, collimator or tube carrying the slit at the end nearest the telescope, and a lens at the other end to render the rays parallel. _c_, plate on which the prisms are fixed. _e_, small telescope through which the observer examines the spectrum after the ray has been dispersed in the prisms. _h_, micrometer for measuring the relative distance of the lines.] when an astronomer wishes to examine the spectrum of any special part of the sun, he takes off the eye-piece of his telescope and screws the spectroscope upon the draw-tube. the spectroscope is made exactly like the large one for ordinary work. the tube _d_ (fig. 49) carries the slit at the end nearest the telescope, and this slit must be so placed as to stand precisely at the principal focus of the lens where the sun's image is formed (see _i_, _i_, p. 44). this comes to exactly the same thing as if we could put the slit close against the face of the sun, so as to show only the small strip which it covers, and by moving it to one part or another of the image we can see any point that we wish and no other. the light then passes through the tube _d_ into the round of prisms standing on the tray _c_, and the observer looking through the small telescope _e_ sees the spectrum as it emerges from the last prism. in this way astronomers can examine the spectrum of a spot, or part of a spot, or of a bright streak, or any other mark on the sun's face. now in looking at the prominences we have seen that the difficulty is caused by the sunlight, between us and them, overpowering the bright lines of the gas, nor could we overcome this if it were not for a difference which exists between the two kinds of light. the more you disperse or spread out the continuous sun-spectrum the fainter it becomes, but in spreading out the bright lines of the gas you only send them farther and farther apart; they themselves remain almost as bright as ever. so, when the telescope forms an image of the red flame in front of the slit, though the glowing gas and the sunlight both send rays into the spectroscope, you have only to use enough prisms and arrange them in such a way that the sunlight is dispersed into a very long faint spectrum, and then the bright lines of the flames will stand out bright and clear. of course only a small part of the long spectrum can be seen at once, and the lines must be studied separately. on the other hand, if you want to compare the strong light of the sun with the bright lines of the prominences, you place the slit just at the edge of the sun's image in the telescope, so that half the slit is on the sun's face and half on the prominence. the prisms then disperse the sunlight between you and the prominences, while they only lessen the strong light of the sun itself, which still shows clearly. in this way the two spectra are seen side by side and the dark and bright lines can be compared accurately together (see fig. 50). [illustration: fig. 50. bright lines of prominences. sun-spectrum with dark lines.] wherever the telescope is turned all round the sun the lines of luminous gas are seen, showing that they form a complete layer outside the photosphere, or light-giving mass, of the sun. this layer of luminous gases is called the _chromosphere_, or coloured sphere. it lies between the photosphere and the corona, and is supposed to be at least 5000 miles deep, while, as we have seen, the flames shoot up from it to fabulous heights. the quiet red flames are found to be composed of hydrogen and another new metal called helium; but lower down, near the sun's edge, other bright lines are seen, showing that sodium, magnesium, and other metals are there, and when violent eruptions occur these often surge up and mingle with the purer gas above. at other times the eruptions below fling the red flames aloft with marvellous force, as when professor young saw a long low-lying cloud of hydrogen, 100,000 miles long, blown into shreds and flung up to a height of 200,000 miles, when the fragments streamed away and vanished in two hours. yet all these violent commotions and storms are unseen by us on earth unless we look through our magic glasses. you will wonder no doubt how the spectroscope can show the height and the shape of the flames. i will explain to you, and i hope to show them you one day. you must remember that the telescope makes a small real image of the flame at its focus, just as in one of our earlier experiments you saw the exact image of the candle-flame upside down on the paper (see p. 33). the reason why we only see a strip of the flame in the spectroscope is because the slit is so narrow. but when once the sunlight was dispersed so as no longer to interfere, dr. huggins found that it is possible to open the slit wide enough to take in the image of the whole flame, and then, by turning the spectroscope so as to bring one of the bright hydrogen lines into view, the actual shape of the prominence is seen, only it will look a different colour, either red, greenish-blue, or indigo-blue, according to the line chosen. as the image of the whole sun and its appendages in the telescope is so very small, you will understand that even a very narrow slit will really take in a very large prominence several thousand miles in length. fig 51 shows a drawing by mr. lockyer of a group of flames he observed very soon after dr. huggins suggested the open slit, and these shapes did not last long, for in another picture he drew ten minutes later their appearance had already changed. [illustration: fig. 51. red prominences, as drawn by mr. lockyer during the total eclipse of march 14, 1869.] these then are some of the facts revealed to us by our magic glasses. i scarcely expect you to remember all the details i have given you, but you will at least understand now how astronomers actually penetrate into the secrets of the sun by bringing its image into their observatory, as we brought it to-day on the card-board, and then making it tell its own tale through the prisms of the spectroscope; and you will retain some idea of the central light of the sun with its surrounding atmosphere of cooler gases and its layer of luminous lambent gases playing round it beyond. of the corona i cannot tell you much, except that it is far more subtle than anything we have spoken of yet; that it is always strongest when the sun is most spotted; that it is partly made up of self-luminous gases whose bright lines we can see, especially an unknown green ray; while it also shines partly by reflected light from the sun, for we can trace in it faint dark lines; lastly it fades away into the mysterious zodiacal light, and so the sun ends in mystery at its outer fringe as it began at its centre. and now at last, having learnt something of the material of the sun, we can come back to the spots and ask what is known about them. as i have said, they are not always the same on the sun's face. on the contrary, they vary very much both in number and size. in some years the sun's face is quite free from them, at others there are so many that they form two wide belts on each side of the sun's equator, with a clear space of about six degrees between. no spots ever appear near the poles. herr schwabe, who watched the sun's face patiently for more than thirty years, has shown that it is most spotted about every eleven years, then the spots disappear very quickly and reappear slowly till the full-spot time comes round again. some spots remain a very short time and then break up and disappear, but others last for days, weeks, and even months, and when we watch these, we find that a spot appears to travel slowly across the face of the sun from east to west and then round the western edge so that it disappears. it is when it reaches the edge that we can convince ourselves that the spot is really part of the sun, for there is no space to be seen between them, the edge and the spot are one, as the last trace of the dark blotch passes out of sight. in fact, it is not the spot which has crossed the sun's face, but the sun itself which has turned, like our earth, upon its axis, carrying the spot round with it. as some spots remain long enough to reappear, after about twelve or thirteen days, on the opposite edge, and even pass round two or three times, astronomers can reckon that the sun takes about twenty-five days and five hours in performing one revolution. you will wonder why i say only _about_ twenty-five, but i do so because all spots do not come round in exactly the same time, those farthest from the equator lag rather more than a day behind those nearer to it, and this is explained by the layer of gases in which they are formed, drifting back in higher latitudes as the sun turns. it is by watching a spot as it travels across the sun, that we are able to observe that the centre partlies deeper in the sun's face than the outer rim. there are many ways of testing this, and you can try one yourselves with a telescope if you watch day after day. i will explain it by a simple experiment. i have here a round lump of stiff dough, in which i have made a small hollow and blackened the bottom with a drop of ink. as i turn this round, so that the hollow facing you moves from right to left, you will see that after it passes the middle of the face, the hole appears narrower and narrower till it disappears, and if you observe carefully you will note that the dark centre is the first thing you lose sight of, while the edges of the cup are still seen, till just before the spot disappears altogether. but now i will stick a wafer on, and a pea half into, the dough, marking the centre of each with ink. then i turn the ball again. this time you lose sight of the foremost edge first, and the dark centre is seen almost to the last moment. this shows that if the spots were either flat marks, or hillocks, on the sun's face, the dark centre would remain to the last, but as a fact it disappears before the rim. father secchi has tried to measure the depth of a spot-cavity, and thinks they vary from 1000 to 3000 miles deep. but there are many difficulties in interpreting the effects of light and shadow at such an enormous distance, and some astronomers still doubt whether spots are really depressions. for many centuries now the spots have been watched forming and dispersing, and this is roughly speaking what is seen to happen. when the sun is fairly clear and there are few spots, these generally form quietly, several black dots appearing and disappearing with bright streaks or _faculæ_ round their edge, till one grows bigger than the rest, and forms a large dark nucleus, round which, after a time, a half-shadow or _penumbra_ is seen and we have a sun-spot complete, with bright edges, dark shadow, and deep black centre (fig. 52). this lasts for a certain time and then it becomes bridged over with light streaks, the dark spot breaks up and disappears, and last of all the half-shadow dies away. [illustration: fig. 52. a quiet sun-spot. (secchi.)] but things do not always take place so quietly. when the sun's face is very troubled and full of spots, the bright _faculæ_, which appear with a spot, seem to heave and wave, and generally several dark centres form with whirling masses of light round them, while in some of them tongues of fire appear to leap up from below (fig. 53). such spots change quickly from day to day, even if they remain for a long time, until at last by degrees the dark centres become less distinct, the half-shadows disappear, leaving only the bright streaks, which gradually settle down into luminous points or _light granules_. these light granules are in fact supposed by astronomers to be the tips of glowing clouds heaving up everywhere, while the dark spaces between them are cooler currents passing downwards. [illustration: fig. 53. a tumultuous sun-spot. (langley.)] below these clouds, no doubt, the great mass of the sun is in a violent state of heat and commotion, and when from time to time, whether suddenly or steadily, great upheavals and eruptions take place, bright flames dart up and luminous clouds gather and swell, so that long streaks or _faculæ_ surge upon the face of the sun. now these hot gases rising up thus on all sides would leave room below for cooler gases to pour down from above, and these, as we know, would cut off, or absorb, much of the light coming from the body of the sun, so that the centre, where the down current was the strongest, would appear black even though some light would pass through. this is the best explanation we have as yet of the formation of a sun-spot, and many facts shown in the spectroscope help to confirm it, as for example the thickening of the dark lines of the spectrum when the slit is placed over the centre of a spot, and the flashing out of bright lines when an uprush of streaks occurs either across the spots or round it. and now, before you go, i must tell you of one of these wonderful uprushes, which sent such a thrill through our own atmosphere, as to tell us very plainly the power which the sun has over our globe. the year 1859 was remarkable for sun-spots, and on september 1, when two astronomers many miles apart were examining them, they both saw, all at once, a sudden cloud of light far brighter than the general surface of the sun burst out in the midst of a group of spots. the outburst began at eight minutes past eleven in the forenoon, and in five minutes it was gone again, but in that time it had swept across a space of 35,000 miles on the sun! now both before and after this violent outburst took place a magnetic storm raged all round the earth, brilliant auroras were seen in all parts of the world, sparks flashed from the telegraph wires, and the telegraphic signalmen at washington and philadelphia received severe electric shocks. messages were interrupted, for the storm took possession of the wires and sent messages of its own, the magnetic needles darting to and fro as though seized with madness. at the very instant when the bright outburst was seen in the sun, the self-registering instruments at kew marked how three needles jerked all at once wildly aside; and the following night the skies were lit up with wondrous lights as the storm of electric agitation played round the earth. we are so accustomed to the steady glow of sunshine pouring down upon us that we pay very little heed to daylight, though i hope none of us are quite so ignorant as the man who praised the moon above the sun, because it shone in the dark night, whereas the sun came in the daytime when there was light enough already! yet probably many of us do not actually realise how close are the links which bind us to our brilliant star as he carries us along with him through space. it is only when an unusual outburst occurs, such as i have just described, that we feel how every thrill which passes through our atmosphere, through the life-current of every plant, and through the fibre and nerve of every animal has some relation to the huge source of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism at which we are now gazing across a space of more than 93,000,000 miles. yet it is well to remember that the sudden storm and the violent eruption are the exceptional occurrences, and that their use to us as students is chiefly to lead us to understand the steady and constant thrill which, never ceasing, never faltering, fulfils the great purpose of the unseen lawgiver in sustaining all movement and life in our little world. chapter vii an evening among the stars [illustration] "do you love the stars?" asked the magician of his lads, as they crowded round him on the college green, one evening in march, to look through his portable telescope. "have you ever sat at the window on a clear frosty night, or in the garden in summer, and looked up at those wondrous lights in the sky, pondering what they are, and what purpose they serve?" i will confess to you that when i lived in london i did not think much about the stars, for in the streets very few can be seen at a time even on a clear night; and during the long evenings in summer, when town people visit the country, you must stay up late to see a brilliant display of starlight. it is when driving or walking across country on a winter's evening week after week, and looking all round the sky, that the glorious suns of heaven force you to take notice of them; and orion becomes a companion with his seven brilliant stars and his magnificent nebula, which appears as a small pale blue patch, to eyes accustomed to look for it, when the night is very bright and clear. it is then that charles's wain becomes quite a study in all its different positions, its horses now careering upwards, now plunging downwards, while the waggon, whether upwards or downwards, points ever true, by the two stars of its tail-board, to the steadfast pole-star. it is on such nights as these that, looking southward from orion, we recognise the dog-star sirius, bright long before other stars have conquered the twilight, and feast our eye upon his glorious white beams; and then, turning northwards, are startled by the soft lustrous sheen of vega just appearing above the horizon. but stop, i must remember that i have not yet introduced you to these groups of stars; and moreover that, though we shall find them now in the positions i mention, yet if you look for them a few hours later to-night, or at the same hour later in the year, you will not find them in the same places in the sky. for as our earth turns daily on its axis, the stars _appear_ to alter their position hour by hour, and in the same way as we travel yearly on our journey round the sun, they _appear_ to move in the sky month by month. yet with a little practice it is easy to recognise the principal stars, for, as it is our movement and not theirs which makes us see them in different parts of the sky, they always remain in the same position with regard to each other. in a very short time, with the help of such a book as proctor's _star atlas_; you could pick out all the chief constellations and most conspicuous stars for yourselves. one of the best ways is to take note of the stars each night as they creep out one by one after sunset. if you take your place at the window to-morrow night as the twilight fades away, you will see them gradually appear, now in one part, now in another of the sky, as "one by one each little star sits on its golden throne." the first to appear will be sirius or the dog-star (see fig. 54), that pure white star which you can observe now rather low down to the south, and which belongs to the constellation _canis major_. as sirius is one of the most brilliant stars in the sky, he can be seen very soon after the sun is gone at this time of year. if, however, you had any doubt as to what star he was, you would not doubt long, for in a little while two beautiful stars start into view above him more to the west, and between them three smaller ones in a close row, forming the cross in the constellation of orion, which is always very easy to recognise. now the three stars of orion's belt which make the short piece of the cross always point to sirius, while betelgeux in his right shoulder, and rigel in his left foot (see figs. 54 and 55), complete the long piece, and these all show very early in the twilight. you would have to wait longer for the other two leading stars, bellatrix in the right shoulder and [greek: k] orionis in the right leg, for these stars are feebler and only seen when the light has faded quite away. [illustration: fig. 54. some of the constellations seen when looking south in march from six to nine o'clock.] by that time you would see that there are an immense number of stars in orion visible even to the naked eye, besides the veil of misty, tiny stars called the "milky way" which passes over his arm and club. yet the figure of the huntsman is very difficult to trace, and the seven bright stars, the five of the cross and those in the left arm and knee, are all you need remember. no! not altogether all, for on a bright clear night like this you can detect a faint greenish blue patch (n, fig. 54) just below the belt, and having a bright star in the centre. this is called the "great nebula" or mist of orion (see frontispiece). with your telescopes it looks very small indeed, for only the central and brightest part is seen. really, however, it is so widespread that our whole solar system is as nothing compared to it. but even your telescopes will show, somewhere near the centre, what appears to be a bright and very beautiful star (see fig. 55) surrounded by a darker space than the rest of the nebula, while in my telescope you will see many stars scattered over the mist. [illustration: fig. 55. chief stars of orion, with aldebaran. (after proctor.)] now first let me tell you that these last stars do not, so far as we know, lie _in_ the nebula, but are scattered about in the heavens between us and it, perhaps millions of miles nearer our earth. but with the bright star in the centre it is different, for the spectroscope tells us that the mist passes _over_ it, so that it is either behind or in the nebula. moreover, this star is very interesting, for it is not really one star, but six arranged in a group (see fig. 56). you can see four distinctly through my telescope, forming a trapezium or four-sided figure, and more powerful instruments show two smaller ones. so [greek: th] orionis, or the trapezium of orion, is a multiple star, probably lying in the midst of the nebula. [illustration: fig. 56. the trapezium, [greek: th] orionis, in the nebula of orion. (herschel.)] the next question is, what is the mist itself composed of? for a long time telescopes could give us no answer. at last one night lord rosse, looking through his giant telescope at the densest part of the nebula, saw myriads of minute stars which had never been seen before. "then," you will say, "it is after all only a cluster of stars too small for our telescopes to distinguish." wait a bit; it is always dangerous to draw hasty conclusions from single observations. what lord rosse said was true as to that particular part of the nebula, but not the whole truth even there, and not at all true of other parts, as the spectroscope tells us. for though the light of nebulæ, or luminous mists, is so faint that a spectrum can only be got by most delicate operations, yet dr. huggins has succeeded in examining several. among these is the nebula of orion, and we now know that when the light of the mist is spread out it gives, not a continuous band of colour such as would be given by stars, but _faint coloured lines_ on a dark ground (see fig. 57). such lines as these we have already learnt are always given by gases, and the particular bright lines thrown by orion's nebula answer to those given by nitrogen and hydrogen, and some other unknown gases. so we learn at last that the true mist of the nebula is formed of glowing gas, while parts have probably a great number of minute stars in them. [illustration: fig. 57. nebula-spectrum. sun-spectrum. spectrum of orion's nebula, showing bright lines, with sun-spectrum below for comparison.] till within a very short time ago only those people who had access to very powerful telescopes could see the real appearance of orion, for drawings made of it were necessarily very imperfect; but now that telescopes have been made expressly for carrying photographic appliances, even these faint mists print their own image for us. in 1880 professor draper of america photographed the nebula of orion, in march 1881 mr. common got a still better effect, and last year mr. isaac roberts succeeded in taking the most perfect and beautiful photograph[1] yet obtained, in which the true beauty of this wonderful mist stands out clearly. i have marked on the edge of our copy two points [greek: th] and [greek: th]´, and if you follow out straight lines from these points till they meet, you will arrive at the spot where the multiple star lies. it cannot, however, be seen here, because the plate was exposed for three hours and a half, and after a time the mist prints itself so densely as to smother the light of the stars. look well at this photograph when you go indoors and fix it on your memory, and then on clear nights accustom your eye to find the nebula below the three stars of the belt, for it tells a wonderful story. [1] reproduced in the frontispiece with mr. roberts's kind permission. the star-halo at the top of the plate is caused by diffraction of light in the telescope, and comes only from an ordinary star. more than a hundred years ago the great german philosopher kant suggested that our sun, our earth, and all the heavenly bodies might have begun as gases, and the astronomer laplace taught this as the most likely history of their formation. after a few years, however, when powerful telescopes showed that many of the nebulæ were only clusters of very minute stars, astronomers thought that laplace's teaching had been wrong. but now the spectroscope has revealed to us glowing gas actually filling large spaces in the sky, and every year accurate observations and experiments tell us more and more about these marvellous distant mists. some day, though perhaps not while you or i are here to know it, orion's nebula, with its glowing gas and minute star-dust, may give some clue to the early history of the heavenly bodies; and for this reason i wish you to recognise and ponder over it, as i have often done, when it shines down on the rugged moor in the stillness of a clear frosty winter's night. but we must pass on for, while i have been talking, the whole sky has become bespangled with hundreds of stars. that glorious one to the west, which you can find by following (fig. 54) a curved line upwards from betelgeux, is the beautiful red star aldebaran or the hindmost; so called by the arabs, because he drives before him that well-known cluster, the pleiades, which we reach by continuing the curve westwards and upwards. stop to look at this cluster through your telescopes, for it will delight you; even with the naked eye you can count from six to ten stars in it, and an opera-glass will show about thirty, though they are so scattered you will have to move the glass about to find them. yet though my telescope shows a great many more, you cannot even count all the chief ones through it, for in powerful telescopes more than 600 stars have been seen in the single cluster! while a photograph taken by mr. roberts shows also four lovely patches of nebula. and now from the pleiades let us pass on directly overhead to the beautiful star capella, which once was red but now is blue, and drop down gently to the south-east, where castor and pollux, the two most prominent stars in the constellation "gemini" or the twins, show brilliantly against the black sky. pause here a moment, for i want to tell you something about castor, the one nearest to capella. if you look at castor through your telescopes, some of you may possibly guess that it is really two stars, but you will have to look through mine to see it clearly. these two stars have been watched carefully for many years, and there is now no doubt that one of them is moving slowly round the other. such stars as these are called "binary," to distinguish them from stars that merely _appear_ double because they stand nearly in a line one behind the other in the heavens, although they may be millions of miles apart. but "binary" stars are actually moving in one system, and revolve round each other as our earth moves round the sun. i wonder if it strikes you what a grand discovery this is? you will remember that it is gravitation which keeps the moon held to the earth so that it moves round in a circle, and which keeps the earth and other planets moving round the sun. but till these binary stars were discovered we had no means of guessing that this law had any force beyond our own solar system. now, however, we learn that the same law and order which reigns in our small group of planets is in action billions of miles away among distant suns, so that they are held together and move round each other as our earth moves round our sun. i will repeat to you what sir r. ball, the astronomer-royal of ireland, says about this, for his words have remained in my mind ever since i read them, and i should like them to linger in yours till you are old enough to feel their force and grandeur. "this discovery," he writes, "gave us knowledge we could have gained from no other source. from the binary stars came a whisper across the vast abyss of space. that whisper told us that the law of gravitation is not peculiar to the solar system. it gives us grounds for believing that it is obeyed throughout the length, the breadth, the depth, and the height of the entire universe."[1] [1] _the story of the heavens._ and now, leaving castor and going round to the east, we pass through the constellation leo or the lion, and i want you particularly to notice six stars in the shape of a sickle, which form the front part of the lion, the brightest, called regulus, being the end of the handle.[1] this sickle is very interesting, because it marks the part of the heavens from which the brilliant shower of november meteors radiates once in thirty-three years. this is, however, too long a story to be told to-night, so we will pass through leo, and turning northwards, look high up in the north-east (fig. 58), where "charles's wain" stretches far across the sky. i need not point this out to you, for every country lad knows and delights in it. you could not have seen it in the twilight when sirius first shone out, for these stars are not so powerful as he is. but they come out very soon after him, and when once fairly bright, the four stars which form the waggon, wider at the top than at the bottom, can never be mistaken, and the three stars in front, the last bending below the others, are just in the right position for the horses. for this reason i prefer the country people's name of charles's wain or waggon to that of the "plough," which astronomers generally give to these seven stars. they really form part of an enormous constellation called the "great bear" (fig. 59), but, as in the case of orion, it is very difficult to make out the whole of bruin in the sky. [1] in fig. 54 the sickle alone comes within the picture. [illustration: fig. 58. some of the constellations seen when looking north in march from six to nine o'clock.] [illustration: fig. 59. the great bear, showing the position of charles's wain, and also the small binary star [greek: x] in the hind foot, whose period has been determined.] now, although most people know charles's wain when they see it, we may still learn a good deal about it. look carefully at the second star from the waggon and you will see another star close to it, called by country people "jack by the second horse," and by astronomers "alcor." even in your small telescopes you can see that jack or alcor is not so close as he appears to the naked eye, but a long way off from the horse, while in my telescope you will find this second horse (called mizar) split up into two stars, one a brilliant white and the other a pale emerald green. we do not know whether these two form a binary, for they have not yet been observed to move round each other. take care in looking that you do not confuse the stars one with another, for you must remember that your telescope makes objects appear upside down, and alcor will therefore appear in it _below_ the two stars forming the horse. but though we do not know whether mizar is binary, there is a little star a long way below the waggon, in the left hind paw of the great bear ([greek: x], figs. 58 and 59), which has taught us a great deal, for it is composed of two stars, one white and the other grey, which move right round each other once in sixty years, so that astronomers have observed more than one revolution since powerful telescopes were invented. you will have to look in my telescope to see the two stars divided, but you can make an interesting observation for yourselves by comparing the light of this binary star with the light of castor, for castor is such an immense distance from us that his light takes more than a hundred years to reach us, while the light of this smaller star comes in sixty-one years, yet see how incomparably brighter castor is of the two. this proves that brilliant stars are not always the nearest, but that a near star may be small and faint and a far-off one large and bright. [illustration: fig. 60. the seven stars of charles's wain, showing the directions in which they are travelling. (after proctor.)] there is another very interesting fact known to us about charles's wain which i should like you to remember when you look at it. this is that the seven stars are travelling onwards in the sky, and not all in the same direction. it was already suspected centuries ago that, besides the _apparent_ motion of all the stars in the heavens caused by our own movements, they have each also a _real_ motion and are travelling in space, though they are so inconceivably far off that we do not notice it. it has now been proved, by very accurate observations with powerful instruments, that three of the stars forming the waggon and the two horses nearest to it, together with jack, are drifting forwards (see fig. 60), while the top star of the tailboard of the waggon and the leader of the horses are drifting the other way. thus, thousands of years hence charles's wain will most likely have quite altered its shape, though so very slowly that each generation will think it is unchanged. one more experiment with charles's wain, before we leave it, will help you to imagine the endless millions of stars which fill the universe. look up at the waggon and try to count how many stars you can see inside it with the naked eye. you may, if your eye is keen, be able to count twelve. now take an opera-glass and the twelve become two hundred. with your telescopes they will increase again in number. in my telescope upstairs the two hundred become hundreds, while in one of the giant telescopes, such as lord rosse's in ireland, or the great telescope at washington in the united states, thousands of stars are brought into view within that four-sided space! now this part of the sky is not fuller of stars than many others; yet at first, looking up as any one might on a clear evening, we thought only twelve were there. cast your eyes all round the heavens. on a clear night like this you may perhaps, with the naked eye, have in view about 3000 stars; then consider that a powerful telescope can multiply these by thousands upon thousands, so that we can reckon about 20,000,000 where you see only 3000. if you add to these the stars that rise later at night, and those of the southern hemisphere which never rise in our latitude, you would have in all about 50,000,000 stars, which we are able to see from our tiny world through our most powerful telescopes. but we can go farther yet. when our telescopes fail, we turn to our other magic seer, the photographic camera, and trapping rays of light from stars invisible in the most powerful telescope, make them print their image on the photographic plate, and at once our numbers are so enormously increased that if we could photograph the whole of the heavens as visible from our earth, we should have impressions of at least 170,000,000 stars! these numbers are so difficult to grasp that we had better pass on to something easier, and our next step brings us to the one star in the heavens which never appears to move, as our world turns. to find it we have only to draw a line upwards through the two stars in the tailboard of the waggon and on into space. indeed these two stars are called "the pointers," because a line prolonged onwards from them will, with a very slight curve, bring us to the "pole-star" (see fig. 58). this star, though not one of the largest, is important, because it is very near that spot in the sky towards which the north pole of our earth points. the consequence is, that though all the other stars appear to move in a circle round the heavens, and to be in different places at different seasons, this star remains always in the same place, only appearing to describe a very tiny circle in the sky round the exact spot to which our north pole points. month after month and year after year it shines exactly over that thatched cottage yonder, which you see now immediately below it; and wherever you are in the northern hemisphere, if you once note a certain tree, or chimney, or steeple which points upwards to the pole-star, it will guide you to it at any hour on any night of the year, though the other constellations will be now on one side, now on the other side of it. the pole-star is really the front horse of a small imitation of charles's wain, which, however, has never been called by any special name, but only part of the "little bear." those two hind stars of the tiny waggon, which are so much the brightest, are called the "guards," because they appear to move in a circle round the pole-star night after night and year after year like sentries. [illustration: fig. 61. the constellation of cassiopeia, and the heavenly bodies which can be found by means of it.[1]] [1] for almach see fig. 58, it has been accidentally omitted from this figure. opposite to them, on the farther side of the pole-star, is a well-marked constellation, a widespread w written in the sky by five large stars; the second v of the w has rather a longer point than the first, and as we see it now the letter is almost upside down (see fig. 58). these are the five brightest stars in the constellation cassiopeia, with a sixth not quite so bright in the third stroke of the w. you can never miss them when you have once seen them, even though they lie in the midst of a dense layer of the stars of the milky way, and if you have any difficulty at first, you have only to look as far on the one side of the pole-star as the top hind star of charles's wain is on the other, and you must find them. i want to use them to-night chiefly as guides to find two remarkable objects which i hope you will look at again and again. the first is a small round misty patch not easy to see, but which you will find by following out the _second_ stroke of the first v of the w. beginning at the top, and following the line to the point of the v, continue on across the sky, and then search with your telescope till you catch a glimpse of this faint mist (_c_, fig. 58; star-cluster, fig. 61). you will see at once that it is sparkling all over with stars, for in fact you have actually before you in that tiny cluster more stars than you can see with the naked eye all over the heavens! think for a moment what this means. one faint misty spot in the constellation perseus, which we should have passed over unheeded without a telescope, proves to be a group of more than 3000 suns! the second object you will find more easily, for it is larger and brighter, and appears as a faint dull spot to the naked eye. going back to cassiopeia, follow out the _second_ v in the w from the top to the point of the v and onwards till your eye rests upon this misty cloud, which is called the great nebula of andromeda, and has sometimes been mistaken for a comet (figs. 58 and 61). you will, however, be disappointed when you look through the telescope, for it will still only appear a mist, and you will be able to make nothing of it, except that instead of being of an irregular shape like orion, it is elliptical; and in a powerful telescope two dark rifts can be seen separating the streams of nebulous matter. these rifts are now shown in a photograph taken by mr. roberts, 1st october 1888, to be two vast dusky rings lying between the spiral stream of light, which winds in an ellipse till it ends in a small nucleus at the centre. ah! you will say, this must be a cloud of gas like orion's nebula, only winding round and round. no! the spectroscope steps in here and tells us that the light shows something very much like a continuous spectrum, but not as long as it ought to be at the red end. now, since gases give only bright lines, this nebula cannot be entirely gaseous. then it must be made of stars too far off to see? if so, it is very strange that though it is so dense and bright in some parts, and so spread out and clear in others, the most powerful telescopes cannot break it up into stars. in fact, the composition of the great nebula of andromeda is still a mystery, and remains for one of you boys to study when he has become a great astronomer. still one more strange star we will notice before we leave this part of the heavens. you will find it, or at least go very near it, by continuing northwards the line you drew from cassiopeia to the star cluster (_c_, fig. 58), and as it is a bright star, you will not miss it. that is to say, it is bright to-night and will remain so till to-morrow night, but if you come to me about nine o'clock to-morrow evening i will show you that it is growing dim, and if we had patience to watch through the night we should find, three or four hours later still, that it looks like one of the smaller stars. then it will begin to brighten again, and in four hours more will be as bright as at first. it will remain so for nearly three days, or, to speak accurately, 2 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes, and 55 seconds, and then will begin to grow dull again. this star is called algol the variable. there are several such stars in the heavens, and we do not know why they vary, unless perhaps some dark globe passes round them, cutting off part of their light for a time. and now, if your eyes are not weary, let us go back to the pole-star and draw a line from it straight down the horizon due north. shortly before we arrive there you will see a very brilliant bluish-white star a little to the east of this line. this is vega, one of the brightest stars in the heavens except sirius. it had not risen in the earlier part of the evening, but now it is well up and will appear to go on, steadily mounting as it circles round the pole-star, till at four o'clock to-morrow morning it will be right overhead towards the south. but beautiful as vega is, a still more interesting star lies close to it (see fig. 58). this small star, called [greek: e] lyræ by astronomers, looks a little longer in one direction than in the other, and even with the naked eye some people can see a division in the middle dividing it into two stars. your telescopes will show them easily, and a powerful telescope tells a wonderful story, for it reveals that each of these two stars is again composed of two stars, so that [greek: e] lyræ (fig. 62) is really a double-double star. there is no doubt that each pair is a binary star, that is, the two stars move round each other very slowly, and possibly both pairs may also revolve round a common centre. there are at least 10,000 double stars in the heavens; though, as we have seen, they are not all binary. the list of binary stars, however, increases every year as they are carefully examined, and probably about one star in three over the whole sky is made up of more than one sun. [illustration: fig. 62. [greek: e] lyræ. a double-binary star. each couple revolves, and the couples probably also revolve round each other. (after chambers.)] let us turn the telescope for a short time upon a few of the double stars and we shall have a great treat, for one of the most interesting facts about them is that both stars are rarely of the same colour. it seems strange at first to speak of stars as coloured, but they do not by any means all give out the same kind of light. our sun is yellow, and so are the pole-star and pollux; but sirius, vega, and regulus are dazzling white or bluish-white, arcturus is a yellowish-white, aldebaran is a bright yellow-red, betelgeux a deep orange-red, as you may see now in the telescope, for he is full in view; while antares, a star in the constellation of the scorpion, which at this time of year cannot be seen till four in the morning, is an intense ruby red. [illustration: _plate ii._] coloured double stars. [illustration: [greek: g] _andromedæ_.] [illustration: [greek: e] _boötis_.] [illustration: [greek: d] _geminorum_.] [illustration: [greek: a] _herculis_.] [illustration: [greek: b] _cygni_.] [illustration: [greek: ê] _cassiopeiæ_.] it appears to be almost a rule with double stars to be of two colours. look up at almach ([greek: g] andromedæ), a bright star standing next to algol the variable in the sweep of four bright stars behind cassiopeia (see fig. 58). even to the naked eye he appears to flash in a strange way, and in the telescope he appears as two lovely stars, one a deep orange and the other a pale green, while in powerful telescopes the green one splits again into two (plate ii.) then again, [greek: ê] cassiopeæ, the sixth star lying between the two large ones in the second v of cassiopeia, divides into a yellow star and a small rich purple one, and [greek: d] geminorum, a bright star not far from pollux in the constellation gemini, is composed of a large green star and a small purple one. another very famous double star ([greek: b] cygni), which rises only a little later in the evening, lies below vega a little to the left. it is composed of two lovely stars; one an orange yellow and the other blue; while [greek: e] boötis, just visible above the horizon, is composed of a large yellow star and a very small green one.[1] [1] the plate of coloured stars has been most kindly drawn to scale and coloured for me by mr. arthur cottam, f.r.a.s. there are many other stars of two colours even among the few constellations we have picked out to-night, as, for example, the star at the top of the tailboard of charles's waggon and the second horse mizar. rigel in orion, and the two outer stars of the belt, [greek: a] herculis, which will rise later in the evening, and the beautiful triple star ([greek: z] cancer) near the beehive (see fig. 54), are all composed of two or more stars of different colours. why do these suns give out such beautiful coloured light? the telescope cannot tell us, but the spectroscope again reveals the secrets so long hidden from us. by a series of very delicate experiments, dr. huggins has shown that the light of all stars is sifted before it comes to us, just as the light of our sun is; and those rays which are least cut off play most strongly on our eyes, and give the colour to the star. the question is a difficult one but i will try to give you some idea of it, that you may form some picture in your mind of what happens. we learnt in our last lecture (p. 131) that the light from our sun passes through the great atmosphere of vapours surrounding him before it goes out into space, and that many rays are in this way cut off; so that when we spread out his light in a long spectrum there are dark lines or spaces where no light falls.[1] now in sunlight these dark lines are scattered pretty evenly over the spectrum, so that about as much light is cut off in one part as in another, and no one colour is stronger than the rest. [1] see no. 1 in table of spectra, plate i. dr. huggins found, however, that in coloured stars the dark spaces are often crowded into particular parts of the long band of colour forming the spectrum; showing that many of those light-rays have been cut off in the atmosphere round the star, and thus their particular colours are dimmed, leaving the other colour or colours more vivid. in red stars, for example, the yellow, blue, and green parts of the spectrum are much lined while the red end is strong and clear. with blue stars it is just the opposite, and the violet end is most free from dark lines. so there are really brilliantly coloured suns shining in the heavens, and in many cases two or more of these revolve round each other. and now i have kept your attention and strained your eyes long enough, and you have objects to study for many a long evening before you will learn to see them plainly. you must not expect to find them every night, for the lightest cloud or the faintest moonlight will hide many of them from view; and, moreover, though you may learn to use the telescope fairly, you will often not know how to get a clear view with it. still, you may learn a great deal, and before we go in i want to put a thought into your minds which will make astronomy still more interesting. we have seen that the stronger our telescopes the more stars, star-clusters, and nebulæ we see, and we cannot doubt that there are still countless heavenly bodies quite unknown to us. some years ago bessel the astronomer found that sirius, in its real motion through the heavens, moves irregularly, travelling sometimes a little more slowly than at other times, and he suggested that some unseen companion must be pulling at him. twenty-eight years later, in 1862, two celebrated opticians, father and son, both named alvan clark, were trying a new telescope at chicago university, when suddenly the son, who was looking at sirius, exclaimed, "why, father, the star has a companion!" and so it was. the powerful telescope showed what bessel had foretold, and proved sirius to be a "binary" star--that is, as we have seen, a star which has another moving round it. it has since been proved that this companion is twenty-eight times farther from sirius than we are from our sun, and moves round him in about forty-nine years. it is seven times as heavy as our sun, and yet gives out so little light that only the keenest telescopes can bring it into view. now if such a large body as this can give so very faint a light that we can scarcely see it, though sirius, which is close to it, shines brightest of any star in the heavens, how many more bodies must there be which we shall never see, even among those which give out light, while how many there are dark like our earth, who can tell? now that we know each of the stars to be a brilliant sun, many of them far, far brighter than ours, yet so like in their nature and laws, we can scarcely help speculating whether round these glorious suns, worlds of some kind may not be moving. if so, and there are people in them, what a strange effect those double coloured suns must produce with red daylight one day and blue daylight another! surely, as we look up at the myriads of stars bespangling the sky, and remember that our star-sun has seven planets moving round it of which one at least--our own earth--is full of living beings, we must picture these glorious suns as the centres of unseen systems, so that those twinkling specks become as suggestive as the faint lights of a great fleet far out at sea, which tell us of mighty ships, together with frigates and gunboats, full of living beings, though we cannot see them, nor even guess what they may be like. how insignificant we feel when we look upon that starlit sky and remember that the whole of our solar system would be but a tiny speck of light if seen as far off as we see the stars! if our little earth and our short life upon it were all we could boast of we should be mites indeed. but our very study to-night lifts us above these and reminds us that there is a spirit within us which even now can travel beyond the narrow bounds of our globe, measure the vast distances between us and the stars, gauge their brightness, estimate their weight, and discern their movements. as we gaze into the depths of the starlit sky, and travel onwards and onwards in imagination to those distant stars which photography alone reveals to us, do not our hearts leap at the thought of a day which must surely come when, fettered and bound no longer to earth, this spirit shall wander forth and penetrate some of the mystery of those mighty suns at which we now gaze in silent awe. chapter viii little beings from a miniature ocean [illustration] in our last lecture we soared far away into boundless space, and lost ourselves for a time among seen and unseen suns. in this lecture we will come back not merely to our little world, nor even to one of the widespread oceans which cover so much of it, but to one single pool lying just above the limits of low tide, so that it is only uncovered for a very short time every day. this pool is to be found in a secluded bay within an hour's journey by train from this college, and only a few miles from torquay. it has no name, so far as i know, nor do many people visit it, otherwise i should not have kept my little pool so long undisturbed. as it is, however, for many years past i have had only to make sure as to the time of low tide, and put myself in the train; and then, unless the sea was very rough and stormy, i could examine the little inhabitants of my miniature ocean in peace. the pool lies in a deep hollow among a group of rocks and boulders, close to the entrance of the cove, which can only be entered at low water; it does not measure more than two feet across, so that you can step over it, if you take care not to slip on the masses of green and brown seaweed growing over the rocks on its sides, as i have done many a time when collecting specimens for our salt-water aquarium. i find now the only way is to lie flat down on the rock, so that my hands and eyes are free to observe and handle, and then, bringing my eye down to the edge of the pool, to lift the seaweeds and let the sunlight enter into the chinks and crannies. in this way i can catch sight of many a small being either on the seaweed or the rocky ledges, and even creatures transparent as glass become visible by the thin outline gleaming in the sunlight. then i pluck a piece of seaweed, or chip off a fragment of rock with a sharp-edged collecting knife, bringing away the specimen uninjured upon it, and place it carefully in its own separate bottle to be carried home alive and well. now though this little pool and i are old friends, i find new treasures in it almost every time i go, for it is almost as full of living things as the heavens are of stars, and the tide as it comes and goes brings many a mother there to find a safe home for her little ones, and many a waif and stray to seek shelter from the troublous life of the open ocean. you will perhaps find it difficult to believe that in this rock-bound basin there can be millions of living creatures hidden away among the fine feathery weeds; yet so it is. not that they are always the same. at one time it may be the home of myriads of infant crabs, not an eighth of an inch long, at another of baby sea-urchins only visible to the naked eye as minute spots in the water, at another of young jelly-fish growing on their tiny stalks, and splitting off one by one as transparent bells to float away with the rising tide. or it may be that the whelk has chosen this quiet nook to deposit her leathery eggs; or young barnacles, periwinkles, and limpets are growing up among the green and brown tangles, while the far-sailing velella and the stay-at-home sea-squirts, together with a variety of other sea-animals, find a nursery and shelter in their youth in this quiet harbour of rest. and besides these casual visitors there are numberless creatures which have lived and multiplied there, ever since i first visited the pool. tender red, olive-coloured, and green seaweeds, stony corallines, and acorn-barnacles lining the floor, sea-anemones clinging to the sides, sponges tiny and many-coloured hiding under the ledges, and limpets and mussels wedged in the cracks. these can be easily seen with the naked eye, but they are not the most numerous inhabitants; for these we must search with a magnifying-glass, which will reveal to us wonderful fairy-forms, delicate crystal vases with tiny creatures in them whose transparent lashes make whirlpools in the water, living crystal bells so tiny that whole branches of them look only like a fringe of hair, jelly globes rising and falling in the water, patches of living jelly clinging to the rocky sides of the pool, and a hundred other forms, some so minute that you must examine the fine sand in which they lie under a powerful microscope before you can even guess that they are there. [illustration: fig. 63. group of seaweeds (natural size). 1, _ulva linza._ 2, _sphacelaria filicina._ 3, _polysiphonia urceolata._ 4, _corallina officinalis._] so it has proved a rich hunting-ground, where summer and winter, spring and autumn, i find some form to put under my magic glass. there i can watch it for weeks growing and multiplying under my care; moved only from the aquarium, where i keep it supplied with healthy sea-water, to the tiny transparent trough in which i place it for a few hours to see the changes it has undergone. i could tell you endless tales of transformations in these tiny lives, but i want to-day to show you a few of my friends, most of which i brought yesterday fresh from the pool, and have prepared for you to examine. [illustration: fig. 64. _ulva lactuca_, a green seaweed, greatly magnified to show structure. (after oersted.) _s_, spores in the cells. _ss_, spores swimming out. _h_, holes through which spores have escaped.] let us begin with seaweeds. i have said that there are three leading colours in my pool--green, olive, and red--and these tints mark roughly three kinds of weed, though they occur in an endless variety of shapes. here is a piece of the beautiful pale green seaweed, called the laver or sea-lettuce, _ulva linza_ (1, fig. 63), which grows in long ribbons in a sunny nook in the water. i have placed under the first microscope a piece of this weed which is just sending out young seaweeds in the shape of tiny cells, with lashes very like those we saw coming from the moss-flower, and i have pressed them in the position in which they would naturally leave the plant (_ss_, fig. 64.).[1] you will also see on this slide several cells in which these tiny spores _s_ are forming, ready to burst out and swim; for this green weed is merely a collection of cells, like the single-celled plants on land. each cell can work as a separate plant; it feeds, grows, and can send out its own young spores. [1] the slice given in fig. 64 is from a broader-leaved form, _u. lactuca_, because this species, being composed of only one layer of cells, is better seen. _ulva linza_ is composed of two layers of cells. this deep olive-green feathery weed (2, fig. 63), of which a piece is magnified under the next microscope (2, fig. 65), is very different. it is a higher plant, and works harder for its living, using the darker rays of sunlight which penetrate into shady parts of the pool. so it comes to pass that its cells divide the work. those of the feathery threads make the food, while others, growing on short stalks on the shafts of the feather make and send out the young spores. [illustration: fig. 65. three seaweeds of fig. 63 much magnified to show fruits. (harvey.) 2, _sphacelaria filicina._ 3, _polysiphonia urceolata._ 4, _corallina officinalis._] lastly, the lovely red threadlike weeds, such as this _polysiphonia urceolata_ (3, fig. 63), carry actual urns on their stems like those of mosses. in fact, the history of these urns (see no. 3, fig. 65) is much the same in the two classes of plants, only that instead of the urn being pushed up on a thin stalk as in the moss, it remains on the seaweed close down to the stem, when it grows out of the plant-egg, and the tiny plant is shut in till the spores are ready to swim out. the stony corallines (4, figs. 63 and 65), which build so much carbonate of lime into their stems, are near relations of the red seaweeds. there are plenty of them in my pool. some of them, of a deep purple colour, grow upright in stiff groups about three or four inches high; and others, which form crusts over the stones and weeds, are a pale rose colour; but both kinds, when the plant dies, leaving the stony skeleton (1, fig. 66), are a pure white, and used to be mistaken for corals. they belong to the same order of plants as the red weeds, which all live in shady nooks in the pools, and are the highest of their race. my pool is full of different forms of these four weeds. the green ribbons float on the surface rooted to the sides of the pool and, as the sun shines upon it, the glittering bubbles rising from them show that they are working up food out of the air in the water, and giving off oxygen. the brown weeds lie chiefly under the shelves of rocks, for they can manage with less sunlight, and use the darker rays which pass by the green weeds; and last of all, the red weeds and corallines, small and delicate in form, line the bottom of the pool in its darkest nooks. and now if i hand round two specimens--one a coralline, and the other something you do not yet know--i am sure you will say at first sight that they belong to the same family, and, in fact, if you buy at the seaside a group of seaweeds gummed on paper, you will most likely get both these among them. yet the truth is, that while the coralline (1, fig. 66) is a plant, the other specimen (2) which is called _sertularia filicula_, is an animal. [illustration: fig. 66. coralline and sertularia, to show likeness between the animal sertularia and the plant coralline. 1, _corallina officinalis._ 2, _sertularia filicula._] this special sertularian grows upright in my pool on stones or often on seaweeds, but i have here (fig. 67) another and much smaller one which lives literally in millions hanging its cups downwards. i find it not only under the narrow ledges of the pool sheltered by the seaweed, but forming a fringe along all the rocks on each side of the cove near to low-water mark, and for a long time i passed it by thinking it was of no interest. but i have long since given up thinking this of anything, especially in my pool, for my magic glass has taught me that there is not even a living speck which does not open out into something marvellous and beautiful. so i chipped off a small piece of rock and brought the fringe home, and found, when i hung it up in clear sea water as i have done over this glass trough (fig. 67) and looked at it through the lens, that each thread of the dense fringe, in itself not a quarter of an inch deep, turns out to be a tiny sertularian with at least twenty mouths. you can see this with your pocket lens even as it hangs here, and when you have examined it you can by and by take off one thread and put it carefully in the trough. i promise you a sight of the most beautiful little beings which exist in nature. [illustration: fig. 67. _sertularia tenella_, hanging from a splint of rock over a water trough. also piece enlarged to show the animal protruding.] come and look at it after the lecture. it is a horny branched stem with a double row of tiny cups all along each side (see fig. 67). out of these cups there appear from time to time sixteen minute transparent tentacles as fine as spun glass, which wave about in the water. if you shake the glass a little, in an instant each crystal star vanishes into its cup, to come out again a few minutes later; so that now here, now there, the delicate animal-flowers spread out on each side of the stem, and the tree is covered with moving beings. these tentacles are feelers, which lash food into a mouth and stomach in each cup, where it is digested and passed, through a hole in the bottom, along a jelly thread which runs down the stem and joins all the mouths together. in this way the food is distributed all over the tree, which is, in fact, one animal with many feeding-cups. some day i will show you one of these cups with the tentacles stretched out and mounted on a slide, so that you can examine a tentacle with a very strong magnifying power. you will then see that it is dotted over with cells, in which are coiled fine threads. the animal uses these threads to paralyse the creatures on which it feeds, for at the base of each thread there is a poison gland. in the larger sertularia (2, fig. 66) the whole branched tree is connected by jelly threads running through the stem, and all the thousands of mouths are spread out in the water. one large form called the sea-fir _sertularia cupressina_ grows sometimes three feet high, and bears as many as a hundred thousand cups, with living mouths, on its branches. the next of my minute friends i can only show to the class in a diagram, but you will see it under the fourth microscope by and by. i had great trouble in finding it yesterday, though i knew its haunts upon the green weed, for it is so minute and transparent that even when the weed is in a trough a magnifying-glass will scarcely detect it. and i must warn you that if you want to know any of the minute creatures we are studying, you must visit one place constantly. you may in a casual way find many of them on seaweed, or in the damp ooze and mud, but it will be by chance only; to look for them with any certainty you must take trouble in making their acquaintance. turning then to the diagram (fig. 68) i will describe it as i hope you will see it under the microscope--a curious tiny, perfectly transparent open-mouthed vase standing upright on the weed, and having an equally transparent being rising up in it and waving its tiny lashes in the water. this is really all one animal, the vase _hc_ being the horny covering or carapace of the body, which last stands up like a tube in the centre. if you watch carefully, you may even see the minute atoms of food twisting round inside the tube until they are digested, after they have been swept in at the wide open mouth by the whirling lashes. you will see this more clearly if you put a little rice-flour, very minutely powdered and coloured by carmine, into the water; for you can trace these red atoms into some round spaces called _vacuoles_ which are dotted over the body of the animal, and are really globules of watery fluid in which the food is probably partly digested. [illustration: fig. 68. _thuricolla folliculata_ and _chilomonas amygdalum_. (saville kent.) 1, thuricolla erect; 2, retracted; 3, dividing. 4, _chilomonas amygdalum_. _hc_, horny carapace. _cv_, contractile vesicle. _v_, closing valves.] you will notice, however, one round clear space (_cv_) into which they do not go, and after a time you will be able to observe that this round spot closes up or contracts very quickly, and then expands again very slowly. as it expands it fills with a clear fluid, and naturalists have not yet decided exactly what work it does. it may serve the animal either for breathing, or as a very simple heart, making the fluids circulate in the tube. the next interesting point about this little being is the way it retreats into its sheltering vase. even while you are watching, it is quite likely it may all at once draw itself down to the bottom as in no. 2, and folding down the valves _v_, _v_ of horny teeth which grow on each side, shut itself in from some fancied danger. another very curious point is that, besides sending forth young ones, these creatures multiply by dividing in two (see no. 3, fig. 68), each one closing its own part of the vase into a new home. there are hundreds of these _infusoria_, as they are called, in my pond, some with vases, some without, some fixed to weeds and stones, others swimming about freely. even in the water-trough in which this thuricolla stands, i saw several smaller forms, and the next microscope has a trough filled with the minutest form of all, called a monad (no. 4, fig. 68). these are so small that 2000 of them would lie side by side in an inch; that is, if you could make them lie at all, for they are the most restless little beings, darting hither and thither, scarcely even halting except to turn back. and yet though there are so many of them, and as far as we know they have no organs of sight, they never run up against each other, but glide past more cleverly than any clear-sighted fish. these creatures are mostly to be found among decaying seaweed, and though they are so tiny, you can still see distinctly the clear space (_cv_) contracting and expanding within them. but if there are so many thousands of mouths to feed, on the tree-like _sertulariæ_ as well as in all these _infusoria_, where does the food come from? partly from the numerous atoms of decaying life all around, and the minute eggs of animals and spores of plants; but besides these, the pool is full of minute living plants--small jelly masses with solid coats of flint which are moulded into most lovely shapes. plants formed of jelly and flint! you will think i am joking, but i am not. these plants, called _diatoms_, which live both in salt and fresh water, are single cells feeding and growing just like those we took from the water-butt (fig. 29, p. 78), only that instead of a soft covering they build up a flinty skeleton. they are so small, that many of them must be magnified to fifty times their real size before you can even see them distinctly. yet the skeletons of these almost invisible plants are carved and chiselled in the most delicate patterns. i showed you a group of these in our lecture on magic glasses (p. 39), and now i have brought a few living ones that we may learn to know them. the diagram (fig. 69) shows the chief forms you will see on the different slides. [illustration: fig. 69. living diatoms. _a_, _cocconema lanceolatum_. _b_, _bacillaria paradoxa_. _c_, _gomphonema marinum_. _d_, _diatoma hyalina_.] the first one, _bacillaria paradoxa_ (_b_, fig. 69), looks like a number of rods clinging one to another in a string, but each one of these is a single-celled plant with a jelly cell surrounding the flinty skeleton. you will see that they move to and fro over each other in the water. [illustration: fig. 70. a diatom (_diatoma vulgare_) growing. _a_, _b_, flint skeleton inside the jelly-cell. _a_, _c_ and _d_, _b_, two flint skeletons formed by new valves, _c_ and _d_, forming within the first skeleton.] the next two forms, _a_ and _c_, look much more like plants, for the cells arrange themselves on a jelly stem, which by and by disappears, leaving only the separate flint skeletons such as you see in fig. 16. the last form, _d_, is something midway between the other forms, the separate cells hang on to each other and also on to a straight jelly stem. another species of diatoma (fig. 70) called _diatoma vulgare_, is a very simple and common form, and will help to explain how these plants grow. the two flinty valves _a_, _b_ inside the cell are not quite the same size; the older one _a_ is larger than the younger one _b_ and fits over it like the cover of a pill-box. as the plant grows, the cell enlarges and forms two more valves, one _c_ fitting into the cover _a_, so as to make a complete box _ac_, and a second, _d_, back to back with _c_, fitting into the valve _b_, and making another complete box _bd_. this goes on very rapidly, and in this plant each new cell separates as it is formed, and the free diatoms move about quite actively in the water. if you consider for a moment, you will see that, as the new valves always fit into the old ones, each must be smaller than the last, and so there comes a time when the valves have become too small to go on increasing. then the plant must begin afresh. so the two halves of the last cell open, and throwing out their flinty skeletons, cover themselves with a thin jelly layer, and form a new cell which grows larger than any of the old ones. these, which are spore-cells, then form flinty valves inside, and the whole thing begins again. now though the plants themselves die, or become the food of minute animals, the flinty skeletons are not destroyed, but go on accumulating in the waters of ponds, lakes, rivers, and seas, all over the world. untold millions have no doubt crumbled to dust and gone back into the waters, but untold millions also have survived. the towns of berlin in europe and of richmond in the united states are actually built upon ground called "infusorial earth," composed almost entirely of valves of these minute diatoms which have accumulated to a thickness of more than eighty feet! those under berlin are fresh-water forms, and must have lived in a lake, while those of richmond belong to salt-water forms. every inch of the ground under those cities represents thousands and thousands of living plants which flourished in ages long gone by, and were no larger than those you will see presently under the microscope. these are a very few of the microscopic inhabitants of my pond, but, as you will confuse them if i show you too many, we will conclude with two rather larger specimens, and examine them carefully. the first, called the cydippe, is a lovely, transparent living ball, which i want to explain to you because it is so wondrously beautiful. the second, the sea-mat or flustra, looks like a crumpled drab-coloured seaweed, but is really composed of many thousands of grottos, the homes of tiny sea-animals. [illustration: fig. 71. _cydippe pileus._ 1, animal with tentacles _t_, bearing small tendrils _t´_. 2, body of animal enlarged. _m_, mouth. _c_, digestive cavity. _s_, sac into which the tentacles are withdrawn. _p_, bands with comb-like plates. 3, portion of a band enlarged to show the moving plates _p_.] let us take the cydippe first (1, fig. 71). i have six here, each in a separate tumbler, and could have brought many more, for when i dipped my net in the pool yesterday such numbers were caught in it that i believe the retreating tide must just have left a shoal behind. put a tumbler on the desk in front of you, and if the light falls well upon it you will see a transparent ball about the size of a large pea marked with eight bright bands, which begin at the lower end of the ball and reach nearly to the top, dividing the outside into sections like the ribs of a melon. the creature is so perfectly transparent that you can count all the eight bands. at the top of the ball is a slight bulge which is the mouth (_m_ 2, fig. 71), and from it, inside the ball, hangs a long bag or stomach, which opens below into a cavity c, from which two canals branch out, one on each side, and these divide again into four canals which go one into each of the tubes running down the bands. from this cavity the food, which is digested in the stomach, is carried by the canals all over the body. the smaller tubes which branch out of these canals cannot be seen clearly without a very strong lens, and the only other parts you can discern in this transparent ball are two long sacs on each side of the lower end. these are the tentacle sacs, in which are coiled up the tentacles, which we shall describe presently. lastly, you can notice that the bands outside the globe are broader in the middle than at the ends, and are striped across by a number of ridges. in moving the tumblers the water has naturally been shaken, and the creature being alarmed will probably at first remain motionless. but very soon it will begin to play in the water, rising and falling, and swimming gracefully from side to side. now you will notice a curious effect, for the bands will glitter and become tinged with prismatic colours, till, as it moves more and more rapidly these colours, reflected in the jelly, seem to tinge the whole ball with colours like those on a soap-bubble, while from the two sacs below come forth two long transparent threads like spun glass. at first these appear to be simple threads, but as they gradually open out to about four or five inches, smaller threads uncoil on each side of the line till there are about fifty on each line. these short _tendrils_ are never still for long; as the main threads wave to and fro, some of the shorter ones coil up and hang like tiny beads, then these uncoil and others roll up, so that these graceful floating lines are never two seconds alike. we do not really know their use. sometimes the creature anchors itself by them, rising and falling as they stretch out or coil up; but more often they float idly behind it in the water. at first you would perhaps think that they served to drive the ball through the water, but this is done by a special apparatus. the cross ridges which we noticed on the bands are really flat comb-like plates (_p_, fig. 71), of which there are about twenty or thirty on each band; and these vibrate very rapidly, so that two hundred or more paddles drive the tiny ball through the water. this is the cause of the prismatic colours; for iridescent tints are produced by the play of light upon the glittering plates, as they incessantly change their angle. sometimes they move all at once, sometimes only a few at a time, and it is evident the creature controls them at will. this lovely fairy-like globe, with its long floating tentacles and rainbow tints, was for a long time classed with the jelly-fish; but it really is most nearly related to sea-anemones, as it has a true central cavity which acts as a stomach, and many other points in common with the _actinozoa_. we cannot help wondering, as the little being glides hither and thither, whether it can see where it is going. it has nerves of a low kind which start from a little dark spot (_ng_), exactly at the south pole of the ball, and at that point a sense-organ of some kind exists, but what impression the creature gains from it of the world outside we cannot tell. i am afraid you may think it dull to turn from such a beautiful being as this, to the grey leaf which looks only like a dead dry seaweed; yet you will be wrong, for a more wonderful history attaches to this crumpled dead-looking leaf than to the lovely jelly-globe. first of all i will pass round pieces of the dry leaf (_r_, fig. 72), and while you are getting them i will tell you where i found the living ones. great masses of the flustra, as it is called, line the bottom and sides of my pool. they grow in tufts, standing upright on the rock, and looking exactly like hard grey seaweeds, while there is nothing to lead you to suspect that they are anything else. yesterday i chipped off very carefully a piece of rock with a tuft upon it, and have kept it since in a glass globe by itself with sea-water, for the little creatures living in this marine city require a very good supply of healthy water and air. i have called it a "marine city," and now i will tell you why. take the piece in your hand and run your finger gently up and down it; you will glide quite comfortably from the lower to the higher part of the leaf, but when you come back you will feel your finger catch slightly on a rough surface. your pocket lens will show why this is, for if you look through it at the surface of the leaf you will see it is not smooth, but composed of hundreds of tiny alcoves with arched tops; and on each side of these tops stand two short blunt spines (see 2, fig. 72), making four in all, pointing upwards, so as partly to cover the alcove above. as your finger went up it glided over the spines, but on coming back it met their points. this is all you can see in the dead specimen; i must show you the rest by diagrams, and by and by under the microscope. [illustration: fig. 72. the sea-mat or flustra (_flustra foliacea._) 1, natural size. 2, much magnified. _s_, slit caused by drawing in of the animal _a_.] first, then, in the living specimen which i have here, those alcoves are not open as in the dead piece, but covered over with a transparent skin, in which, near the top of the alcove just where the curve begins, is a slit (_s_ 2, fig. 72). unfortunately the membrane covering this alcove is too dense for you to distinguish the parts within. presently, however, if you are watching a piece of this living leaf in a flat water-cell under the microscope, you will see the slit slowly open, and begin to turn as it were inside out, exactly like the finger of a glove, which has been pushed in at the tip, gradually rises up when you put your finger inside it. as this goes on, a bundle of threads appears, at first closed like a bud, but gradually opening out into a crown of tentacles (_a_, fig. 72), each one clothed with hairs. then you will see that the slit was not exactly a slit after all, but the round edge where the sac was pushed in. ah! you will say, you are now showing me a polyp like those on the sertularian tree. not so fast, my friend; you have not yet studied what is still under the covering skin and hidden in the living animal. i have, however, prepared a slide with this membrane removed (see fig. 73), and there you can observe the different parts, and learn that each one of these alcoves contains a complete animal, and not merely one among many mouths, like the polyp on the sertularia. [illustration: fig. 73. diagram of the animal in the flustra or sea-mat. 1, animal protruding. 2, animal retracted in the sheath. _sh_, covering sheath. _s_, slit. _t_, tentacles. _m_, mouth. _th_, throat. _st_, stomach. _i_, intestine. _r_, retractor muscle. _e_, egg-forming parts. _g_, nerve-ganglion.] each of these little beings (_a_, fig 72) living in its alcove has a mouth, throat, stomach, intestine, muscles, and nerves starting from the ganglion of nervous matter, besides all that is necessary for producing eggs and sending forth young ones. you can trace all these under the microscope (see 2, fig. 73) as the creature lies curiously doubled up in its bed, with its body bent in a loop; the intestine _i_, out of which the refuse food passes, coming back close up to the slit. when it is at rest, the top of the sac in which it lies is pulled in by the retractor muscle _r_, and looks, as i have said, like the finger of a glove with the top pushed in. when it wishes to feed, this top is drawn out by muscles running round the sac, and the tentacles open and wave in the water (1, fig. 73). look now at the alcoves, the homes of these animals; see how tiny they are and how closely they fit together. mr. gosse, the naturalist, has reckoned that there are 6720 alcoves in a square inch; then if you turn the leaf over you will see that there is another set, fixed back to back with these, on the other side, making in all 13,440 alcoves. now a moderate-sized leaf of flustra measures about three square inches, taking all the rounded lobes into account, so you will see we get 40,320 as a rough estimate of the number of beings on this one leaf. but if you look at this tuft i have brought, you will find it is composed of twelve such leaves, and this after all is a very small part of the mass growing round my pool. was i wrong, then, when i said that my miniature ocean contains as many millions of beings as there are stars in the heavens? you will want to know how these leaves grew, and it is in this way. first a little free swimming animal, a mere living sac provided with lashes, settles down and grows into one little horny alcove, with its live creature inside, which in time sends off from it three to five buds, forming alcoves all round the top and sides of the first one, growing on to it. these again bud out, and you can thus easily understand that, in this way, in time a good-sized leaf is formed. meanwhile the creatures also send forth new swimming cells, which settle down near to begin new leaves, and thus a tuft is formed; and long after the beings in earlier parts of the leaf have died and left their alcoves empty, those round the margin are still alive and spreading. with this history we must stop for to-day, and i expect it will be many weeks before you have thoroughly examined the specimens of each kind which i have put in the aquarium. if you can trace the spore-cells and urns in the seaweeds, observe the polyps in the sertularia, and count the number of mouths on a branch of my animal fringe (_sertularia tenella_); if you make acquaintance with the thuricolla in its vase, and are fortunate enough to see one divide in two; if you learn to know some of the beautiful forms of diatoms, and can picture to yourselves the life of the tiny inhabitants of the flustra; then you will have used your microscope with some effect, and be prepared for an expedition to my pool, where we will go together some day to seek new treasures. chapter ix the dartmoor ponies, or the wanderings of the horse tribe [illustration] put away the telescopes and microscopes to-day, boys, the holidays are close at hand, and we will take a rest from peeping and peering till we come back in the autumn laden with specimens for the microscope, while the rapidly darkening evenings will tempt us again on to the lawn star-gazing. on this our last lecture-day i want you to take a journey with me which i took in imagination a few days ago, as i lay on my back on the sunny moor and watched the dartmoor ponies. it was a calm misty morning one day last week, giving promise of a bright and sunny day, when i started off for a long walk across the moor to visit the famous stone-circles, many of which are to be found not far off the track, called abbot's way, leading from buckfast abbey, on the dart, to the abbey of tavistock, on the tavy. my mind was full of the olden times as i pictured to myself how, seven hundred years or more ago, some benedictine monk from tavistock abbey, in his black robe and cowl, paced this narrow path on his way to his cistercian brethren at buckfast, meeting some of them on his road as they wandered over the desolate moor in their white robes and black scapularies in search of stray sheep. for the cistercians were shepherds and wool-weavers, while the benedictines devoted themselves to learning, and the track of about twenty-five miles from one abbey to the other, which still remains, was worn by the members of the two communities and their dependents, the only variety in whose lives consisted probably in these occasional visits one to the other. yet even these monks belonged to modern times compared to the ancient britons who raised the stone-circles, and buried their dead in the barrows scattered here and there over the moor; and my mind drifted back to the days when, long before that pathway was worn, men clad in the skins of beasts hunted wild animals over the ground on which i was treading, and lived in caves and holes of the ground. i wondered, as i thought of them, whether the cultured monks and the uncivilised britons delighted as much in the rugged scenery of the moor as i did that morning. for many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was shining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the _tors_, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of the day. the cattle which were scattered in groups here and there feeding on the dewy grass were enjoying the happiest time of the year. the moor, which in winter affords them scarcely a bare subsistence, is now richly covered with fresh young grass, and the sturdy oxen fed solemnly and deliberately, while the wild dartmoor ponies and their colts scampered joyously along, shaking their manes and long flowing tails, and neighing to each other as they went; or clustered together on some verdant spot, where the colts teased and bit each other for fun, as they gambolled round their mothers. it was a pleasure, there on the open moor, with the lark soaring overhead, and the butterflies and bees hovering among the sweet-smelling furze blossoms, to see horses free and joyous, with no thought of bit or bridle, harness or saddle, whose hoofs had never been handled by the shoeing-smith, nor their coats touched with the singeing iron. those little colts, with their thick heads, shaggy coats, and flowing tails, will have at least two years more freedom before they know what it is to be driven or beaten. only once a year are they gathered together, claimed by their owners and branded with an initial, and then left again to wander where they will. true, it is a freedom which sometimes has its drawbacks, for if the winter is severe the only food they can get will be the furze-tops, off which they scrape the snow with their feet; yet it is very precious in itself, for they can gallop when and where they choose, with head erect, sniffing at the wind and crying to each other for the very joy of life. now as i strolled across the moor and watched their gambols, thinking how like free wild animals they seemed, my thoughts roamed far away, and i saw in imagination scenes where other untamed animals of the horse tribe are living unfettered all their lives long. first there rose before my mind the level grass-covered pampas of south america, where wild horses share the boundless plains with troops of the rhea, or american ostrich, and wander, each horse with as many mares as he can collect, in companies of hundreds or even thousands in a troop. these horses are now truly wild, and live freely from youth to age, unless they are unfortunate enough to be caught in the more inhabited regions by the lasso of the hunter. in the broad pampas, the home of herds of wild cattle, they dread nothing. there, as they roam with one bold stallion as their leader, even beasts of prey hesitate to approach them, for, when they form into a dense mass with the mothers and young in their centre, their heels deal blows which even the fierce jaguar does not care to encounter, and they trample their enemy to death in a very short time. yet these are not the original wild horses we are seeking, they are the descendants of tame animals, brought from europe by the spaniards to buenos ayres in 1535, whose descendants have regained their freedom on the boundless pampas and prairies. as i was picturing them careering over the plains, another scene presented itself and took their place. now i no longer saw around me tall pampas-grass with the long necks of the rheas appearing above it, for i was on the edge of a dreary scantily covered plain between the aral sea and the balkash lake in tartary. to the south lies a barren sandy desert, to the north the fertile plains of the kirghiz steppes, where the tartar feeds his flocks, and herds of antelopes gallop over the fresh green pasture; and between these is a kind of no-man's land, where low scanty shrubs and stunted grass seemed to promise but a poor feeding-ground. yet here the small long-legged but powerful "tarpans," the wild horses of the treeless plains of russia and tartary, were picking their morning meal. sturdy wicked little fellows they are, with their shaggy light-brown coats, short wiry manes, erect ears, and fiery watchful eyes. they might well be supposed to be true wild horses, whose ancestors had never been tamed by man; and yet it is more probable that even they escaped in early times from the tartars, and have held their own ever since, over the grassy steppes of russia and on the confines of the plains of tartary. sometimes they live almost alone, especially on the barren wastes where they have been seen in winter, scraping the snow off the herbage as our ponies do on dartmoor. at other times, as in the south of russia, where they wander between the dnieper and the don, they gather in vast herds and live a free life, not fearing even the wolves, which they beat to the ground with their hoofs. from one green oasis to another they travel over miles of ground. "a thousand horse--and none to ride! with flowing tail, and flying mane, wide nostrils--never stretch'd by pain, mouths bloodless to the bit or rein, and feet that iron never shod, and flanks unscarr'd by spur or rod. a thousand horse, the wild, the free, like waves that follow o'er the sea."[1] [1] byron's _mazeppa_. as i followed them in their course i fancied i saw troops of yet another animal of the horse tribe, the "kulan," or _equus hemionus_, which is a kind of half horse, half ass (fig. 74), living on the kirghiz steppes of tartary and spreading far beyond the range of the tarpan into tibet. here at last we have a truly wild animal, never probably brought into subjection by man. the number of names he possesses shows how widely he has spread. the tartars call him "kulan," the tibetans "kiang," while the mongolians give him the unpronounceable name of "dschiggetai." he will not submit to any of them, but if caught and confined soon breaks away again to his old life, a "free and fetterless creature." [illustration: fig. 74. _equus hemionus_, "kiang" or "kulan," the horse-ass of tartary and tibet. (brehm.)] no one has ever yet settled the question whether he is a horse or an ass, probably because he represents an animal truly between the two. his head is graceful, his body light, his legs slender and fleet, yet his ears are long and ass-like; he has narrow hoofs, and a tail with a tuft at the end like all the ass tribe; his colour is a yellow brown, and he has a short dark mane and a long dark stripe down his back as a donkey has, though this last character you may also see in many of our devonshire ponies. living often on the high plateaux, sometimes as much as 1500 feet above the sea, this "child of the steppes" travels in large companies even as far as the rich meadows of central asia; in summer wandering in green pastures, and in winter seeking the hunger-steppes where sturdy plants grow. and when autumn comes the young steeds go off alone to the mountain heights to survey the country around and call wildly for mates, whom, when found, they will keep close to them through all the next year, even though they mingle with thousands of others. [illustration: fig. 75. przevalsky's wild horse, the "kertag" or "statur."] till about ten years ago the _equus hemionus_ was the only truly wild horse known, but in the winter of 1879-80 the russian traveller przevalsky brought back from central asia a much more horse-like animal, called by the tartars "kertag" and by the mongols "statur." it is a clumsy, thick-set, whitish-gray creature with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-coloured head; its legs have a red tint down to the knees, beyond which they are blackish down to the hoofs. but the ears are small, and it has the broad hoofs of the true horse, and warts on his hind legs, which no animal of the ass tribe has. this horse, like the kiang, travels in small troops of from five to fifteen, led through the wildest parts of the dsungarian desert, between the altai and tianschan mountains, by an old stallion. they are extremely shy, and see, hear, and smell very quickly, so that they are off like lightning whenever anything approaches them. so having travelled over america, europe, and asia, was my quest ended? no; for from the dreary asiatic deserts my thoughts wandered to a far warmer and more fertile land, where between the blue nile and the red sea rise the lofty highlands of abyssinia, among which the african wild ass (_asinus tæniopus_), the probable ancestor of our donkeys, feeds in troops on the rich grasses of the slopes, and then onwards to the bank of a river in central africa where on the edge of a forest, with rich pastures beyond, elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes and buffaloes, lions and hyænas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. there i saw the herds of zebras in all their striped beauty coming down from the mountain regions to the north, and mingling with the darker-coloured but graceful quaggas from the southern plains, and i half-grieved at the thought how these untamed and free rovers are being slowly but surely surrounded by man closing in upon them on every side. i might now have travelled still farther in search of the onager, or wild ass of the asiatic and indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented itself, as i flung myself down on the moor to ponder over the early history of all these tribes. where have they all come from? where shall we look for the first ancestors of these wild and graceful animals? for the answer to this question i had to travel back to america, to those western united states where professor marsh has made such grand discoveries in horse history. for there, in the very country where horses were supposed never to have been before the spaniards brought them a few centuries ago, we have now found the true birthplace of the equine race. come back with me to a time so remote that we cannot measure it even by hundreds of thousands of years, and let us visit the territories of utah and wyoming. those highlands were very different then from what they are now. just risen out of the seas of the cretaceous period, they were then clothed with dense forests of palms, tree-ferns, and screw-pines, magnolias and laurels, interspersed with wide-spreading lakes, on the margins of which strange and curious animals fed and flourished. there were large beasts with teeth like the tapir and the bear, and feet like the elephant; and others far more dangerous, half bear, half hyæna, prowling around to attack the clumsy paleotherium or the anoplotherium, something between a rhinoceros and a horse, which grazed by the waterside, while graceful antelopes fed on the rich grass. and among these were some little animals no bigger than foxes, with four toes and a splint for the fifth, on their front feet, and three toes on the hind ones. these clumsy little animals, whose bones have been found in the rocks of utah and wyoming, have been called _eohippus_, or horses of the dawn, by naturalists. they were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they belonged to the horse tribe, and already the fifth toe common to most other toed animals was beginning to disappear. this was in the eocene period, and before it passed away with its screw-pines and tree-ferns, another rather larger animal, called the _orohippus_, had taken the place of the small one, and he had only four toes on his front feet. the splint had disappeared, and as time went on still other animals followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. first one as large as a sheep (_mesohippus_) had only three toes and a splint. then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock of a horse's skeleton. the diagram (fig 76) shows these splints in the horse's or ass's foot of to-day. for you must notice that a horse's foot really begins at the point _w_ which we call his knee in the front legs, and at his hock _h_ in the hind legs. his true knee _k_ and elbow _e_ are close up to the body. what we call his foot or hoof is really the end of the strong, broad, middle toe _t_ covered with a hoof, and farther up his foot at _s_ and _s_ we can feel two small splints, which are remains of two other toes. meanwhile during these long succeeding ages while the foot was lengthening out into a slender limb the animals became larger, more powerful, and more swift, the neck and head became longer and more graceful, the brain-case larger in front and the teeth decreased in number, so that there is now a large gap between the biting teeth _i_ and the grinding teeth _g_ of a horse. their slender limbs too became more flexible and fit for running and galloping, till we find the whole skeleton the same in shape, though not in size, as in our own horses and asses now. [illustration: fig. 76. skeleton of horse or ass. _i_, incisor teeth. _g_, grinding teeth, with the gap between the two as in all grass-feeders. _k_, knee. _h_, hock or heel. _f_, foot. _s_, splints or remains of the two lost toes. _e_, elbow. _w_, wrist. _ha_, hand-bone. _t_, middle toe of three joints, 1, 2, 3 forming the hoof.] they did not, however, during all this time remain confined to america, for, from the time when they arrived at an animal called _miohippus_, or lesser horse, which came after the mesohippus and had only three toes on each foot, we find their remains in europe, where they lived in company with the giraffes, opossums, and monkeys which roamed over these parts in those ancient times. then a little later we find them in africa and india; so that the horse tribe, represented by creatures about as large as donkeys, had spread far and wide over the world. and now, curiously enough, they began to forsake, or to die out in, the land of their birth. why they did so we do not know; but while in the old world as asses, quaggas, and zebras, and probably horses, they flourished in asia, europe, and africa, they certainly died out in america, so that ages afterwards, when that land was discovered, no animal of the horse tribe was found in it. and the true horse, where did he arise? born and bred probably in central asia from some animal like the "kulan," or the "kertag," he proved too useful to savage tribes to be allowed his freedom, and it is doubtful whether in any part of the world he escaped subjection. in our own country he probably roamed as a wild animal till the savages, who fed upon him, learned in time to put him to work; and when the romans came they found the britons with fine and well-trained horses. yet though tamed and made to know his master he has, as we have seen, broken loose again in almost all parts of the world--in america on the prairies and pampas, in europe and asia on the steppes, and in australia in the bush. and even in great britain, where so few patches of uncultivated land still remain, the young colts of dartmoor, exmoor, and shetland, though born of domesticated mothers, seem to assert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the kulan, the tarpan, and the zebra do in the wild desert or grassy plain. chapter x the magician's dream of ancient days. [illustration] the magician sat in his armchair in the one little room in the house which was his, and his only, besides the observatory. and a strange room it was. the walls were hung with skulls and bones of men and animals, with swords, daggers, and shields, coats of mail, and bronze spear-heads. the drawers, many of which stood open, contained flint-stones chipped and worn, arrowheads of stone, jade hatchets beautifully polished, bronze buckles and iron armlets; while scattered among these were pieces of broken pottery, some rough and only half-baked, others beautifully finished, as the romans knew how to finish them. rough needles made of bone lay beside bronze knives with richly-ornamented handles and, most precious of all, on the table by the magician's side lay a reindeer antler, on which was roughly carved the figure of the reindeer itself. he had been enjoying a six weeks' holiday, and he had employed it in visiting some of the bone caves of europe to learn about the men who lived in them long, long ago. he had been to the south of france to see the famous caves of the dordogne, to belgium to the caves of engis and engihoul, to the hartz mountains and to hungary. then hastening home he had visited the chief english caves in yorkshire, wales, and devonshire. now that he had returned to his college, his mind was so full of facts, that he felt perplexed how to lay before his class the wonderful story of the life of man before history began. and as the day was hot, and the very breeze which played around him made him feel languid and sleepy, he fell into a reverie--a waking dream. * * * * * first the room faded from his sight, then the trim villages disappeared; the homesteads, the corn-fields, the grazing cattle, all were gone, and he saw the whole of england covered with thick forests and rough uncultivated land. from the mountains in the north, glaciers were to be seen creeping down the valleys between dense masses of fir and oak, pine and birch; while the wild horse, the bison, and the irish elk were feeding on the plains. as he looked southward and eastward he saw that the sea no longer washed the shores, for the english and irish channels were not yet scooped out. the british isles were still part of the continent of europe, so that animals could migrate overland from the far south, up to what is now england, scotland, and ireland. many of these animals, too, were very different from any now living in the country, for in the large rivers of england he saw the hippopotamus playing with her calf, while elephants and rhinoceroses were drinking at the water's edge. yet these strange creatures did not have all the country to themselves--wolves, bears, and foxes prowled in the woods, large beavers built their dams across the streams, and here and there over the country human beings were living in caves and holes of the earth. it was these men chiefly who attracted the magician's attention, and being curious to know how they lived, he turned towards a cave, at the mouth of which was a group of naked children who were knocking pieces of flint together, trying to strike off splinters and make rough flint tools, such as they saw their fathers use. not far off from them a woman with a wild beast's skin round her waist was gathering firewood, another was grubbing up roots, and another, venturing a little way into the forest, was searching for honey in the hollows of the tree trunks. all at once in the dusk of the evening a low growl and a frightened cry were heard, and the women rushed towards the cave as they saw near the edge of the forest a huge tiger with sabre-shaped teeth struggling with a powerful stag. in vain the deer tried to stamp on his savage foe or to wound him with his antlers; the strong teeth of the tiger had penetrated his throat, and they fell struggling together as the stag uttered his death-cry. just at that moment loud shouts were heard in the forest, and the frightened women knew that help was near. [illustration: fig. 77. palæolithic times.] one after another, several men, clothed in skins hung over one shoulder and secured round the waist, rushed out of the thicket, their hair streaming in the wind, and ran towards the tiger. they held in their hands strange weapons made of rough pointed flints fastened into handles by thongs of skin, and as the tiger turned upon them with a cry of rage they met him with a rapid shower of blows. the fight raged fiercely, for the beast was strong and the weapons of the men were rude, but the tiger lay dead at last by the side of his victim. his skin and teeth were the reward of the hunters, and the stag he had killed became their prey. how skilfully they hacked it to pieces with their stone axes, and then loading it upon their shoulders set off up the hill towards the cave, where they were welcomed with shouts of joy by the women and children! [illustration: fig. 78. palæolithic relics. 1, bone needle, from a cave at la madeleine, ½ size. 2, tooth of machairodus or sabre-toothed tiger, from kent's cavern, ½ size. 3, rough stone implement, from kent's cavern, ¼ size.] then began the feast. first fires were kindled slowly and with difficulty by rubbing a sharp-pointed stick in a groove of softer wood till the wood-dust burst into flame; then a huge pile was lighted at the mouth of the cave to cook the food and keep off wild beasts. how the food was cooked the magician could not see, but he guessed that the flesh was cut off the bones and thrust in the glowing embers, and he watched the men afterwards splitting open the uncooked bones to suck out the raw marrow which savages love. after the feast was over he noticed how they left these split bones scattered upon the floor of the cave mingling with the sabre-shaped teeth of the tiger, and this reminded him of the bones of the stag and the tiger's tooth which he had found in kent's cavern in devonshire only a few days before. by this time the men had lain down to sleep, and in the darkness strange cries were heard from the forest. the roar of the lion, mingled with the howling of the wolves and the shrill laugh of the hyænas, told that they had come down to feed on the remains of the tiger. but none of these animals ventured near the glowing fire at the mouth of the cavern, behind which the men slept in security till the sun was high in the heavens. then all was astir again, for weapons had been broken in the fight, and some of the men sitting on the ground outside the cave placed one flint between their knees, and striking another sharply against it drove off splinters, leaving a pointed end and cutting edge. they spoiled many before they made one to their liking, and the entrance to the cave was strewn with splintered fragments and spoilt flints, but at last several useful stones were ready. meanwhile another man, taking his rude stone axe, set to work to hew branches from the trees to form handles, while another, choosing a piece remaining of the body of the stag, tore a sinew from the thigh, and threading it through the large eye of the bone needle, stitched the tiger's skin roughly together into a garment. "_this, then_," said the magician to himself, "_is how ancient man lived in the summer-time, but how would he fare when winter came?_" as he mused the scene gradually changed. the glaciers crept far lower down the valleys, and the hills, and even the lower ground, lay thick in snow. the hippopotamus had wandered away southward to warmer climes, as animals now migrate over the continent of america in winter, and with him had gone the lion, the southern elephant, and other summer visitors. in their place large herds of reindeer and shaggy oxen had come down from the north and were spread over the plains, scraping away the snow with their feet to feed on the grass beneath. the mammoth, too, or hairy elephant, of the same extinct species as those which have been found frozen in solid ice under a sandbank in siberia, had come down to feed, accompanied by the woolly rhinoceros; and scattered over the hills were the curious horned musk-sheep, which have long ago disappeared off the face of the earth. still, bitterly cold as it was, the hunter clad in his wild-beast skin came out from time to time to chase the mammoth, the reindeer, and the oxen for food, and cut wood in the forest to feed the cavern fires. this time the magician's thoughts wandered down to the south-west of france, where, on the banks of a river in that part now called the dordogne, a number of caves not far from each other formed the home of savage man. here he saw many new things, for the men used arrows of deer-horn and of wood pointed with flint, and with these they shot the birds, which were hovering near in hopes of finding food during the bitter weather. by the side of the river a man was throwing a small dart of deer-horn fastened to a cord of sinews, with which from time to time he speared a large fish and drew it to the bank. [illustration: fig. 79. mammoth engraved on ivory by palæolithic man.] but the most curious sight of all, among such a rude people, was a man sitting by the glowing fire at the mouth of one of the caves scratching a piece of reindeer horn with a pointed flint, while the children gathered round him to watch his work. what was he doing? see! gradually the rude scratches began to take shape, and two reindeer fighting together could be recognised upon the horn handle. this he laid carefully aside, and taking a piece of ivory, part of the tusk of a mammoth, he worked away slowly and carefully till the children grew tired of watching and went off to play behind the fire. then the magician, glancing over his shoulder, saw a true figure of the mammoth scratched upon the ivory, his hairy skin, long mane, and up-curved tusks distinguishing him from all elephants living now. "_ah_," exclaimed the magician aloud, "_that is the drawing on ivory found in the cave of la madeleine in dordogne, proving that man existed ages ago, and even knew how to draw figures, at a time when the mammoth, or hairy elephant, long since extinct, was still living on the earth!_" with these words he started from his reverie, and knew that he had been dreaming of palæolithic man who, with his tools of rough flints, had lived in europe so long ago that his date cannot be fixed by years, or centuries, or even thousands of years. only this is known, that, since he lived, the mammoth, the sabre-toothed tiger, the cave-bear, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-hyæna, the musk-sheep, and many other animals have died out from off the face of the earth; the hippopotamus and the lion have left europe and retired to africa, and the sea has flowed in where land once was, cutting off great britain and ireland from the continent. how long all these changes were in taking place no one knows. when the magician drifted back again into his dream the land had long been desolate, and the hyænas, which had always taken possession of the caves whenever the men deserted them for awhile, had now been undisturbed for a long time, and had left on the floor of the cave gnawed skulls and bones, and jaws of animals, more or less scored with the marks of their teeth, and these had become buried in a thick layer of earth. the magician knew that these teeth marks had been made by hyænas, both because living hyænas leave exactly such marks on bones in the present day, and because the hyæna bones alone were not gnawed, showing that no animals preyed upon their flesh. he knew too that the hyænas had been there long after man had ceased to use the caves, because no flint tools were found among the bones. but now the age of hyænas, too, was past and gone, and the caves had been left so long undisturbed that in many of them the water dripping from the roof had left film after film of carbonate of lime upon the floor, which as the centuries went by became a layer of stalagmite many feet thick, sealing down the secrets of the past. * * * * * the face of the country was now entirely changed. the glaciers were gone, and so, too, were all the strange animals. true, the reindeer, the wild ox, and even here and there the irish elk, were still feeding in the valleys; wolves and bears still made the country dangerous, and beavers built their dams across the streams, which were now much smaller than formerly, and flowed in deeper channels, carved out by water during the interval; but the elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and tigers were gone never to return, and near the caves in which some of the people lived, and the rude underground huts which formed the homes of others, tame sheep and goats were lying with dogs to watch them. also, though the land was still covered with dense forests, yet here and there small clearings had been made, where patches of corn and flax were growing. naked children still played about as before, but now they were moulding cups of clay like those in which food was being cooked on the fire outside the caves or huts. some of the women, dressed partly in skins of beasts, partly in rough woven linen, were spinning flax into thread, using as a spinning-whorl a small round stone with a hole in the middle tied to the end of the flax, as a weight to enable them to twirl it. others were grinding corn in the hollow of a large stone by rubbing another stone within it. [illustration: fig. 80. neolithic implements. 1, stone hatchet mounted in wood. 2, jade celt, a polished stone weapon, from livermore in suffolk, ¼ size. 3, spindle whorl, ½ size.] the men, while they still spent much time in hunting, had now other duties in tending the sheep and goats, or looking after the hogs as they turned up the ground in the forest for roots, or sowing and reaping their crops. yet still all the tools were made of stone, no longer rough and merely chipped like the old stone weapons, but neatly cut and polished. stone axes with handles of deer-horn, stone spears and javelins, stone arrowheads beautifully finished, sling-stones and scrapers, were among their weapons and tools, and with them they made many delicate implements of bone. on the broad lakes which here and there broke the monotony of the forests, canoes, made of the trunks of trees hollowed out by fire, were being paddled by one man, while another threw out his fishing line armed with delicate bone-hooks; and on the banks of the lakes, nets weighted with drilled stones tied on to the meshes were dragged up full of fish. for these neolithic men, or men of the new stone period, who used polished stone weapons, were farmers and shepherds and fishermen. they knew how to make rude pottery, and kept domestic animals. moreover, they either came from the east or exchanged goods by barter with tribes living more to the eastward, now that canoes enabled them to cross the sea; for many of their weapons were made of greenstone or jade, and of other kinds of stone not to be found in europe, and their sheep and goats were animals of eastern origin. they understood how to unite to protect their homes, for they made underground huts by digging down several feet into the ground and roofing the hole over with wood coated with clay; and often long passages underground united these huts, while in many places on the hills, camps, made of ramparts of earth surrounded by ditches, served as strongholds for the women and children and the flocks and herds, when some neighbouring tribe attacked their homesteads. still, however, where caves were ready to hand they used them for houses, and the same shelter which had been the home of the ancient hunters, now resounded with the voices of the shepherds, who, treading on the sealed floor, little dreamt that under their feet lay the remains of a bygone age. [illustration: fig. 81. a burial in neolithic times.] and now, as our dreamer watched this new race of men fashioning their weapons, feeding their oxen, and hunting the wild stag, his attention was arrested by a long train of people crossing a neighbouring plain, weeping and wailing as they went. at the head of this procession, lying on a stretcher made of tree-boughs, lay a dead chieftain, and as the line moved on, men threw down their tools, and women their spinning, and joined the throng. on they went to where two upright slabs of stone with another laid across them formed the opening to a long mound or chamber. into this the bearers passed with lighted torches, and in a niche ready prepared placed the dead chieftain in a sitting posture with the knees drawn up, placing by his side his flint spear and polished axe, his necklace of shells, and the bowl from which he had fed. then followed the funeral feast, when, with shouts and wailing, fires were lighted, and animals slaughtered and cooked, while the chieftain was not forgotten, but portions were left for his use, and then the earth was piled up again around the mouth of the chamber, till it should be opened at some future time to place another member of his family by his side, or till in after ages the antiquary should rifle his resting-place to study the mode of burial in the neolithic or polished stone age. time passed on in the magician's dream, and little by little the caves were entirely deserted as men learnt to build huts of wood and stone. and as they advanced in knowledge they began to melt metals and pour them into moulds, making bronze knives and hatchets, swords and spears; and they fashioned brooches and bracelets of bronze and gold, though they still also used their necklaces of shells and their polished stone weapons. they began, too, to keep ducks and fowls, cows and horses; they knew how to weave in looms, and to make cloaks and tunics; and when they buried their dead it was no longer in a crouching position. they laid them decently to rest, as if in sleep, in the barrows where they are found to this day with bronze weapons by their side. then as time went on they learnt to melt even hard iron, and to beat it into swords and plough-shares, and they lived in well-built huts with stone foundations. their custom of burial, too, was again changed, and they burnt their dead, placing the ashes in a funeral urn. [illustration: fig. 82. british relics. 1, a coin of the age of constantine. 2, bronze weapon from a suffolk barrow. 3, bronze bracelet from liss in hampshire.] by this time the britons, as they were now called, had begun to gather together in villages and towns, and the romans ruled over them. now when men passed through the wild country they were often finely dressed in cloth tunics, wearing arm rings of gold, some even driving in war-chariots, carrying shields made of wickerwork covered with leather. still many of the country people who laboured in the field kept their old clothing of beast skins; they grew their corn and stored it in cavities of the rocks; they made basket-work boats covered with skin, in which they ventured out to sea. so things went on for a long period till at last a troubled time came, and the quiet valleys were disturbed by wandering people who fled from the towns and took refuge in the forests; for the romans after three hundred and fifty years of rule had gone back home to italy, and a new and barbarous people called the jutes, angles, and saxons, came over the sea from jutland and drove the britons from their homes. [illustration: fig. 83. britons taking refuge in the cave.] and so once more the caves became the abode of man, for the harassed britons brought what few things they could carry away from their houses and hid themselves there from their enemies. how little they thought, as they lay down to sleep on the cavern floor, that beneath them lay the remains of two ages of men! they knew nothing of the woman who had dropped her stone spindle-whorl into the fire, on which the food of neolithic man had been cooking in rough pots of clay; they never dug down to the layer of gnawed bones, nor did they even in their dreams picture the hyæna haunting his ancient den, for a hyæna was an animal they had never seen. still less would they have believed that at one time, countless ages before, their island had been part of the continent, and that men, living in the cave where they now lay, had cut down trees with rough flints, and fought with such unknown animals as the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger. but the magician saw it all passing before him, even as he also saw these britons carrying into the cave their brooches, bracelets, and finger rings, their iron spears and bronze daggers, and all their little household treasures which they had saved in their flight. and among these, mingling in the heap, he recognised roman coins bearing the inscription of the emperor constantine, and he knew that it was by these coins that he had, a few days before in yorkshire, been able to fix the date of the british occupation of a cave. * * * * * and with this his dream ended, and he found himself clutching firmly the horn on which palæolithic man had engraved the figure of the reindeer. he rose, and stretching himself crossed the sunny grass plot of the quadrangle and entered his classroom. the boys wondered as he began his lecture at the far-away look in his eyes. they did not know how he had passed through a vision of countless ages; but that afternoon, for the first time, they realised, as he unfolded scene after scene, the history of "the men of ancient days." index abbot's way across dartmoor, 196 absorption of rays of sunlight, 129 abyssinia, wild ass of, 203 _actinozoa_, cydippe allied to the, 190 ages, lapse of between old and new stone age, 217 alcor, or jack, 158 aldebaran, 149; called so by the arabs, 153; colour of, 167 algol the variable, 162, 165 almach, [greek: g] andromedæ, 156; a coloured double star, 167 america, extinction of original horse in, 207 andromeda, the great nebula of, 162, 164; double coloured star in, 167 animal of the sea-mat, 191; number in one leaf, 193 animal-trees and stony plants, 178 animals, extinct, living with man, 211 antares, a ruby-red star, 167 antherozoids of mosses, 89 apothecia of lichens, 83 apennines, lunar, figured, 19 archimedes, a lunar crater, 10; smooth centre of, 19 arctic lands, lichens in, 82 arcturus, colour of, 166 aristarchus, a lunar crater, 10, 24; streaks around, 17 aristotle, a lunar crater, 10 arrows, old stone, 215 asia, horse of central, 201 _asinus tæniopus_, 203 _aspergillus glaucus_, 61; growth of, 63 ass tribe, forms allied to the, 201 ass, wild of africa, 203 atmosphere, absence of in the moon, 21 australia, wild horses of, 207 _bacillaria paradoxa_, a diatom, 185 bacteria growing on wounds, 66 baiæ, hill thrown up on bay of, 103 ball, sir r., on binary stars, 154 beehive, triple star near the, 168 beer, fermentation of, 65 bellatrix, a star in orion, 148 berlin, ground beneath, formed of diatoms, 186 bessel, on movements of sirius, 169 betelgeux, a star in orion, 148 binary star in great bear, 157, 158 binary stars, 154, 166, 170 bog-moss or sphagnum, 93 bog-mosses, distribution of, 94 bombs, volcanic, 105 boötis [greek: e], a coloured double star, 167 britons inhabiting caves, 224; ornaments and customs of, 223 britons of dartmoor, 196 bronze weapon and bracelet, 223 bryum or thread moss, 77 buckfast abbey, monks of, 196 bunt, a fungus, 64 burial in neolithic times, 221 cassiopeia, the constellation, 162; coloured double star in, 167 castor, a binary star, 154 camera, photographic, 47; attached to the telescope, 121 cancer [greek: z], a triple coloured star, 168 candle-flame, image of, formed by lens, 33 canis major, constellation of, 148 capella, colour of the star, 153 castor, light of compared with a near star, 158 caterpillars destroyed by fungus, 66 caucasus mountains on the moon, 18 cave, the three periods of a, 225 caves, palæolithic and neolithic, 210; palæolithic life in, 211; hyænas roamed in, 217; neolithic life in, 218; britons took refuge in, 224 cells, fertile of mushroom, 69; of moss-plant, 89 celt, jade, from suffolk, 219 chambers, mr., his drawing of [greek: e] lyræ, 166 charles's wain, 155; part of great bear, 157; stars of drifting, 159; stars visible in waggon of, 160; double coloured star in, 158, 167 _chilomonas amygdalum_, a monad, 182 ciliary muscle, action of the, 34 clark, alvan, on companion of sirius, 169 clockwork of telescope, 2 _cocconema lanceolatum_, a diatom, 184 coin of age of constantine, 223 _confervæ_, growth of, 79 commons, mr., photographed orion's nebula, 152 constantine, coin of age of, 223 constellations, maps of, 148, 156 copernicus, a lunar crater, 10, 24; figured, 17; bright streaks around, 18 copper-sulphate in lava, 108 _corallina_, a stony seaweed, 175; fruit of, 177; appearance like _sertularia_, 179 cornea of the eye, 31 corona, nature of the sun's, 123, 137 cottam, mr. a., his plate of coloured stars, 167 crater, lava flowing from a, 98; interior of vesuvius, 100 crater-plains, 19-21 craters on the moon, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20; of earth and moon compared, 16 crystallites in volcanic glass, 109 crystallisation, two periods of, in lava, 115 crystals forming in artificial lavas, 114; precious, 116 _cydippe pileus_, a living jelly-ball, 187; structure of, 188-190 cygni [greek: b], a coloured double star, 167 dartmoor, fairy rings on, 57, 58; the sundew on, 56; granite figured, 112; ponies, 195 de la rue, his photograph of moon, 13 devonshire ponies, black stripe on, 201 diatom, a growing, 185 _diatoma hyalina_, 184 diatoms, magnified fossil, 39; living marine, 184 didymium, giving a broken spectrum, 126 dordogne, caves of the, 210, 215 draper, prof., photographed orion's nebula, 152 _drosera rotundifolia_ on dartmoor, 56 dschiggetai, horse-ass of tibet, 200 dsungarian desert, wild horse of the, 203 dykes, nature of volcanic, 111 earth, path of the moon round the, 8; magnetic storm on, caused by sun, 14; reservoirs of melted matter in the, 101 earthquakes accompanying volcanic outbursts, 102 eclipse of sun, red jets and corona seen during, 125 eclipse, total, of the moon, 23; lurid light during, 25 eclipses, how caused, 7 elephant, hairy, engraved on ivory, 216 _empusa muscæ_, 66 engis and engihoul caves, 210 england, ancient caves in, 210; in palæolithic times, 211 eocene, toed horses of the, 205 _eohippus_, or horse of the dawn, 205 _equus hemionus_, the horse-ass, 202 eratosthenes, a lunar crater, 10 erbia, giving a broken spectrum, 126 ergot, a fungus, 61 eruptions of vesuvius, 97, 100, 104 eudoxus, a lunar crater, 10 experiments, necessity for accurate, 54 eye, structure of the, 29-32; mode of seeing with the, 32; short-sighted, 29, 35; distances spanned by the naked, 40 faculæ on the sun's face, 122, 140 fairy rings, 55; mentioned in _merry wives of windsor_, 57; growth of, 71-73 ferments caused by fungi, 60, 64 fishing in ancient times, 215, 220 _fistulina hepatica_, a fungus, 71 flint skeletons of plants, 185 flustra or sea-mat, 187; structure of, 191-193 fly, fungus killing a, 66 focal images, 33; distances, 44 fouqué, m., artificial lava made by, 112 fructification of mushrooms, 69; of lichens, 83; of mosses, 91; of seaweeds, 177 _funaria hygrometrica_, urn of the, 89, 91; has no urn lid, 92 fungi, nature of, 59; different kinds of, 60; attacking insects, 66; growing on wounds, 66; the use of, 74 fungus and green cells in lichen, 81 gardener, advice of the old, 118 gas, spectrum of a, 126 gases revealed by spectroscope, 52 gemini, the constellation, 154 geminorum, [greek: d], a double coloured star, 167 gills of mushroom, 69 _gomphonema marinum_, 184 gooseberry, fermentation in a, 64 gory dew, _palmella cruenta_, 79 graham's island thrown up, 102 granular appearance of sun's face, 123 grape fungus, 65 great bear, the constellation, 157; binary star in, 158; coloured double star in, 158, 168 greenstone, neolithic weapons of, 220 guards, the, in the little bear, 162 hartz mountains, caves of the, 210 hatchet, a neolithic stone, 219 hebrides, volcanic islands of, 111 henri, mm., photograph of moon's face by, 19 herculaneum, buried, 98, 104 herculis [greek: a], a coloured double star, 168 hermitage, lava stream flowing behind the, 97, 99 herschel's drawing of copernicus, 17 huggins, dr., on shape of prominences, 135; on spectra of nebulæ, 151; on cause of colour in stars, 168 himalayas, single-celled plants in the, 79 horse, wild, of the pampas, 198; of tartary, 199; of kirghiz steppes, 200; przevalsky's, 202; early history of toed, 204; structure of foot and hoof of, 205; skeleton of, 206; origin and migration of early, 207 hungary, ancient caves of, 210 huyghens, the highest peak in lunar apennines, 19 image formed at focus of lens, 33; of sky in telescope, 49 implements, old stone, 213; new stone, 219 imps of plant-life, 59 india, low plants in springs of, 79; solar eclipse seen in, 124; wild ass of, 203 infusorial earth, 186 infusorians in a seaside pool, 183 inhabitants of a seaside pool, 172-174 iris of the eye, 30 iron pyrites in lava, 108 iron slag, lava compared to, 105 islands, volcanic thrown up, 102 jack by the second horse, 157 jade, neolithic weapons of, 220 jannsen, prof., on sun prominences, 131 judd, mr., on volcano of mull, 111 jutes and angles invading britain, 224 kant on nebular hypothesis, 152 kent's cavern, rough stone implement from, 213 kepler, a lunar crater, 10; streaks around, 17 kertag, or wild horse, 202 kew, sun-storm registered at, 143 kiang or kulan, 200 kirchhoff, prof., on sunlight, 128 kulan or kiang, 200 labrador felspar artificially made, 113 langley, prof., sun-spot drawn by, 141 laplace, nebular hypothesis of, 152 lava, aspect of flowing, 99; reservoirs of molten, 101; nature of, 107; artificially made, 113; two periods of crystallisation in, 115 lava-stream, history of a, 100; section of a, 108; rapid cooling of surface, 108 laver or sea-lettuce, structure of, 176 leo, the constellation, 155 leucotephrite artificially made, 113 lens, natural, of the eye, 31; simple magnifying, 35 levy, m., artificial lava made by, 112 lichens, specimens of from life, 77; the life-history of, 80-84; sections of, 81; distribution of 82, 95; fructification of, 83; causes of success of, 94 lick telescope, magnifying power of, 46 light, lurid, on moon during eclipse, 24; sifted by spectroscope, 126 light-granules on sun's face, 123; supposed explanation of, 141 lime-tree, fungi on the, 64 liss, bronze bracelet from, 223 little bear, pole-star and guards in the, 162 lockyer, mr., on sun-prominences, 131, 136 lunar apennines figured, 19 lyræ [greek: epsilon], a double-binary star, 166 machairodus, tooth of, 213 madeleine, la, carvings from cave of, 216 magic glasses and how to use them, 27; what can be done by, 28, 53 magician's chamber, 1; his pupils, 4; spells, 28; his dream of ancient days, 209 magnetic connection of sun and earth, 142 magnifying-glass, action of a, 35 mammoth engraved on ivory, 216 maps of constellations, 148, 156 _marasmius oreastes_, fairy-ring mushroom, 55, 72 _mazeppa_, quotation from byron's, 201 men of older stone age, 212; of neolithic age, 218 _mesohippus_, a toed horse, 205 microliths in volcanic glass, 109, 110, 113, 115; formed in artificial lava, 113 microscope, 3; action of the, 36-38 mildews are fungi, 60 milky way, 149; cassiopeia in the, 163 minerals crystallising in lava, 108 mines, increase of temperature in, 101 miohippus, or lesser toed horse, 206 mizar, a double-coloured star in the great bear, 158, 168 monads, size and activity of, 183 monks, ancient, of dartmoor, 196 monte nuovo thrown up in 1538, 103 moon, phases of the, 6; course in the heavens, 8; map of the, 10; craters of the, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20; face of full, 11; a worn-out planet, 21; no atmosphere in the, 21; diagram of eclipse of, 23; lurid light on during eclipse, 24 moss-leaf magnified, 87 moss, life-history of a, 84, 92; a stem of feathery, 85; protonema of a, 86; modes of new growth of a, 88; fructification of a, 89; urns of a, 89, 91 mosses, different kinds of, 77; advantages and distribution of, 94 moulds are fungi, 60; how they grow, 63 mountains of the moon, 19; formation of, 21 _mucor mucedo_, figured, 61; growth of, 63 mull, volcanic dykes in the island of, 111 mushroom, early stages and spawn of, 67; mycelium of, 67; later stages of, 68; section of gills of, 69; spores of, 70; fairy or scotch bonnet, 72 mycelium of mould, 63; of mushroom, 67; of fairy rings, 72 naples, volcanic eruption seen at, 96; monte nuovo thrown up near, 103 nasmyth on bright lunar streaks, 16 nebula of orion, 149; spectrum of, 151; photographs of, 152; of pleiades, 153; of andromeda, 163-164 needle, bone, from a cave, 212 neolithic implements, 219; industries and habits, 218-220; burials, 221 neptune, invisible to naked eye, 35 neison, mr., his drawing of plato, 20 _nostoc_, growing on stones, 79 oak, fungi on the, 64 observatory, the magician's, 2; astronomical on vesuvius, 97; cascade of lava behind the, 99 obsidian, or volcanic glass, 109 occultation of a star, 22, 25 onager, or wild ass of asia, 203 optic nerve of eye, 34 orion, constellation of, 147, 149; great nebula of, 149; photographs of nebula of, 152; coloured double stars in, 168 orionis [greek: th], or trapezium, 150 ornaments of ancient britons, 222 orohippus, a toed horse, 205 _oscillariæ_, growth of, 79 palæolithic man, 212; relics, 213; life, 214, 216 pampas, wild horses of the, 198 _penicillium glaucum_, figured, 61; growth of, 63 penumbra of an eclipse, 23; of sun-spots, 140 perithecia of lichens, 84 petavius, a lunar crater, 10 photographic camera, 3, 47; attached to telescope, 121 photographs of the moon, 13, 19; of galloping horse, 48; of the stars, 49, 161; of the sun, 121 photosphere of the sun, 123 philadelphia, electric shocks at during sun-storm, 143 pixies of plant life, 59 plains of the moon, 10; nature of the, 12 plants, colourless, single-celled, 65; single-celled green, 78; two kinds of in lichens, 80; with flint skeletons, 185 plato, a lunar crater, 10, 24; figured, 20 pleiades, the, 153; nebulæ in, 153 _pleurococcus_, a single-celled plant, 78 plough, the, or charles's wain, 157 pointers, in charles's wain, 161 pole-star, the, 161; a yellow sun, 166 pollux, a yellow sun, 166 _polysiphonia_, a red seaweed, 175; fruit of, 177 _polytrichum commune_, a hair moss, 88; its urns protected by a lid, 91 pool, inhabitants of a seaside, 172-74 precious stones, formation of, 116 proctor, his star atlas, 146; on drifting of charles's wain, 159 prominence-spectrum and sun-spectrum compared, 134 prominences, red, of the sun, 125; seen in full daylight, 131-133; shape of, 135 _protococcus nivalis_, 79 protonema of a moss, 86 przevalsky's wild horse, 202 ptolemy, a lunar crater, 10 puffballs, 67, 70; use of in nature, 73 pupil of the eye, 30 puzzuoli, eruption near, 1538, 103 quaggas, herds of, 203 rain-band in the solar spectrum, 130 rain-shower during volcanic eruption, 107 readings in the sky, 53, 127, 151, 168 red snow, a single-celled plant, 79 regulus, the star, 155, 166 reindeer, carving on horn of, 216 reservoirs of molten rock underground, 101 resina, ascent of vesuvius from, 98 retina of the eye, 31; image of object on the, 33 richmond, virginia, infusorial earth of, 186 rigel, a star in orion, 149; a coloured double star, 168 rings, growth of fairy, 73 roberts, mr. i., his photograph of orion's nebula, 152; and of nebula of the pleiades, 153; and of nebula of andromeda, 164 rosse, lord, his telescope, 46; on orion's nebula, 150; stars visible in his telescope, 160 rue, de la, his photograph of the moon, 13 rust on plants, 61 sabrina island formed, 102 saturn, distance of, 40 saxons, invasion of the, 224 schwabe, herr, on sun-spots cycle, 137 scoriæ of volcanoes, 108 "scotch bonnet" mushroom, 72 sea-mat, _see_ flustra "seas" lunar, so-called, 10 seaweeds, a group of, 175; fruits of, 177 secchi, father, on depth of a sun-spot, 139 selwyn, mr., photograph of sun by, 122 senses alone tell us of outer world, 29 _sertularia tenella_, structure of, 180; _cupressina_, 181 sertularian and coralline, resemblance of, 179 shakespeare on fairy rings, 57 shipley, mr., saw volcanic island formed, 103 sight, far and near, 35 silkworm destroyed by fungi, 66 sirius, 146; a bluish white sun, 166; irregularities of caused by a companion, 169 skeleton of the horse, 206 skin diseases caused by fungi, 61, 66 sky, light readings in the, 53, 127, 151, 168 smut, a fungus, 61 sodium lime in the spectrum, 128 somma, part of ancient vesuvius, 97, 104 spawn of mushroom, 67 spectra, plate of coloured, 127 spectroscope, 3; kirchhoff's, 51; gases revealed by the, 52; direct vision, 127; sifting light, 126; attached to telescope, 132 spectrum of sunlight, 127, 130 sphacelaria, a brown-green seaweed, 175; fruit of, 177 sphagnum or bog moss, 77, 93; structure of leaves of, 93 spindle-whorl from neolithic caves, 219 spore-cases of mosses, 89, 91, 93 spores of moulds, 63; of mushroom, 70; of lichens, 83; of mosses, 91 star, occultation of, by the moon, 24; a double-binary, 166; a dark, travelling round sirius, 169 star-cluster in perseus, 162 star-depths, 160, 171 stars, light from the, 40, 42; visible in the country, 145; apparent motion of the, 146; maps of, 148, 156; of milky way, 149; binary, 154; real motion of, 159; drifting, 159; number of known and estimated, 161; colours of, 166; double coloured, 167; cause of colour in, 168; are they centres of solar systems? 170 statur or wild horse, 202 streaks, bright, on the moon, 14-17 suffolk, bronze weapon from barrow in, 223 sun, path of the moon round the, 8; one of the stars, 119; how to look at the, 119; face of, thrown on a screen, 120; photograph of the, 122; prominences, corona, and faculæ of, 122-125; mottling of face of, 123; total eclipse of, 124; zodiacal line round, 125; dark lines in spectrum of, 128; reversing layer of, 131; metals in the, 131; sudden outburst in the, 142; magnetic connection with the earth, 143; a yellow star, 166 sun's rays touching moon during eclipse, 24 sun-spots, cycle of, 137; proving sun's rotation, 138; nature of, 139; quiet and unquiet, 140; formation of, 142 sundew on dartmoor, 56 tarpan, a wild horse, 199 tartary, wild horses of, 199 tavistock abbey, monks of, 196 telescope, clock-work, adjusting a, 2; an astronomical, 41; magnifying power of the, 43-46; giant, 46; terrestrial, 47; what can be seen in a small, 46; how the sun is photographed in the, 122; how the spectroscope is worked with the, 132 teneriffe, peak of compared to lunar craters, 15 tennant, major, drawing of eclipsed sun by, 123 temperature, underground, 101 _thuricolla follicula_, a transparent infusorian, 182 tiger, sabre-toothed, 211, 213 _tilletia caria_ or bunt, 64 toadstools, 67, 70; use of in nature, 73 tools, of ancient stone period, 214, 215 tooth of machairodus, 213 torquay, the magician's pool near, 172 tors of dartmoor, 197 trapezium of orion, 150 _tremella mesenterica_ fungus, 71 tripoli formed of diatoms, 35 tundras, lichens and mosses of the, 82, 95 tycho, a lunar crater, 10; description of, 13; bright streaks of, 14 _ulva_, a green seaweed, 175; a section magnified, 176 umbra of an eclipse, 23 urns of mosses, 89, 91 _ustilago carbo_, or smut, 64 variable stars, 165 vega, a bluish-white sun, 166; double-binary star near, 165 veil of mushroom, 68 vesuvian lavas imitated, 113 vesuvius, eruption of 1868 described, 97, 99, 104; dormant, 103; eruption of in a.d. 79, 104 volcanic craters of earth and moon compared, 16; eruptions in the moon, 21; glass under the microscope, 109, 110, 115 volcano, diagram of an active, 105 volcanoes, the cause of discussed, 101, 102; ancient, laid bare, 111 washington, electric shocks at during sun-storm, 143 winter in palæolithic times, 215 wood, winter growth in a, 76 "world without end," 115 yeast, growth of, 65 yorkshire, roman coins in caves of, 225 zebra, herds of, 203 zodiacal light, 125 the end * * * * * d. appleton & co.'s publications. _the fairyland of science._ by arabella b. buckley. with 74 illustrations. cloth, gilt, $1.50. 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"the book is most certainly one to be read, and will be welcomed as an addition to the scant literature on a singularly interesting country."--_courier._ _china: travels and investigations in the "middle kingdom."_ a study of its civilization and possibilities. with a glance at japan. by james harrison wilson, late major-general united states volunteers and brevet major-general united states army. 12mo. cloth, $1.75. "the book presents china and japan in all these aspects; the manners and customs of the people; the institutions, tendencies, and social ideas; the government and leading men."--_boston traveller._ _the garden's story; or, pleasures and trials of an amateur gardener._ by george h. ellwanger. with head and tail pieces by rhead. 12mo. cloth extra, $1.50. "mr. ellwanger's instinct rarely errs in matters of taste. he writes out of the fullness of experimental knowledge, but his knowledge differs from that of many a trained cultivator in that his skill in garden practice is guided by a refined æsthetic sensibility, and his appreciation of what is beautiful in nature is healthy, hearty, and catholic. his record of the garden year, as we have said, begins with the earliest violet, and it follows the season through until the witch-hazel is blossoming on the border of the wintry woods.... this little book can not fail to give pleasure to all who take a genuine interest in rural life. they will sympathize with most of the author's robust and positive judgments, and with his strong aversions as well as his tender attachments."--_the tribune_, new york. _the folk-lore of plants._ by t. f. thiselton dyer, m.a. 12mo. cloth, $1.50. "the folk-lore of plants" traces the superstitions and fancies connected with plants in fairy-lore, in witchcraft and demonology, in religion, in charms, in medicine, in plant language, etc. the author is an eminent english botanist, and superintendent of the gardens at kew. "a handsome and deeply interesting volume.... in all respects the book is excellent. its arrangement is simple and intelligible, its style bright and alluring; authorities are cited at the foot of the page, and a full index is appended.... to all who seek an introduction to one of the most attractive branches of folk-lore, this delightful volume may be warmly commended."--_notes and queries._ _flowers and their pedigrees._ by grant allen, author of "vignettes of nature," etc. illustrated. 12mo. cloth, $1.50. no writer treats scientific subjects with so much ease and charm of style as mr. grant allen. his sketches in the magazines have well been called fascinating, and the present volume, being a collection of various papers, will fully sustain his reputation as an eminently entertaining and suggestive writer. "'flowers and their pedigrees,' by grant allen, with many illustrations, is not merely a description of british wild flowers, but a discussion of why they are, what they are, and how they come to be so; in other words, a scientific study of the migration and transformation of plants, illustrated by the daisy, the strawberry, the cleavers, wheat, the mountain tulip, the cuckoo-pint, and a few others. the study is a delightful one, and the book is fascinating to any one who has either love for flowers or curiosity about them."--_hartford courant._ _the history of ancient civilization._ a hand-book based upon m. gustave ducoudray's "histoire sommaire de la civilisation." edited by the rev. j. verschoyle, m.a. with numerous illustrations. large 12mo. cloth, $1.75. "with m. ducoudray's work as a basis, many additions having been made, derived from special writers, mr. verschoyle has produced an excellent work, which gives a comprehensive view of early civilization.... as to the world of the past, the volume under notice treats of egypt, assyria, the far east, of greece and rome in the most comprehensive manner. it is not the arts alone which are fully illustrated, but the literature, laws, manners, and customs, the beliefs of all these countries are contrasted. if the book gave alone the history of the monuments of the past it would be valuable, but it is its all-around character which renders it so useful. a great many volumes have been produced treating of a past civilization, but we have seen none which in the same space gives such varied information."--_the new york times._ _great leaders: historic portraits from the great historians._ selected, with notes and brief biographical sketches, by g. t. ferris. with sixteen engraved portraits. 12mo. cloth, $1.75. the historic portraits of this work are eighty in number, drawn from the writings of plutarch, grote, gibbon, curtius, mommsen, froude, hume, macaulay, lecky, green, thiers, taine, prescott, motley, and other historians. the subjects extend from themistocles to wellington. "every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of history. these pen-portraits often stand out from the narrative with luminous and vivid effect, the writers seeming to have concentrated upon them all their powers of penetration and all their skill in graphic delineation. few things in literature are marked by analysis so close, discernment so keen, or effects so brilliant and dramatic."--_from the preface._ _life of the greeks and romans_, described from ancient monuments. by e. guhl and w. koner. translated from the third german edition by f. hueffer. with 543 illustrations. 8vo. cloth, $2.50. "the result of careful and unwearied research in every nook and cranny of ancient learning. nowhere else can the student find so many facts in illustration of greek and roman methods and manners."--_dr. c. k. adams's manual of historical literature._ new york: d. appleton & co., 1, 3, & 5 bond street. round-about rambles in lands of fact and fancy by frank r stockton _new edition_ new york charles scribner's sons 1910 entered according to act of congress, in the year 1872, by scribner. armstrong & co., in the office of the librarian of congress, at washington. contents winter in the woods tricks of light saving the toll the real king of beasts the french soldier-boy a lively way to ring a bell down in the earth the lion bob's hiding-place the continental soldier a judge of music the sensitive plant sir marmaduke the giraffe up in the air the arabian horse indian-puddings: pumpkin-pies living in smoke the cannon of the palais-royal waters, deep and shallow hans the herb-gatherer some cunning insects a first sight of the sea the largest church in the world the soft place a few feathered friends in a well a vegetable gas manufactory about bears an old country-house far-away forests building ships the orang-outang little bridget's bath some novel fishing eagles and little girls climbing mountains andrew's plan the wild ass ancient riding beautiful bugs a battle on stilts drawing the long bow an ancient theatre bird chat mummies tame snakes gymnastics buying "the mirror" big game the bootblack's dog going after the cows the reflective stag when we must not believe our eyes a city under the ground the coachman geysers, and how they work a giant puff-ball tickled by a straw the light in the castle the oak tree the sea-side the sick pike two kinds of blossoms about glass carl school's out nest-builders the boomerang list of illustrations _frontispiece._ the woodcutter the minstrel on the wall tricks in a church the dance of demons nostradamus the lion's head the theatrical ghost the toll-bridge a royal procession an elephant after him the dog's protector an elephant nurse saving the artillery-man the gallant elephant the french soldier-boy on a bell fishes found in the mammoth cave the bottomless pit the lion's home the uncaged lion a lion's dinner a terrible companion off to the kitchen blind man's buff the story-teller in the cellar handing round the apples the drummer of 1776 the continental soldier the donkey in the parlor sir marmaduke the giraffe above the clouds the flying man the parachute--shut the parachute--open le flesseles bagnolet's balloon coming down roughly a balloon with sails and rudders the minerva safe ballooning driven out to sea the arabian horse in the cornfield a big mosquito exactly noon the spring the brook the mill the cascade the great river falls of gavarni the falls of zambesi niagara fishing with a net fishing with a spear sponge-fishing a pearl oyster divers rough water the iceberg the storm the shipwreck water-spouts a bit of cable hans, the herb-gatherer patsey a spider at home the ant's arch the cock-chafer's wing the spider's bridge the moth and the bees learned fleas the pacific st. peter's at rome interior of st. peter's the five young deer waking up familiar friends the pigeon the dove the swan the goose that led the goose that followed the sensible duck the goldfinch the magpie the owl morning singers in a well the fraxinella a company of bears the black bear the grizzly bear the white bear the tame bear an old country-house ancient builders the pine forest tree ferns tropical forest the giant trees the great eastern the orang-outang bridget and the fairies flat-fish turbots the sea-horse the cuttle-fish the polypier tunnies the sword-fish the shark the child and the eagle climbing the mountain andrew and jenny wild asses the palanquin the chariot transformation of beetles a battle on stilts drawing the long bow the colosseum the cormorants the bittern the pelican the hoopoe the falcon the mummy the stand the coffin the outside coffin the sarcophagus the tame snake the novel team youngsters fighting throwing the hammer throwing the stone thomas topham venetian acrobats the tight-rope the see-saw the wild boar the musk-ox and the sailor hunting the brown bear a brave hippopotamus a rhinocerus turning the table a tiger-hunt a fight with a gorilla the boot-black's dog going after the cows the reflective stag the mirage fata morgana the spectre of the brocken a narrow street in pompeii a cleared street in pompeii the atrium in the house of pansa ornaments from pompeii a pompeiian bakery the amphitheatre of pompeii the coachman the grand geyser the artificial geyser a giant puff-ball tickled by a straw the will-o'-the-wisp the oak tree the sea-side the vessels on shore the sick pike the blossoms ice-blossoms ice-flowers ancient bead venetian bottle german drinking-glass glass jug making bottles venetian goblet modern goblets the queen's mirror bohemian goblet french flagon the portland vase the strange lady carl and the duke the dominie wrens' nests orioles' nest owl's nests flamingoes' nests the little grebe's nest the ostrich-nest the stork's nest a fish's nest throwing the boomerang the way the boomerang goes preface come along, boys and girls! we are off on our rambles. but please do not ask me where we are going. it would delay us very much if i should postpone our start until i had drawn you a map of the route, with all the stopping-places set down. we have far to go, and a great many things to see, and it may be that some of you will be very tired before we get through. if so, i shall be sorry; but it will be a comfort to think that none of us need go any farther than we choose. there will be considerable variety in our rambles. we shall walk about familiar places, and we shall explore streets and houses that have been buried for centuries. we shall go down deep into the earth, and we shall float in a balloon, high up into the air. we shall see many beasts of the forest; some that are bloody and cruel, and others that are gentle and wise. we will meet with birds, fishes, grand old buildings, fleas, vast woods, bugs, mummies, snakes, tight-rope dancers, gorillas, will-o'-the-wisps, beautiful blossoms, boomerangs, oceans, birds' nests, and i cannot tell you what all besides. we will also have some adventures, hear some stories, and have a peep at a fairy or two before we are done. i shall not, however, be able to go with you everywhere. when you are enjoying a "bird chat;" "buying the mirror;" learning when "we must not believe our eyes;" visiting "a city under the ground;" hearing of "the coachman's" troubles; sitting under "the oak-tree;" finding out wonderful things "about glass;" watching what happens when "school's out;" or following the fortunes of "carl," your guide will be a lady, and i think that you will all agree that she knows very well where she ought to go, and how to get there. the rest of the time you will be with me. and now, having talked enough, suppose we start. winter in the woods [illustration] what can be more delightful, to a boy of spirit, than a day in the woods when there has been a good snow! if he also happens to have a good friend or two, and some good dogs (who are just as likely to be friends as his boy-companions), he ought to be much happier than an ordinary king. a forest is a fine place at any time, but when the ground is well covered with snow--especially if there is a hard crust upon it--the woods seem to possess a peculiar charm. you can go anywhere then. in the summer, the thick undergrowth, the intertwining vines, and the heavy lower branches of the trees, make it difficult even to see into the dark recesses of the forest. but in the winter all is open. the low wet places, the deep holes, the rotten bogs, everything on the ground that is in the way of a good run and a jump, is covered up. you do not walk a hundred yards under the bare branches of the trees before up starts a rabbit, or a hare, if you would rather call him by his right name,--and away go the dogs, and away you go--all of you tearing along at the top of your speed! but poor bunny has a small chance, when a hard snow is on the ground. his hiding-places are all covered up, and before he knows it the dogs have caught him, and your mother will have stewed rabbit for supper. it seems a hard fate for the poor little fellow, but he was born partly for that purpose. when you have caught your rabbit, and come back to where the men are cutting wood, you will be just as proud to tell the boy who is cutting up the branches all about your splendid hunt, as if you had chased and killed a stag. "there's where we started him!" you will cry, "and away he scudded, over there among the chestnuts, and rover right at his heels, and when we got down there to the creek, rover turned heels-over-head on the ice, he was going so fast; but i gave one slide right across, and just up there, by the big walnut, the other two dogs got him!" that boy is almost as much excited as you are, and he would drop his axe in one minute, and be off with you on another chase, if his father were not there. and now you find that you have reached the wood-cutters exactly in time, for that great tree is just about to come down. there go the top-branches, moving slowly along through the tops of the other trees, and now they move faster, and everything begins to crack; and, with a rush and a clatter of breaking limbs, the great oak comes crashing down; jarring the very earth beneath your feet, and making the snow fly about like a sparkling cloud, while away run the dogs, with their tails between their legs. the tree is down now, and you will want to be home in time for dinner. farmer brown's sled has just passed, and if you will cut across the woods you can catch up with him, and have a ride home, and tell him all about the rabbit-hunt, on the way. if it is saturday, and a holiday, you will be out again this afternoon, with some of the other boys, perhaps, and have a grand hunt. suppose it is snowing, what will you care? you will not mind the snow any more than if it were a shower of blossoms from the apple-trees in may. tricks of light. [illustration] there is nothing more straightforward in its ways than light--when we let it alone. but, like many of us, when it is introduced to the inventions and contrivances of the civilized world, it often becomes exceedingly fond of vagaries and extravagances. of all the companions of light which endeavor to induce it to forsake its former simple habits, there is not one which has the influence possessed by glass. when light and glass get together it is difficult to divine what tricks they are going to perform. but some of these are very interesting, if they are a little wild, and there are very few of us who do not enjoy them. [illustration] for instance, what a delight to any company, be it composed of young folks or old, is a magic-lantern! the most beautiful and the most absurd pictures may be made to appear upon the wall or screen. but there is an instrument, called the phantasmagoria, which is really nothing but an improved magic-lantern, which is capable of producing much more striking effects. it is a much larger instrument than the other, and when it is exhibited a screen is placed between it and the spectators, so that they do not see how the pictures are produced. it is mounted on castors, so that at times it can be brought nearer and nearer to the screen, until the picture seems to enlarge and grow in a wonderful manner. then, when it is drawn back, the image diminishes and recedes far into the distance. the lenses and other mechanism of the phantasmagoria can also be moved in various directions, making the action of the pictures still more wonderful. sometimes, when the instrument is exhibited in public, the screen is not used, but the pictures are thrown upon a cloud of smoke, which is itself almost invisible in the dim light of the room. in such a case the figures seem as if they were floating in the air. a man, named robertson, once gave exhibitions in paris, in an old chapel, and at the close of his performances he generally caused a great skeleton figure of death to appear among the pillars and arches. many of the audience were often nearly scared to death by this apparition. the more ignorant people of paris who attended these exhibitions, could not be persuaded, when they saw men, women, and animals walking about in the air between the arches of the chapel, that robertson was not a magician, although he explained to them that the images were nothing but the effect of a lantern and some glass lenses. when these people could see that the figures were produced on a volume of smoke, they were still more astonished and awed, for they thought that the spirits arose from the fire which caused the smoke. but robertson had still other means of exhibiting the tricks of light. opposite is a picture of the "dance of demons." this delusion is very simple indeed, and is produced by placing a card-figure on a screen, and throwing shadows from this upon another screen, by means of several lights, held by assistants. thus each light throws its own shadow, and if the candles are moved up and down, and about, the shadows will dance, jump over each other, and do all sorts of wonderful things. robertson, and other public exhibitors, had quite complicated arrangements of this kind, but they all acted on the same principle. but all of those who exhibit to the public the freaks of light are not as honest as mr. robertson. you may have heard of nostradamus, who also lived in paris, but long before robertson, and who pretended to be a magician. among other things, he asserted that he could show people pictures of their future husbands or wives. marie de medicis, a celebrated princess of the time, came to him on this sensible errand, and he, being very anxious to please her, showed her, in a looking-glass, the reflected image of henry of navarre, sitting upon the throne of france. this, of course, astonished the princess very much, but it need not astonish us, if we carefully examine the picture of that conjuring scene. [illustration] the mirror into which the lady was to look, was in a room adjoining that in which henry was sitting on the throne. it was placed at such an angle that her face would not be reflected in it, but an aperture in the wall allowed the figure of henry to be reflected from a looking-glass, hung near the ceiling, down upon the "magic" mirror. so, of course, she saw his picture there, and believed entirely in the old humbug, nostradamus. [illustration] but there are much simpler methods by which the vagaries of light may be made amusing, and among the best of these are what are called "chinese shadows." these require a little ingenuity, but they are certainly simple enough. they consist of nothing but a card or paper, upon which the lights of the picture intended to be represented are cut out. when this is held between a candle and a wall, a startling shadow-image may be produced, which one would not imagine to have any connection with the card, unless he had studied the manner in which said card was cut. here is a picture of a company amusing themselves with these cards. no one would suppose that the card which the young man is holding in his hand bore the least resemblance to a lion's head, but there is no mistaking the shadow on the wall. [illustration] the most wonderful public exhibitions of optical illusions have been those in which a real ghost or spectre apparently moves across the stage of a theatre. this has frequently been done in late years, both in this country and europe. the audiences were perfectly amazed to see a spirit suddenly appear, walk about the stage, and act like a regular ghost, who did not seem to be in the least disturbed when an actor fired a pistol at him, or ran him through with a sword. the method of producing this illusion is well shown in the accompanying picture. a large plate of glass is placed in front of the stage so that the audience does not perceive it. the edges of it must be concealed by curtains, which are not shown in the picture. an actor, dressed as a ghost, walks in front of the stage below its level, where he is not seen by the audience, and a strong electric light being thrown upon him, his reflected image appears to the spectator as if it were walking about on the stage. when the light is put out of course the spirit instantly vanishes. [illustration] a very amusing account is given of a man who was hired to do some work about a theatre. he had finished his work for the present, and wishing to eat his supper, which he had brought with him, he chose a nice quiet place under the stage, where he thought he would not be disturbed. not knowing that everything was prepared for the appearance of a ghost, he sat down in front of the electric lamp, and as soon as it was lighted the audience was amazed to see, sitting very comfortably in the air above the stage, a man in his shirt-sleeves, eating bread and cheese! little did he think, when he heard the audience roaring with laughter, that they were laughing at his ghost! light plays so many tricks with our eyes and senses that it is possible to narrate but a few of them here. but those that i have mentioned are enough to show us what a wild fellow he is, especially where he and glass get frolicking together. saving the toll. [illustration] when i was a youngster and lived in the country, there were three of us boys who used to go very frequently to a small village about a mile from our homes. to reach this village it was necessary to cross a narrow river, and there was a toll-bridge for that purpose. the toll for every foot-passenger who went over this bridge was one cent. now, this does not seem like a very high charge, but, at that time, we very often thought that we would much rather keep our pennies to spend in the village than to pay them to the old man who took toll on the bridge. but it was often necessary for us to cross the river, and to do so, and save our money at the same time, we used to adopt a very hazardous expedient. at a short distance below the toll-bridge there was a railroad-bridge, which you cannot see in the picture. this bridge was not intended for anything but railroad trains; it was very high above the water, it was very long, and it was not floored. when any one stood on the cross-ties which supported the rails, he could look right down into the water far below him. for the convenience of the railroad-men and others who sometimes were obliged to go on the bridge, there was a single line of boards placed over the ties at one side of the track, and there was a slight hand-rail put up at that side of the bridge. to save our pennies we used to cross this bridge, and every time we did so we risked our lives. we were careful, however, not to go on the bridge at times when a train might be expected to cross it, for when the cars passed us, we had much rather be on solid ground. but one day, when we had forgotten the hour; or a train was behind, or ahead of time; or an extra train was on the road--we were crossing this railroad bridge, and had just about reached the middle of it, when we heard the whistle of a locomotive! looking up quickly, we saw a train, not a quarter of a mile away, which was coming towards us at full speed. we stood paralyzed for a moment. we did not know what to do. in a minute, or less, the train would be on the bridge and we had not, or thought we had not, time to get off of it, whether we went forward or backward. but we could not stand on that narrow path of boards while the train was passing. the cars would almost touch us. what could we do? i believe that if we had had time, we would have climbed down on the trestle-work below the bridge, and so let the train pass over us. but whatever could be done must be done instantly, and we could think of nothing better than to get outside of the railing and hold on as well as we could. in this position we would, at any rate, be far enough from the cars to prevent them from touching us. so out we got, and stood on the ends of the timbers, holding fast to the slender hand-rail. and on came the train! when the locomotive first touched the bridge we could feel the shock, and as it came rattling and grinding over the rails towards us--coming right on to us, as it seemed--our faces turned pale, you may well believe. but the locomotive did not run off the track just at that exact spot where we were standing--a catastrophe which, i believe, in the bottom of our hearts, every one of us feared. it passed on, and the train came thundering after it. how dreadfully close those cars did come to us! how that bridge did shake and tremble in every timber; and how we trembled for fear we should be shaken off into the river so far below us! and what an enormously long train it was! i suppose that it took, really, but a very short time to pass, but it seemed to us as if there was no end to it at all, and as if it would never, never get entirely over that bridge! but it did cross at last, and went rumbling away into the distance. then we three, almost too much frightened to speak to each other, crept under the rail and hurried over the bridge. all that anxiety, that fright, that actual misery of mind, and positive danger of body, to save one cent apiece! but we never saved any more money in that way. when we crossed the river after that, we went over the toll-bridge, and we paid our pennies, like other sensible people. had it been positively necessary for us to have crossed that river, and had there been no other way for us to do it but to go over the railroad bridge, i think we might have been called brave boys, for the bridge was very high above the water, and a timid person would have been very likely to have been frightened when he looked down at his feet, and saw how easy it would be for him to make a misstep and go tumbling down between the timbers. but, as there was no necessity or sufficient reason for our risking our lives in that manner, we were nothing more or less than three little fools! it would be well if all boys or girls, to whom a hazardous feat presents itself, would ask themselves the question: "would it be a brave thing for me to do that, or would i be merely proving myself a simpleton?" the real king of beasts. [illustration: a royal procession.] for many centuries there has been a usurper on the throne of the beasts. that creature is the lion. but those who take an interest in the animal kingdom (and i am very sorry for those who do not) should force the lion to take off the crown, put down the sceptre, and surrender the throne to the real king of beasts--the elephant. there is every reason why this high honor should be accorded to the elephant. in the first place, he is physically superior to the lion. an elephant attacked by a lion could dash his antagonist to the ground with his trunk, run him through with his tusks, and trample him to death under his feet. the claws and teeth of the lion would make no impression of any consequence on the elephant's thick skin and massive muscles. if the elephant was to decide his claim to the throne by dint of fighting for it, the lion would find himself an ex-king in a very short time. but the elephant is too peaceful to assert his right in this way--and, what is more, he does not suppose that any one could even imagine a lion to be his superior. he never had such an idea himself. but besides his strength of body, the elephant is superior in intelligence to all animals, except the dog and man. he is said by naturalists to have a very fine brain, considering that he is only a beast. his instinct seems to rise on some occasions almost to the level of our practical reasoning, and the stories which are told of his smartness are very many indeed. but no one can assert that the lion has any particular intelligence. to be sure, there have been stories told of his generosity, but they are not many, and they are all very old. the elephant proves his pre-eminence as a thinking beast every day. we see him very frequently in menageries, and we can judge of what he is capable. we see the lion also, and we very soon find out what he can do. he can lie still and look grave and majestic; he can jump about in his cage, if he has been trained; and he can eat! he is certainly great in that respect. we all know a great deal about the elephant, how he is caught and tamed, and made the servant and sometimes the friend of man. this, however, seldom happens but in india. in africa they do not often tame elephants, as they hunt them generally for the sake of their ivory, and the poor beasts are killed by hundreds and hundreds so that we may have billiard-balls, knife-handles, and fine-tooth combs. rut whether the elephant is wanted as a beast of burden, or it is only his great tusks that are desired, it is no joke to hunt him. he will not attack a man without provocation (except in very rare cases); when he does get in a passion it is time for the hunter to look out for his precious skin. if the man is armed with a gun, he must take the best of aim, and his bullets must be like young cannon-balls, for the elephant's head is hard and his skin is tough. if the hunter is on a horse, he need not suppose that he can escape by merely putting his steed to its best speed. the elephant is big and awkward-looking, but he gets over the ground in a very rapid manner. here is an illustration of an incident in which a boy found out, in great sorrow and trepidation, how fast an elephant can run. this boy was one of the attendants of the duke of edinburgh, one of queen victoria's sons, who was hunting elephants in africa. the elephants which the party were after on that particular day had got out of the sight of the hunters, and this boy, being mounted on a horse, went to look them up. it was not long before he found them, and he also found much more than he had bargained for. he found that one of the big fellows was very much inclined to hunt _him_ and he came riding out of the forest as hard as he could go, with a great elephant full tilt after him. fortunately for the boy, the duke was ready with his gun, and when the elephant came dashing up he put two balls into his head. the great beast dropped mortally wounded, and the boy was saved. i don't believe that he was so curious about the whereabouts of elephants after that. [illustration] when the elephant is desired as a servant, he is captured in various ways. sometimes he is driven into great pens; sometimes he tumbles into pitfalls, and sometimes tame elephants coax him into traps, and fondle and amuse him while their masters tie up his legs with strong ropes. the pitfalls are not favorite methods of capturing elephants. besides the injury that may be done to the animal, other beasts may fall into and disturb the trap, and even men may find themselves at the bottom of a great deep hole when they least expect it, for the top is very carefully covered over with sticks and leaves, so as to look as much as possible like the surrounding ground. du chaillu, who was a great hunter in africa, once fell down one of these pits, and it was a long time before he could make anybody hear him and come and help him out. if an elephant had happened to put his foot on the covering of that hole while du chaillu was down there, the hunter would have found himself very much crowded. when the elephant is caught, he is soon tamed and trained, and then he goes to work to make himself useful, if there is anything for him to do. and it is when he becomes the servant and companion of man that we have an opportunity of seeing what a smart fellow he is. it is sometimes hard to believe all that we hear of the elephant's cleverness and sagacity, but we know that most of the stories we hear about him are true. for instance, an elephant which was on exhibition in this country had a fast and true friend, a little dog. one day, when these animals were temporarily residing in a barn, while on their march from one town to another, the elephant heard some men teasing the dog, just outside of the barn. the rough fellows made the poor little dog howl and yelp, as they persecuted him by all sorts of mean tricks and ill usage. when the elephant heard the cries of his friend he became very much worried, and when at last he comprehended that the dog was being badly treated, he lifted up his trunk and just smashed a great hole in the side of the barn, making the stones and boards fly before him. [illustration] when the men saw this great head sticking out through the side of the barn, and that great long trunk brandishing itself above their heads, they thought it was time to leave that little dog alone. here, again, is an elephant story which is almost as tough as the animal's hide, but we have no right to disbelieve it, for it is told by very respectable writers. during the war between the east indian natives and the english, in 1858, there was an elephant named kudabar moll the second,--his mother having been a noted elephant named kudabar moll. this animal belonged to the british army, and his duty was to carry a cannon on his back. in this way he became very familiar with artillery. during a battle, when his cannon was posted on a battery, and was blazing away at the enemy, the good kudabar was standing, according to custom, a few paces in the rear of the gunners. but the fire became very hot on that battery, and very soon most of the gunners were shot down, so that there was no one to pass the cartridges from the ammunition wagon to the artillery-men. perceiving this, kudabar, without being ordered, took the cartridges from the wagon, and passed them, one by one, to the gunner. very soon, however, there were only three men left, and these, just as they had loaded their cannon for another volley, fell killed or wounded, almost at the same moment. one of them, who held a lighted match in his hand, called as he fell to the elephant and handed him the match. the intelligent kudabar took the match in his trunk, stepped up to the cannon, and fired it off! he was then about to apply the match to others, when re-enforcements came up, and his services as an artillery-man were no longer required. i cannot help thinking, that if that elephant had been furnished with a pen and ink, he might possibly have written a very good account of the battle. but few stories are quite as wonderful as that one. we have no difficulty at all in believing the account of the elephant who took care of a little child. he did not wear a cap and apron, as the artist has shown in the picture, but he certainly was a very kind and attentive nurse. when the child fell down, the elephant would put his trunk gently around it, and pick it up. when it got tangled among thorns or vines, the great nurse would disengage it as carefully as any one could have done it; and when it wandered too far, the elephant would bring it back and make it play within proper limits. i do not know what would have been the consequence if this child had behaved badly, and the elephant had thought fit to give it a box on the ear. but nothing of the kind ever happened, and the child was a great deal safer than it would have been with many ordinary nurses. [illustration] there are so many stories told about the elephant that i can allude to but few, even if i did not believe that you were familiar with a great many of them. one of the most humane and thoughtful elephants of whom i have ever heard was one which was attached, like our friend kudabar, to an artillery train in india. he was walking, on a march, behind a wagon, when he perceived a soldier slip down in the road and fall exactly where, in another instant, the hind-wheel of the wagon would pass over him. without being ordered, the elephant seized the wheel with his trunk, lifted it--wagon and all--in the air, and held it up until it had passed over the fallen soldier! neither you nor i could have done better than that, even if we had been strong enough. [illustration] a very pretty story is told of an indian elephant who was very gallant. his master, a young burman lord, had recently been married, and, shortly after the wedding, he and his bride, with many of their guests and followers, were gathered together in the veranda, on the outside of his house. the elephant, who was a great favorite with the young lord, happened to be conducted past the house as the company were thus enjoying themselves. feeling, no doubt, that it was right to be as polite as possible on this occasion, he put his trunk over a bamboo-fence which enclosed a garden, and selecting the biggest and brightest flower he could see, he approached the veranda, and rearing himself upon his hind-legs, he stretched out his trunk, with the flower held delicately in the little finger at its end, towards the company. one of the women reached out her hand for it, but the elephant would not give it to her. then his master wished to take it, but the elephant would not let him have it. but when the newly-made bride came forward the elephant presented it to her with all the grace of which he was capable! [illustration] now, do you not think that an animal which is larger and more powerful than any beast which walks the earth, and is, at the same time, gentle enough to nurse a child, humane enough to protect a dog or a man, and sensible enough to be polite to a newly-married lady, is deserving of the title of the king of beasts? the french soldier-boy [illustration] anxiously the general-in-chief of the french army stood upon a little mound overlooking the battle-field. the cannon were thundering, the musketry was rattling, and clouds of smoke obscured the field and the contending armies. "ah!" thought he, "if that town over yonder is not taken; if my brave captains fall, and my brave soldiers falter at that stone wall; and if our flag shall not soon wave over those ramparts, france may yet be humbled." is it, then, a wonder, feeling that so much depended on the result of this battle, that his eyes strove so earnestly to pierce the heavy clouds of smoke that overhung the scene? but while he stood, there came towards him, galloping madly out of the battle, a solitary rider. in a few minutes he had reached the general, and thrown himself from his saddle. it was a mere boy--one of the very youngest of soldiers! "sire!" he cried, "we've taken the town! our men are in the market-place, and you can ride there now! and see!--upon the walls--our flag!" the eyes of the general flashed with joy and triumph. here was glorious news! as he turned to the boy to thank him for the more than welcome tidings that he brought, he noticed that the lad was pale and trembling, and that as he stood holding by the mane of his horse, his left hand was pressed upon his chest, and the blood was slowly trickling between his fingers. "my boy!" said he, tenderly, as he fixed his eyes upon the stripling, "you're wounded!" "no, sire!" cried the boy, his pale face flushing as his general thus addressed him, and the shouts of victory filled his ears, "i am not wounded; i am killed!" and down at his general's feet he fell and died. there have been brave men upon the battle-field ever since the world began, but there never was a truer soldier's heart than that which kept this boy alive until he had borne to his general the glorious news of the battle won. a lively way to ring a bell. [illustration] here are two young men who look very much as if they were trying to break their necks; but in reality they have no such desire. they are simply ringing that great bell, and riding backward and forward on it as it swings through the air. these young fellows are spaniards, and in many churches in their country it is considered a fine thing to go up into the belfry of a church or cathedral, and, when the regular bell-ringers are tired, to jump on the great bells and swing away as hard as they can make them go. no matter about any particular peal or style of ringing. the faster and the more furiously they swing, the jollier the ride, and the greater the racket. sometimes in a cathedral there are twenty bells, all going at once, with a couple of mad chaps riding on each one of them. it is, doubtless, a very pleasant amusement, after one gets used to it, but it is a wonder that some of those young men are not shot off into the air, when the great bell gets to swinging as fast and as far as it can go. but although they hold on as tightly as if they were riding a wild young colt, they are simply foolhardy. no man or boy has a right to risk his life and limbs in such reckless feats. there is no probability, however, of the sport ever being introduced into this country. even if there were no danger in it, such a clatter and banging as is heard in a spanish belfry, when the young men are swinging on the bells, would never be allowed in our churches. the spaniards may like such a noise and hubbub, but they like a great many things which would not suit us. down in the earth. [illustration] let us take a little trip down under the surface of the earth. there will be something unusual about such an excursion. of course, as we are not going to dig our way, we will have to find a convenient hole somewhere, and the best hole for the purpose which i know of is in edmondson county, kentucky. so let us go there. when we reach this hole we find that it is not a very large one, but still quite high and wide enough for us to enter. but, before we go in to that dark place, we will get some one to carry a light and guide us; for this underground country which we are going to explore is very extensive, very dark, and, in some places, very dangerous. here is a black man who will go with us. he has a lantern, and he says he knows every nook and corner of the place. so we engage him, get some lanterns for ourselves, and in we go. we commence to go downwards very soon after we have passed from the outer air and sunshine, but it is not long before we stand upon a level surface, where we can see nothing of the outside world. if our lanterns went out, we should be in pitchy darkness. now we are in the mammoth cave of kentucky! this vast cavern, which stretches so many miles beneath the surface of the earth, has never been fully explored; but we are going over as much of it as our guide is accustomed to show to visitors, and if our legs are not tired before we get back i shall be very much surprised, for the trip will take us all day. the floor on which we are now standing is smooth and level, and runs back into the interior of the cave fully a thousand yards. this place they call the "audubon gallery"--after our famous naturalist who made birds the study of his life. his works are published in enormous volumes, costing about one hundred and fifty dollars apiece. perhaps your father will get you one. we pass quickly through this gallery, where there is not much to see, although, to be sure, they used to manufacture saltpetre here. think of that! a manufactory in the bowels of the earth! then we enter a large, roundish room called the "rotunda," and from this there are a great many passages, leading off in various directions. one of these, which is called the "grand vestibule," will take us to the "church." yes, we have a church here, and, what is more, there has been preaching in it, although i have never heard that it had any regular members. this room has a vast arched roof, and a great many stalactites hang from the walls and roof in such a way as to give one an idea of gothic architecture. therefore this has been called the "gothic church." you can see a great deal which looks like old-fashioned church ornaments and furniture, and, as the light of the lanterns flashes about on the walls and ceiling, you can imagine a great deal more. after this we come to the "gothic avenue," which would be a very interesting place to us if we but had a little more time; but we hurry through it, for the next room we are to visit is called the "haunted chamber!" every one of us must be very anxious to see anything of that kind. when we get into it, however, we are very much disappointed. it is not half so gloomy and dark as the rest of the cave, for here we are pretty sure to find people, and lights, and signs of life. here you may sometimes buy gingerbread and bottled beer, from women who have stands here for that purpose. it is expected that when visitors get this far they will be hungry. sometimes, too, there are persons who live down here, and spend most of their time in this chamber. these are invalid people with weak lungs, who think that the air of the cave is good for them. i do not know whether they are right or not, but i am sure that they take very gloomy medicine. the only reason for calling this room the haunted chamber is, that the first explorers of the cave found mummies here. who these were when they were alive, no man can say. if they were indians, they were very different indians from those who have lived in this country since its discovery. they do not make mummies. but all over our land we find evidences that some race--now extinct--lived here before the present north american indian. whether the ghosts of any of these mummies walk about in this room. i cannot say; but as no one ever saw any, or heard any, or knew anybody who had seen or heard any, i think it is doubtful. when we leave this room we go down some ladders and over a bridge, and then we enter what is called the "labyrinth," where the passage turns and twists on itself in a very abrupt manner, and where the roof is so low that all of us, except those who are very short indeed, must stoop very low. when we get through this passage, which some folks call the "path of humiliation"--for everybody has to bow down, you know--we come to a spot where the guide says he is going to show us something through a window. the window is nothing but a hole broken in a rocky wall; but as we look through it, and hold the lanterns so that we can see as much as possible, we perceive that we are gazing down into a deep and enormous well. they call it the "bottomless pit." if we drop bits of burning paper into this well we can see them fall down, down, and down, until they go out, but can never see them stop, as if they had reached the bottom. the hole through which we are looking is cut through one side of this well, so that there is a great deal of it above us as well as below; but although we hold our lanterns up, hoping to see the top, we can see nothing but pitchy darkness up there. the roof of this pit is too high for the light to strike upon it. here is a picture of some persons dropping lights down into this pit, hoping to be able to see the bottom. we must climb up and down some more ladders now, and then we will reach the "mammoth dome." this is a vast room--big enough for a gymnasium for giants--and the roof is so high that no ordinary light will show it. it is nearly four hundred feet from the floor. the next room we visit is one of the most beautiful places in the whole cave. it is called the starry chamber. the roof and walls and floor are covered with little bright bits of stone, which shine and glitter, when a light is brought into the room, like real stars in the sky. if the guide is used to his business, he can here produce most beautiful effects. by concealing his lantern behind a rock or pillar, and then gradually bringing it out, throwing more and more light upon the roof, he can create a most lovely star-light scene. [illustration] at first all will be dark, and then a few stars will twinkle out, and then there will be more of them, and each one will be brighter, and at last you will think you are looking up into a dark sky full of glorious shining stars! and if you look at the walls you will see thousands of stars that seem as if they were dropping from the sky; and if you cast your eyes upon the ground, you will see it covered with other thousands of stars that seem to have already fallen! this is a lovely place, but we cannot stay here any longer. we want to reach the underground stream of which we have heard so much--the "river styx." this is a regular river, running through a great part of the mammoth cave. you may float on it in a boat, and, if you choose, you may fish in it, although you would not be likely to catch anything. but if you did, the fish would have no eyes! all the fish in this river are blind. you can easily perceive that eyes would be of no use in a place where it is always as dark as pitch, except when travellers come along with their lanterns. there is a rough boat here, and we will get into it and have a row over this dark and gloomy river. whenever our guide shouts we hear the wildest kind of echoes, and everything seems solemn and unearthly. at one time our boat stops for a moment, and the guide goes on shore, and directly we hear the most awful crash imaginable. it sounds as if a dozen gong-factories had blown up at once, and we nearly jump out of the boat! but we soon see that it was nothing but the guide striking on a piece of sheet-iron or tin. the echoes, one after another, from this noise had produced the horrible crashing sounds we had heard. after sailing along for about half an hour we land, and soon reach an avenue which has its walls ornamented with beautiful flowers--all formed on the rocky walls by the hand of nature. now we visit the "ball room," which is large and handsome, with its walls as white as snow. leaving this, we take a difficult and exciting journey to the "rocky mountains." we go down steep paths, which are narrow, and up steep ones, which are wide; we jump over wide cracks and step over great stones, and we are getting very tired of scrambling about in the bowels of the earth; but the guide tells us that if we will but cross the "mountains"--which we find to be nothing more than great rocks, which have fallen from the roof above, but which, however, are not very easy to get over--we shall rest in the "fairy grotto." so on we push, and reach the delightful abode of the fairies of the mammoth cave. that is, if there were any fairies in this cave, they would live here. and a splendid place they would have! great colonnades and magnificent arches, all ornamented with beautiful stalactites of various forms, and glittering like cut-glass in the light of our lanterns, and thousands of different ornaments of sparkling stone, many of them appearing as if they were cut by the hand of skilful artists, adorn this beautiful grotto. at one end there is a group of stalactites, which looks to us exactly like a graceful palm-tree cut out of alabaster. all over the vast hall we can hear the pattering and tinkling of the water, which has been dripping, drop by drop, for centuries, and making, as it carried with it little particles of earth and rock, all these beautiful forms which we see. we have now walked nearly five miles into the great cave, and there is much which we have not seen. but we must go back to the upper earth. we will have a tiresome trip of it, but it is seldom that we can get anything good without taking a little trouble for it. and to have seen this greatest of all natural caverns is worth far more labor and fatigue than we have expended on its exploration. there is nothing like it in the known world. the lion. [illustration: the lion's home.] i do not desire to be wanting in respect to the lion. because i asserted that it was my opinion that he should resign the throne of the king of beasts to the elephant, i do not wish to deprive him of any part of his just reputation. the lion, with the exception of any animal but the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and such big fellows, is the strongest of beasts. compared to tigers and panthers, he is somewhat generous, and compared to most of the flesh-eating animals, he is quite intelligent. lions have been taught to perform certain feats when in a state of captivity; but, as all of us know who have seen the performing animals in a menagerie, he is by no means the equal of a dog or an elephant. the lion appears to the greatest advantage in the midst of his family. when he and his wife are taking their walks abroad they will often fly before a man, especially if he is a white man. but at home, surrounded by their little ones, the case is different. those cubs, in the picture of the lion's home, are nice little fellows, and you might play with them without fear of more than a few scratches. but where is the brave man who would dare to go down among those rocks, armed with guns, pistols, or whatever he pleased, and take one of them! i do not think he lives in your town. we never see a lion looking very brave or noble in a cage. most of those that i have seen appeared to me to be excessively lazy. they had not half the spirit of the tigers and wolves. but, out in his native country, he presents a much more imposing spectacle, especially if one can get a full view of him when he is a little excited. here is a picture of such a lion as you will not see in a cage. [illustration] considering his size, the strength of the lion is astonishing. he will kill an ox with one blow of his great paw, if he strikes it on the back, and then seizing it in his great jaws, he will carry it off almost as easily as you could carry a baby. and when he has carried his prey to the spot where he chooses to have his dinner, he shows that no beast can surpass him in the meat-eating line. when he has satisfied his hunger on an ox, there is not much left for those who come to the second table. and there are often other lions, younger and weaker than the one who has provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. but, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. they roar and growl and grumble until their turn comes. [illustration] lions have some very peculiar characteristics. when they have made a bound upon their prey and have missed it, they seldom chase the frightened animal. they are accustomed to make one spring on a deer or an ox, and to settle the matter there and then. so, after a failure to do this, they go to the place from which they have made the spring and practise the jump over and over until they feel that they can make it the next time they have a chance. this is by no means a bad idea for a lion--or a man either. another of their peculiarities is their fear of traps and snares. very often they will not spring upon an ox or a horse, simply because it is tied to a tree. they think there is some trick when they see the animal is fastened by a rope. and when they come upon a man who is asleep, they will very often let him lie undisturbed. they are not accustomed to seeing men lying about in their haunts, and they don't know what to make of it. sometimes they take it in their heads to lie down there themselves. then it becomes disagreeable for the man when he awakes. [illustration] a story of this kind is told of an african who had been hunting, and who, being tired, had lain down to sleep. when he awoke there lay a great lion at a short distance from him! for a minute or two the man remained motionless with fright, and then he put forth his hand to take his gun, which was on the ground a few feet from him. but when the lion saw him move he raised his head and roared. the man was quiet in a second. after a while it began to be terribly hot, and the rocks on which the poor man was lying became so heated by the sun that they burned his feet. but whenever he moved the old lion raised his head and growled. the african lay there for a very long time, and the lion kept watch over him. i expect that lion had had a good meal just before he saw this man, and he was simply saving him up until he got hungry again. but, fortunately, after the hunter had suffered awfully from the heat of the burning sun, and had also lain there all night, with this dreadful beast keeping watch over him, the lion became thirsty before he got hungry, and when he went off to a spring to get a drink the african crawled away. if that lion had been a tiger, i think he would have killed the man, whether he wished to eat him or not. so there is something for the lion's reputation. bob's hiding-place. [illustration] bob was not a very big boy, but he was a lively little fellow and full of fun. you can see him there in the picture, riding on his brother jim's back. one evening there happened to be a great many boys and girls at bob's father's house. the grown-up folks were having a family party, and as they were going to stay all night--you see this was in the country--some of them brought their children with them. [illustration] it was not long after supper that a game of blind-man's-buff was proposed, and, as it would not do to have such an uproar in the sitting-room as the game would produce, the children were all packed off to the kitchen. there they have a glorious time. jim is the first one blindfolded, and, as he gropes after the others, they go stumbling up against tables, and rattling down tin-pans, and upsetting each other in every direction. old grandfather, who has been smoking his pipe by the kitchen fire, takes as much pleasure in the game as the young folks, and when they tumble over his legs, or come banging up against his chair, he only laughs, and warns them not to hurt themselves. i could not tell you how often grandfather was caught, and how they all laughed at the blind-man when he found out whom he had seized. but after a while the children became tired of playing blind-man's-buff, and a game of hide-and-seek was proposed. everybody was in favor of that, especially little bob. it appears that bob had not a very good time in the other game. everybody seemed to run up against him and push him about, and whenever he was caught the blind-man said "bob!" immediately. you see there was no mistaking bob; he was so little. but in hide-and-seek he would have a better chance. he had always liked that game ever since he had known how to play anything. he was a good little fellow for hiding, and he knew it. when the game had begun, and all the children--except the biggest girl, who was standing in a corner, with her hands before her face, counting as fast as she could, and hoping that she would come to one hundred before everybody had hidden themselves--had scampered off to various hiding-places, bob still stood in the middle of the kitchen-floor, wondering where in the world he should go to! all of a sudden--the girl in the corner had already reached sixty-four--he thought he would go down in the cellar. there was no rule against that--at least none that he knew of--and so, slipping softly to the cellar-door, over in the darkest corner of the kitchen, he opened it, and went softly down the steps. there was a little light on the steps, for bob did not shut the door quite tightly after him, and if there had been none at all, he would have been quite as well pleased. he was not afraid of the dark, and all that now filled his mind was the thought of getting somewhere where no one could possibly find him. so he groped his way under the steps, and there he squatted down in the darkness, behind two barrels which stood in a corner. "now," thought bob, "she won't find me--easy." he waited there a good while, and the longer he waited the prouder he became. "i'll bet mine's the hardest place of all," he said to himself. [illustration] bob heard a great deal of noise and shouting after the big girl came out from her corner and began finding the others, and he also heard a bang above his head, but he did not know that it was some one shutting the cellar-door. after that all was quiet. bob listened, but could not hear a step. he had not the slightest idea, of course, that they had stopped playing and were telling stories by the kitchen fire. the big girl had found them all so easily that hide-and-seek had been voted down. bob had his own ideas in regard to this silence. "i know," he whispered to himself, "they're all found, and they're after me, and keeping quiet to hear me breathe!" and, to prevent their finding his hiding-place by the sound of his breathing, bob held his breath until he was red in the face. he had heard often enough of that trick of keeping quiet and listening to breathing. you couldn't catch him that way! when he was at last obliged to take a breath, you might have supposed he would have swallowed half the air in the cellar. he thought he had never tasted anything so good as that long draught of fresh air. "can't hold my breath all the time!" bob thought. "if i could, maybe they'd never find me at all," which reflection was much nearer the truth than the little fellow imagined. i don't know how long bob had been sitting under the steps--it may have been five minutes, or it may have been a quarter of an hour, and he was beginning to feel a little cold--when he heard the cellar-door open, and some one put their foot upon the steps. "there they are!" he thought, and he cuddled himself up in the smallest space possible. some one was coming down, sure enough, but it was not the children, as bob expected. it was his aunt alice and her cousin tom green. they had come down to get some cider and apples for the company, and had no thought of bob. in fact, when bob was missed it was supposed that he had got tired and had gone up-stairs, where old aunt hannah was putting some of the smaller children to bed. so, of course, alice and tom green did not try to find him, but bob, who could not see them, thought it was certainly some of the children come down to look for him. in this picture of the scene in the cellar, little bob is behind those two barrels in the right-hand upper corner, but of course you can't see him. he knows how to hide too well for that. [illustration] but when tom and alice spoke, bob knew their voices and peeped out. "oh!" he thought, "it's only aunt alice and he. they've come down for cider and things. i've got to hide safe now, or they'll tell when they go up-stairs." "i didn't know _all_ them barrels had apples in! i thought some were potatoes. i wish they would just go up-stairs again and leave that candle on the floor! i wonder if they will forget it! if they do, i'll just eat a whole hat-full of those big red apples, and some of the streakedy ones in the other barrel too; and then i'll put my mouth to the spigot of that cider-barrel, and turn it, and drink and drink and drink--and if there isn't enough left in that barrel, i'll go to another one and turn that. i never did have enough cider in all my life. i wish they'd hurry and go up. "kissin'! what's the good of kissin'! a cellar ain't no place for that. i expect they won't remember to forget the candle if they don't look out! "oh, pshaw! just look at 'em! they're a-going up again, and taking the candle along! the mean things!" poor little bob! there he sat in his corner, all alone again in the darkness and silence, for tom and alice had shut the cellar-door after them when they had gone up-stairs. he sat quietly for a minute or two, and then he said to himself: "i b'lieve i'd just as lieve they'd find me as not." and to help them a little in their search he began to kick very gently against one of the barrels. poor bob! if you were to kick with all your force and even upset the barrel they would not hear you. and what is more, they are not even thinking of you, for the apples are now being distributed. "i wonder," said the little fellow to himself, "if i could find that red-apple barrel in the dark. but then i couldn't tell the red ones from the streakedy ones. but either of 'em would do. i guess i won't try, though, for i might put my hand on a rat. they run about when it's dark. i hope they won't come in this corner. but there's nothin' for 'em to eat in this corner but me, and they ain't lions. i wonder if they'll come down after more cider when that's all drunk up. if they do, i guess i'll come out and let aunt alice tell them all where i am. i don't like playin' this game when it's too long." [illustration] and so he sat and waited and listened, and his eye-lids began to grow heavy and his head began to nod, and directly little bob was fast asleep in the dark corner behind the barrels. by ten o'clock the children were all put to bed, and soon after the old folks went up-stairs, leaving only tom green, alice, and some of the young men and women down in the big sitting-room. bob's mother went up into the room where several of the children were sleeping, and after looking around, she said to the old colored nurse: "hannah, what have you done with bob?" "i didn't put him to bed, mum. i spect miss alice has took him to her bed. she knowed how crowded the chil'un all was, up here." "but alice has not gone to bed," said bob's mother. "don't spect she has, mum," said hannah. "but i reckon she put him in her bed till she come." "i'll go and see," said bob's mother. she went, and she saw, but she didn't see bob! and he wasn't in the next room, or in any bed in the house, or under any bed, or anywhere at all, as far as she could see; and so, pretty soon, there was a nice hubbub in that house! bob's mother and father, and his grandfather, and hannah, and the young folks in the parlor, and nearly all the rest of the visitors, ransacked the house from top to bottom. then they looked out of doors, and some of them went around the yard, where they could see very plainly, as it was bright moonlight. but though they searched and called, there was no bob. the house-doors being open, snag the dog came in, and he joined in the search, you may be sure, although i do not know that he exactly understood what they were looking for. some one now opened the cellar-door, but it seemed preposterous to look down in the cellar for the little fellow. but nothing was preposterous to snag. the moment the cellar-door was opened he shuffled down the steps as fast as he could go. he knew there was somebody down there. and when those who followed him with a candle reached the cellar-floor, there was snag, with his head between the barrels, wagging his tail as if he was trying to jerk it off, and whining with joy as he tried to stick his cold nose into the rosy face of little sleeping bob. it was tom green who carried bob up-stairs, and very soon indeed, all the folks were gathered in the kitchen, and bob sleepily told his story. "but tom and i were down in the cellar," said his aunt alice, "and we didn't see you." "i guess you didn't," said bob, rubbing his eyes. "i was a-hidin' and you was a-kissin'." what a shout of laughter arose in the kitchen at this speech! everybody laughed so much that bob got wide awake and wanted some apples and cake. the little fellow certainly made a sensation that night; but it was afterwards noticed that he ceased to care much for the game of hide-and-seek. he played it too well, you see. the continental soldier. [illustration] did you ever see a continental soldier? i doubt it. some twenty years ago there used to be a few of them scattered here and there over the country, but they must be nearly all gone now. about a year ago there were but two of them left. those whom some of us can remember were rather mournful old gentlemen. they shuffled about their dwelling-places, they smoked their pipes, and they were nearly always ready to talk about the glorious old days of the revolution. it was well they had those days to fall back upon, for they had but little share in the glories of the present. when they looked abroad upon the country that their arms, and blood perhaps, had helped give to that vigorous young america which now swells with prosperity from alaska to florida, they could see very little of it which they could call their own. it was difficult to look upon those feeble old men and imagine that they were once full of vigor and fire; that they held their old flintlocks with arms of iron when the british cavalry rushed upon their bayonets; that their keen eyes flashed a deadly aim along their rusty rifle-barrels; that, with their good swords quivering in their sinewy hands, they urged their horses boldly over the battle-field, shouting brave words to their advancing men; and that they laughed at heat and cold, patiently endured hunger and privation, strode along bravely on the longest marches, and, at last, stood proudly by when cornwallis gave up his sword. those old gentlemen did not look like anything of that sort. their old arms could hardly manage their old canes; their old legs could just about carry them on a march around the garden, and they were very particular indeed about heat and cold. but history and art will better keep alive the memory of their good deeds, and call more vigorously upon the gratitude of their countrymen, than those old continentallers could themselves have done it, had they lived on for years and years, and told generation after generation how once they galloped proudly along the ranks, or, in humbler station, beat with vigorous arm the stirring drum-roll that called their comrades to the battle-field. [illustration] a judge of music. [illustration] it is not well to despise anybody or anything until you know what they can do. i have known some very stupid-looking people who could do a sum in the rule-of-three in a minute, and who could add up a column of six figures abreast while i was just making a beginning at the right-hand bottom corner. but stupid-looking beings are often good at other things besides arithmetic. i have seen doctors, with very dull faces, who knew all about castor-oil and mustard-plasters, and above you see a picture of a donkey who understood music. this animal had a very fine ear for music. you can see how much ear he had, and i have no doubt that he enjoyed the sweet sounds from one end to the other of those beautiful long flaps. well, he very often had an opportunity of enjoying himself, for the lady of the house was a fine musician, and she used to sing and play upon the piano nearly every day. and as soon as he heard the sweet sounds which thrilled his soul, the donkey would come to the parlor window and listen. one day the lady played and sang something which was particularly sweet and touching. i never heard the name of the song--whether it was "i'm sitting on the stile, mary," or "a watcher, pale and weary"--but if it was the latter, i am not surprised that it should have overcome even a jackass. at any rate, the music so moved the soul of mr. donkey that he could no longer restrain himself, but entering the open door he stepped into the parlor, approached the lady, and with a voice faltering from the excess of his emotion, he joined in the chorus! the lady jumped backwards and gave a dreadful scream, and the donkey, thinking that the music went up very high in that part, commenced to bray at such a pitch that you could have heard him if you had been up in a balloon. that was a lively concert; but it was soon ended by the lady rushing from the room and sending her man john to drive out the musical jackass with a big stick. fortunately, all donkeys have not this taste for music. the nearest that the majority of jackasses come to being votaries of music is when their skins are used for covering cases for musical instruments. and if they have any ambition in the cause of harmony, that is better than nothing. the sensitive plant. there was never a better name for a plant than this, for the delicate leaves which grow on this slender stalk are almost as sensitive to the touch as if they were alive. if you place your hand on a growing plant, you will soon see all the leaves on the stem that you have touched fold themselves up as tightly as if they had been packed up carefully to be sent away by mail or express. in some of the common kinds of this plant, which grow about in our fields, it takes some time for the leaves to fold after they have been touched or handled; but if you watch them long enough--five or ten minutes--you will see that they never fail to close. they are not so sensitive as their cultivated kindred, but they still have the family disposition. now this is certainly a wonderful property for a plant to possess, but it is not half so strange as another trait of these same pretty green leaves. they will shut up when it is dark, and open when it is light. it may be said that many other plants will do this, but that is a mistake. many flowers and leaves close at _night_ and open in the _day-time_, but very few indeed exhibit the peculiar action of the sensitive plant in this respect. that plant will open at night if you bring a bright light into the room where it is growing, and it will close its leaves if the room is made dark in the day-time. other plants take note of times and seasons. the sensitive plant obeys no regular rules of this kind, but acts according to circumstances. when i was a boy, i often used to go to a green-house where there were a great many beautiful and rare plants; but i always thought that the sensitive plant was the most wonderful thing in the whole collection, and i did not know then how susceptible it was to the influence of light. i was interested in it simply because it seemed to have a sort of vegetable reason, and understood that it should shut up its leaves whenever i touched it. [illustration: the sensitive plant.] but there were things around me in the vegetable kingdom which were still more wonderful than that, and i took no notice of them at all. in the garden and around the house, growing everywhere, in the most common and ordinary places, were vines of various kinds--i think there were more morning-glories than anything else--and these exhibited a great deal more sense, and a much nearer approach to reasoning powers, than the sensitive plants, which were so carefully kept in the green-house. when one of these vines came up out of the earth, fresh from its seed, the first thing it wanted, after its tendrils began to show themselves, was something to climb up upon. it would like a good high pole. now, if there was such a pole within a few feet of the little vine it would grow straight towards it, and climb up it! it would not grow first in one direction, and then in another and then in another, until it ran against something to climb on, but it would go right straight towards the pole, as if it saw it, and knew it was a good one for its purpose. i think that there is not much in the vegetable kingdom more wonderful than that. sir marmaduke. [illustration] sir marmaduke was a good old english gentleman, all of the olden time. there you see him, in his old-fashioned dining-room, with his old-fashioned wife holding her old-fashioned distaff, while he is surrounded by his old-fashioned arms, pets, and furniture. on his hand he holds his hawk, and his dogs are enjoying the great wood fire. his saddle is thrown on the floor; his hat and his pipes lie near it; his sword and his cross-bows are stood up, or thrown down, anywhere at all, and standing by his great chair is something which looks like a coal-scuttle, but which is only a helmet. sir marmaduke was certainly a fine old gentleman. in times of peace he lived happily with his family, and was kind and generous to the poor around him. in times of war he fought bravely for his country. but what a different old gentleman would he have been had he lived in our day! then, instead of saying "rebeck me!" and "ods boddikins!" when his hawk bit his finger or something else put him out of humor, he would have exclaimed, "oh, pshaw!" or, "botheration!" instead of playing with a hawk, he would have had a black-and-tan terrier,--if he had any pet at all; and his wife would not have been bothering herself with a distaff, when linen, already spun and woven, could be bought for fifty cents a yard. had she lived now, the good lady would have been mending stockings or crocheting a tidy. instead of a pitcher of ale on his supper-table, the good knight would have had some tea or coffee; and instead of a chine of beef, a mess of pottage, and a great loaf of brown bread for his evening meal, he would have had some white bread, cakes, preserves, and other trifles of that sort, which in the olden days were considered only fit for children and women. the good old english gentlemen were tremendous eaters. they used to take five meals a day, and each one of them was heavy and substantial. if sir marmaduke had any sons or daughters, he would have treated them very differently in the present day. instead of keeping them at home, under the tuition of some young clergyman or ancient scholar, until they should be old enough and accomplished enough to become pages to a great lord, or companions to some great lady, he would have sent them to school, and the boys--the younger ones, at least--would have been prepared for some occupation which would support them, while the girls would have been taught to play on the piano and to work slippers. in these days, instead of that old helmet on the floor, you would have seen a high-top hat--that is, if the old gentleman should continue to be as careless as the picture shows him; instead of a cross-bow on the floor, and another leaning against the chair, you would have seen a double-barrelled gun and a powder-horn; and instead of the picturesque and becoming clothes in which you see sir marmaduke, he would have worn some sort of a tight-fitting and ugly suit, such as old gentlemen now-a-days generally wear. there were a great many advantages in the old style of living, and also a very great many disadvantages. on the whole, we should be very thankful indeed that we were born in this century, and not in the good old times of yore. a little boy once made a very wise remark on this subject. he said: "i wish i could have seen george washington and israel putnam; but i'm glad i didn't, for if i'd been alive then, i should have been dead now." there is enough in that boy's remark for a whole composition, if any one chose to write it. the giraffe. [illustration] some one once called the giraffe a "two-story animal," and the remark was not altogether inapplicable. as you see him in the picture, lying down, he seems to be high enough for all ordinary purposes; but when he stands up, you will see that his legs--or his lower story--will elevate him to a surprising height. the ordinary giraffe measures about fifteen feet from the top of his head to the ground, but some of them have been known to be over sixteen feet high. most of this height is owing to their long necks, but their fore-legs are also very long. the hind-legs seem much shorter, although, in reality, they are as long as the fore-legs. the legs and neck of the giraffe are made long so that he can eat the leaves from the tops of young trees. this tender foliage is his favorite diet; but he will eat the foliage from any part of a tree, and he is content with the herbage on the ground, when there is nothing else. he is not a fighting animal. those little horns which you see on his head, and which look as if they had been broken off--although they are really their full size--are of no use as offensive weapons. when danger threatens him he runs away, and a funny sight he is then. he can run very fast, but he is very awkward; he goes like a cow on stilts. but when there is no chance for him to run away, he can often defend himself, for he can kick like a good fellow. his hind-legs fly so fast when he is kicking that you can hardly see them, and he has been known to drive off a lion by this means of defence. when hunters wish to catch a giraffe alive, they generally drive him into a thick woods, where his great height prevents him from running very rapidly; and as soon as they come up with him, they endeavor to entangle him in ropes, to throw him down, and to put a halter round his neck. if they only keep out of the way of his heels, there is no need of being afraid of him. when they have secured him they lead him off, if he will come; but if he is an old fellow he will not walk after them, and he is too strong to be easily pulled along, no matter how many men may be in the hunt. so in this case they generally kill him, for his skin is valuable, and his flesh is very good to eat. but if the giraffe is a young one, he will follow his captors without difficulty, for these animals are naturally very gentle. why the natives of africa should desire to obtain living giraffes, unless it is to sell them to people who wish to carry them to other countries, travellers do not inform us. we have never heard that any domestic use was made of them, nor that they were kept for the sake of their meat. but we suppose the hunters know their own business. it is probable that the lion is really the greatest enemy of the giraffe. it is not often that this crafty and powerful hunter will put himself within reach of his victim's heels. approaching softly and slowly, the lion waits until he is quite near the giraffe, and then, with one bound, he springs upon his back. sometimes the giraffe succeeds in shaking him off, but generally they both fall together--the giraffe dead, and the lion with his appetite whetted for an enormous dinner. up in the air. [illustration: up in a balloon.] [illustration] we have already taken a journey under the earth, and now, if you like, we will try a trip in the air. anything for a novelty. we have lived on the surface of the earth ever since we were born. we will make our ascent in a balloon. it has been thought by some folks, that there were easier methods of ascending into the air than by a cumbrous balloon, but their inventions never became popular. for instance, look at the picture of a flying-man. this gentleman had an idea that he could fly by the aid of this ingenious machinery. you will see that his wings are arranged so that they are moved by his legs, and also by cords attached to his arms. the umbrella over his head is not intended to ward off the rain or the sun, but is to act as a sort of parachute, to keep him from falling while he is making his strokes. the basket, which hangs down low enough to be out of the way of his feet, is filled with provisions, which he expects to need in the course of his journey. that journey lasted exactly as long as it took him to fall from the top of a high rock to the ground below. but we are not going to trust ourselves to any such _harem-scarem_ contrivance as this. we are going up in a regular balloon. we all know how balloons are made, and this one of ours is like most others. it is a great globular bag, made of strips of silk sewn together, and varnished with a certain composition which renders the balloon air-tight. the car in which we will travel is made of wicker-work, for that is both light and strong, and it is suspended from a net-work of strong cord which covers the whole balloon. it would not do, you know, to attach a cord to any particular part of the silk, for that would tear it. in the top of the balloon is a valve, and a cord from it comes down into the car. this valve is to be pulled open when we wish to come down towards the earth. the gas then escapes, and of course the balloon descends. in the car are bags of sand, and these are to be emptied out when we think we are too heavy for the balloon, and are either coming down too fast or are not as high as we wish to go. relieved of the weight of a bag, the balloon rises. sand is used because it can be emptied out and will not injure anybody in its descent. it would be rather dangerous, if ballooning were a common thing, for the aã«ronauts to throw out stones and old iron, such as are used for the ballast of a ship. if you ever feel a shower of sand coming down upon you through the air, look up, and you will probably see a balloon--that is, if you do not get some of the sand in your eyes. the gas with which our balloon is to be filled is hydrogen gas; but i think we will not use the pure hydrogen, for it is troublesome and expensive to produce. we will get permission of the city gas authorities to take gas from one of their pipes. that will carry us up very well indeed. when the balloon is nearly full--we never fill it entirely, for the gas expands when it rises into lighter air, and the balloon would explode if we did not leave room for this expansion--it is almost as round as a ball, and swells out proudly, struggling and pulling at the ropes which confine it to the ground. [illustration] now we have but to attach the car, get in, and cut loose. but we are going to be very careful on this trip, and so we will attach a parachute to the balloon. i hope we may not use it, but it may save us in case of an accident. this is the manner in which the parachute will hang from the bottom of the car. it resembles, you see, a closed umbrella without a handle, and it has cords at the bottom, to which a car is attached. if we wish to come down by means of this contrivance, we must descend from the car of the balloon to that of the parachute, and then we must unfasten the rope which attaches us to the balloon. we shall then drop like a shot; but as soon as the air gets under our parachute it will spread open, and our descent will immediately begin to be much more gradual, and if nothing unusual occurs to us, we shall come gently to the ground. this picture shows the manner in which we would come down in a parachute. [illustration] this man's balloon has probably burst, for we see it is tumbling down, and it will no doubt reach the ground before him. when all is ready and we are properly seated in the car, with our instruments and extra clothes and ballast, and some provisions, we will give the word to "let her go." there! did you see that? the earth dropped right down. and it is dropping, but more slowly, yet. that is the sensation persons generally experience when they first go up in a balloon. not being used to rising in the air, they think at first that they are stationary, and that the earth and all the people and houses on it are falling below them. now, then, we are off! look down and see how everything gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller. as we pass over a river, we can look down to its very bottom; and if we were not so high we could see the fishes swimming about. the houses soon begin to look like toy-cottages, and the trees like bushes, and the creeks and rivers like silvery bands. the people now appear as black spots; we can just see some of them moving about; but if they were to shout very loud we might hear them, for sound travels upward to a great distance. [illustration: moonlight above the clouds.] soon everything begins to be mixed up below us. we can hardly tell the woods from the fields; all seem pretty much alike. and now we think it is getting foggy; we can see nothing at all beneath us, and when we look up and around us we can see nothing but fog. [illustration] we are in the clouds! yes, these are the clouds. there is nothing very beautiful about them--they are only masses of vapor. but how thick that vapor is! now, when we look up, we cannot even see the balloon above us. we are sitting in our little basket-work car, and that is all we know! we are shut out from the whole world, closed up in a cloud! but this foggy atmosphere is becoming thinner, and we soon shoot out of it! now we can see clearly around us. where are the clouds? look! there they are, spread out like a great bed below us. how they glisten and sparkle in the bright sunlight! is not this glorious, to ride above the clouds, in what seems to us illimitable space! the earth is only a few miles below us, it is true, but up and around us space _is_ illimitable. [illustration] but we shall penetrate space no longer in an upward direction. it is time we were going back to the world. we are all very cold, and the eyes and ears of some of us are becoming painful. more than that, our balloon is getting too large. the gas within it is expanding, on account of the rarity of the air. we shall pull the rope of the valve. now we are descending. we are in the clouds, and before we think much about it we are out of them. we see the earth beneath us, like a great circular plain, with the centre a little elevated. now we see the rivers; the forests begin to define themselves; we can distinguish houses, and we know that we are falling very rapidly. it is time to throw out ballast. we do so, and we descend more slowly. now we are not much higher than the tops of the trees. people are running towards us. out with another bag of sand! we rise a little. now we throw out the anchor. it drags along the ground for some distance, as the wind carries us over a field, and then it catches in a fence. and now the people run up and pull us to the ground, and the most dangerous part of our expedition is over. [illustration] for it is comparatively safe to go up in a balloon, but the descent is often very hazardous indeed. on the preceding page is a picture of a balloon which did not come down so pleasantly as ours. with nine persons in it, it was driven over the ground by a tremendous wind; the anchors were broken; the car was bumped against the ground ever so many times; and the balloon dashed into trees, breaking off their branches; it came near running into a railroad train; it struck and carried away part of a telegraph line, and at last became tangled up in a forest, and stopped. several of the persons in it had their limbs broken, and it is a wonder they were not all killed. the balloon in which we ascended was a very plain, common-sense affair; but when aerial ascents were first undertaken the balloons were very fancifully decorated. for instance, bagnolet's balloon and that of le flesselles, of which we have given you pictures, are much handsomer than anything we have at present. but they were not any more serviceable for all their ornamentation, and they differed from ours in still another way--they were "hot-air balloons." other balloons were furnished with all sorts of fans, rudders, etc., for the purpose of steering them, or accelerating their motion up or down. on the next page is one of that kind. this balloon ascended from dijon, france, in 1784, but the steering-apparatus did not prove to be of much use. there were other balloons devised by the early aã«ronauts, which were still stranger than that one which arose from dijon. the _minerva_, the picture of which you can examine at your leisure, was invented by a mr. robertson, in the beginning of this century. he wished to make a grand aerial voyage of several months, with a company of about sixty persons, and therefore he had to have a very large balloon. to procure this he desired the co-operation of the scientific men throughout europe, and sent plans and descriptions of his projected balloon to all the learned societies. [illustration] this great ship of the air was to be a regular little town, as you may see. the balloon was to be one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and was to carry a large ship, on which the passengers would be safe if they descended in the water, even if it were the middle of the ocean. everything was to be provided for the safety and convenience of the passengers. around the upper part of the balloon you will see a platform, with sentries and tents. these soldiers were to be called the "air-marines." there is a small balloon--about the common size--which could be sent off like a small boat whenever occasion required. if any one got tired of the expedition, and wanted to go home, there was a parachute by which he might descend. on the deck of the ship, near the stern, was to be a little church; small houses hung from below, reached by ladders of silk, which were to be used as medicine-rooms, gymnasiums, etc.; and under the ship would hang a great hogshead, as big as a house, which would contain provisions and stores, and keep them tight and dry. there was also a kitchen; and a cannon, with which to fire off salutes, besides a number of guns, which you see projecting from the port-holes of the ship. these, i suppose, were to be used against all enemies or pirates of the air, sea, or land. [illustration] [illustration] i cannot enumerate all the appendages of this wonderful balloon--you see there are telescopes, sails, great speaking-trumpets, anchors, etc.; but i will merely remark that it was never constructed. one of the safest, and sometimes the most profitable, methods of using a balloon, is that shown in the picture, "safe ballooning." here a battle is going on, and the individuals in the balloon, safely watching the progress of events and the movements of the enemy, transmit their observations to the army with which they are connected. of course the men on the ground manage a balloon of this sort, and pull it around to any point that they please, lowering it by the ropes when the observations are concluded. balloons are often used in warfare in this manner. but during the late siege of paris, balloons became more useful than they have ever been since their invention. a great many aã«ronauts left the besieged city, floated safely over the prussian army, and descended in friendly localities. some of these balloons were captured, but they generally accomplished their purposes, and were of great service to the french. on one occasion, however, a balloon from paris was driven by adverse winds to the ocean, and its occupants were drowned. it has not been one hundred years since the balloon was invented by the brothers montgolfier, of france. they used heated air instead of gas, and their balloons were of course inferior to those of the present day. but we have not improved very much upon the original balloon, and what progress will eventually be made in aerial navigation it is difficult to prophesy. but there are persons who believe that in time air-ships will make regular trips in all directions, like our present steamboats and railroad-trains. if this is ever the case, i hope we may all be living to see it. [illustration: driven out to sea] the horse of arabia. the arabian horse has long been celebrated as the most valuable of his race. he is considered an aristocrat among horses, and only those steeds which can trace their descent from arabian ancestors have the right to be called "thorough-bred." occasionally an arabian horse is brought to this country, but we do not often see them. in fact, they would not be as valuable here as those horses which, besides arabian descent, have also other characteristics which especially adapt them to our country and climate. in arabia the horse, as an individual, especially if he happens to be of the purest breed, is more highly prized than in any other part of the world. it is almost impossible to buy a favorite horse from an arab, and even if he can be induced to sell it, the transaction is a very complicated one. in the first place, all the relations and allies of the owner must give their consent, for the parting with a horse to a stranger is a very important matter with them. the buyer must then make himself sure that the _whole of the horse_ belongs to the man who is selling him, for the arabs, when they wish to raise money, very often do so by selling to a member of their tribe a fore-leg, a hind-leg, or an ear, of one of their horses; and in this case, the person who is a part owner of the animal must have his proportionate share of all profits which may arise from its sale or use. this practice is very much like our method of mortgaging our lands. when the horse is finally bought and paid for, it had better be taken away as soon as possible, for the arabs--even those who have no interest whatever in the sale--cannot endure to see a horse which once belonged to their tribe passing into the hands of strangers. and therefore, in order to soothe their wounded sensibilities, they often steal the animal, if they can get a chance, before the buyer carries him out of their reach. [illustration: arabian horse.] the arabian horse is generally much more intelligent and docile than those of our country. but this is not altogether on account of his good blood. the arab makes a friend and companion of his horse. the animal so constantly associates with man, is talked to so much, and treated so kindly, that he sometimes shows the most surprising intelligence. he will follow his master like a dog; come at his call; stand anywhere without moving, until his master returns to him; stop instantly if his rider falls from his back, and wait until he mounts again; and it has been said that an arabian horse has been known to pick up his wounded master from the field of battle, and by fastening his teeth in the man's clothes, to carry him to a place of safety. there is no doubt, if we were to treat our horses with gentleness and prudence, and in a measure make companions of them whenever it was possible, that they would come to regard us with much of the affection and obedience which the arabian horse shows to his master. indian puddings: pumpkin pies. [illustration] some of the good old folks whom i well remember, called these things "ingin-puddins and punkin pies," but now we all know what very incorrect expressions those were. rut, even with such highly improper names, these delicacies tasted quite--as well in those days as they do now, and, if my youthful memory does not mislead me, they tasted a little better. there is no stage of the rise and progress of indian puddings and pumpkin pies, with which, when a youngster, i was not familiar. in the very beginning of things, when the fields were being ploughed, "we boys" were there. true, we went with no intent to benefit either the corn-crop or the pumpkin-vines. we merely searched in the newly turned-up earth for fish-worms. but for all that, we were there. and when the corn was all planted, how zealous we used to be about the crows! what benevolent but idiotic old scarecrows we used to construct, and how _extremely_ anxious we were to be intrusted with guns, that we might disperse, at once and forever, these black marauders! for well we knew that a few dead crows, stuck up here and there on stakes, would frighten away all the rest of the flock. but we were not allowed the guns, and, even if we had had them, it is probable that the crows would all have died of old age, had they depended for an early death upon our powder and shot. with their sagacity, their long sight, and their sentinels posted on the high trees around the field, they were not likely to let a boy with a gun approach very near to them. i have heard--and have no doubt of the truth of the statement--that one of the best ways to shoot crows is to go after them in a wagon, keeping your gun, of course, as much out of sight as possible. crows seem to know exactly what guns are intended for. but they are seldom afraid of a wagon. they expect no danger from it, and one can frequently drive along a country road while crows are quietly feeding in the field adjoining, quite close to the fence. but if any one goes out to shoot crows in this way he had better be very careful that he has an excessively mild and unimpressible horse. for, if the horse is frightened at the report of the gun, and dashes away, and smashes the wagon, and breaks his harness, and spills everything out of the wagon into the dust, mud, and bramble-bushes, and throws the gunner heels over head into a ditch, it may be that a dead crow will hardly pay him for his trouble and expense in procuring it. but after a time the corn got so high that it was not afraid of a bird, and then we forgot the crows. but we liked to watch the corn in all its stages. we kept a sharp look-out for the young pumpkin-vines, and were glad to see the beans, which were planted in the hills with the corn in some parts of the field. there is one great advantage in a corn-field which many other fields do not possess: you can always walk in it! and when the corn is higher than your head, and the great long leaves are rustling in the wind, and you can hardly see each other a dozen yards away, what a glorious thing it is to wander about amidst all this cool greenness, and pick out the biggest and the fattest ears for roasting! you have then all the loveliness of nature, combined with the hope of a future joy, which art--the art of your mother, or whoever roasts the corn--will give you. but the triumph of the corn-field is not yet. the transformation of its products into indian puddings and pumpkin pies will not occur until the golden autumn days, when the sun, and the corn, and the pumpkins are all yellow alike, and gold--if it was not so scarce--would be nothing to compare to any of them. then come the men, with their corn-cutters--pieces of scythe-blades, with handles fitted to them--and down go the corn-stalks. only one crack apiece, and sometimes a big cut will slice off the stalks on a whole hill. how we used to long to wield those corn-cutters! but our parents thought too much of our legs. when the corn has been cut and carried away, the pumpkins are enough to astonish anybody. we never had any idea that there were so many! at last, when the days were getting short, and the mornings were a little cool, and the corn was in the cribs, and the pumpkins were in the barn, and some of us had taken a grist to the mill, then were the days of the pudding of indian corn and the pies of pumpkin! then we stayed in the kitchen and saw the whole delightful process, from the first mixing of the yellow meal with water, and the first cut into the round pumpkins, until the swelling pudding and the tranquil pie emerged in hot and savory grandeur from the oven. it is of no use to expect those days to return. it is easy enough to get the pies and the puddings, but it is very hard to be a boy again. living in smoke. [illustration] here is a mosquito of which the bravest man might be afraid; but, fortunately, these insects are not found quite so large as the one in the drawing, for he is considerably magnified. but when we hear even a very small fellow buzzing around our heads, in the darkness of a summer night, we are very apt to think that he sounds as if he were at least as big as a bat. in some parts of our country, mosquitoes are at certain seasons so plentiful and bloodthirsty that it is impossible to get along comfortably in their company. but, except in spots where no one would be likely to live, whether there were mosquitoes there or not, these insects do not exist in sufficient numbers to cause us to give up our ordinary style of living and devote all our energies to keeping them at a distance. in some other countries, however, the people are not so fortunate. in senegal, at certain seasons, the inhabitants are driven from their habitations by the clouds of mosquitoes which spread over the land, and are forced to take refuge on high platforms, under which they keep fires continually burning. the smoke from these fires will keep away the mosquitoes, but it cannot be very pleasant to the senegalians. however, they become used to it, and during the worst of the mosquito season, they eat, drink, sleep, and enjoy themselves to the best of their ability on these platforms, which for the time become their houses. [illustration: a smoky dwelling.] it would probably seem to most of us, that to breathe an atmosphere constantly filled with smoke, and to have it in our eyes and noses all the time, would be almost as bad, if not quite, as suffering the stings of mosquitoes. but then we do not know anything about senegalian mosquitoes, and the accounts which dr. livingstone and other travellers give of the insects in africa, ought to make us feel pretty sure that these woolly-headed folks on the platforms know what is good for them. the cannon of the palais royal. [illustration] in the gardens of the palais royal, in paris, there is a little cannon which stands on a pedestal, and is surrounded by a railing. every day it is loaded with powder and wadding, but no one on earth is allowed to fire it off. however, far away in the realms of space, ninety-three millions of miles from our world, there is the great and glorious sun, and every day, at twelve o'clock, he fires off that little cannon, provided there are no clouds in the way. just before noon on bright days, the people gather around the railing, with their watches in their hands,--if they are so lucky as to have watches,--and precisely at twelve o'clock, _bang!_ she goes. the arrangement which produces this novel artillery-practice is very simple. a burning-glass is fixed over the cannon in such a manner that when the sun comes to the meridian--which it does every day at noon, you know--its rays are concentrated on the touch-hole, and of course the powder is ignited and the cannon is fired. most boys understand the power of a burning-glass, and know how easily dry grass or tinder, or a piece of paper, may be set on fire by a good glass when the sun is bright; but they would find it very difficult to place a glass over a little cannon so that it would infallibly be discharged at any set hour. and even if they could do it, they would not be sure of their cannon-clock being _exactly_ right, for the sun does not keep the very best time. he varies a little, and there is a difference between solar time and true time. but the sun is always near enough right for all ordinary intents and purposes. i know boys--lazy fellows--and some girls of the same sort, for that matter,--who, if they could, would have, just outside of their school-doors, one of the largest cannon, which should go off every day at the very earliest hour at which school would let out, and which should make such a tremendous report that it would be impossible for the teacher to overlook the time and keep them in too long. but if these same boys and girls were putting up a cannon to go off at the hour when school commenced, they would get such a little one that it wouldn't frighten a mouse. waters, deep and shallow. with such a vast subject before us as the waters of our beautiful world, we must be systematic. so we will at first confine ourselves to the observation of _pleasant waters_. [illustration] let us begin at the beginning. this pretty little spring, with its cool water running day and night into the old barrel, and then gurgling over the staves, flowing away among the grass and flowers, is but a trifling thing perhaps, and might be passed with but little notice by people who have always lived in cities. but country-folks know how to value a cool, unfailing spring. in the hot days of summer the thirsty and tired farmer would rather see that spring than an ice-cream saloon. yes, even if he has nothing to drink from but a gourd, which may be lying there among the stones. he may have a tin-cup with him,--and how shocking! he may drink out of his hands! but, let him use what he may, he certainly gets a most delicious drink. i once knew a little girl who said she could not bear spring-water; she did not think it was clean, coming out of the ground in that way. i asked her if she liked well-water; but she thought that was worse yet, especially when it was hauled up in old buckets. river-water she would not even consider, for that was too much exposed to all sorts of dirty things to be fit to drink. i then wished to know what kind of water she did like, and she answered, readily enough, "hydrant-water." i don't know where she imagined hydrant-water came from, but she may have thought it was manufactured, by some clean process, out at the water-works. but let us follow this little stream which trickles from the barrel. we cannot walk by its banks all the time, for it winds so much and runs through places where the walking is very bad; but let us go across the fields and walk a mile or two into the woods, and we will meet with it again. here it is! what a fine, tumbling stream it has grown to be now! it is even big enough to have a bridge over it. it does not always rush so noisily among the rocks; but this is early summer; there has been plenty of rain, and the brook is full and strong. now, then, if this is a trout country, we ought to have our hooks and lines with us. among the eddies of this stream we might find many a nice trout, and if we were only successful enough to catch some of them after we had found them, we would be sure of a reward for our walk, even if the beauty of the scene did not repay us. but let us go on. this stream does not stop here. after we have walked a mile or so more, we find that our noisy friend has quieted down very much indeed. it is a little wider, and it may be it is a little deeper, but it flows along very placidly between its low banks. it is doubtful if we should find any trout in it now, but there may be cat-fish and perch, and some sun-fish and eels. [illustration] and now the stream suddenly spreads out widely. it is a little lake! no, it is only a mill-pond. let us walk around and come out in front of the mill. how the stream has diminished again! [illustration] as it comes out of the mill-race and joins itself to that portion which flows over the dam, it is a considerable creek, to be sure, but it looks very small compared to the mill-pond. but what it wants in size it makes up in speed, like some little morgan horses you may have seen, and it goes rushing along quite rapidly again. here, now, is a splendid chance to catch a chub. if we had some little minnows for bait, and could stand on the bank there to the left, and throw our lines down into the race, we ought to be able to hook a chub, if there are any there, and i think it is very likely that there are. a chub, if he is a good-sized fellow, is a fish worth catching, even for people who have been fishing for trout. one big chub will make a meal for a small family. but let us follow the creek and see what new developments we shall discover. to be sure, you may say that following up a stream from its very source involves a great deal of walking; but i can answer with certainty that a great deal of walking is a very easy thing--in books! so on we go, and it is not long before we find that our watery friend has ceased to be a creek, and is quite worthy of being called a fine young river. but still it is scarcely fit yet for navigation. there are rocks in the very middle of the stream, and every now and then we come to a waterfall. but how beautiful some of those cascades are! what a delightful thing it would be, on a warm summer evening, to bathe in that deliciously cool water. it is deep enough for a good swim, and, if any of us want a shower-bath, it would be a splendid thing to sit on the rocks and let the spray from the fall dash over us! and there are fish here, i am sure. it is possible that, if we were to sit quietly on the bank and fish, we might soon get a string of very nice perch, and there is no knowing what else. this stream is now just about big enough and little enough to make the character of its fish doubtful. i have known pike--fellows two feet long--caught in such streams as this; and then again, in other small rivers, very much like it, you can catch nothing but cat-fish, roach, and eels. if we were to follow up our river, we would soon find that it grew larger and larger, until row-boats and sloops, and then schooners and perhaps large ships, sailed upon its surface. and at last we might follow it down to its mouth, and, if it happened to flow into the sea, we would probably behold a grand scene. some rivers widen so greatly near their mouths that it is difficult to believe that they are rivers at all. [illustration] on the next page we see a river which, at its junction with the ocean, seems almost like a little sea itself. [illustration] we can hardly credit the fact that such a great river as the amazon arose from a little spring, where you might span the body of the stream with your hand. but, at its source, there is no doubt just such a little spring. the great trouble, however, with these long rivers, is to find out where their source really is. there are so many brooks and smaller rivers flowing into them that it is difficult to determine the main line. you know that we have never settled that matter in regard to the mississippi and missouri. there are many who maintain that the source of the mississippi is to be found at the head of the missouri, and that the latter is the main river. but we shall not try to decide any questions of that sort. we are in quest of pleasant waters, not difficult questions. [illustration: falls of gavarni.] there is no form which water assumes more grand and beautiful than the cascade or waterfall. and these are of very varied shapes and sizes. some of the most beautiful waterfalls depend for their celebrity, not upon their height, but upon their graceful forms and the scenery by which they are surrounded, while others, like the cascade of gavarni, are renowned principally for their great height. there we see a comparatively narrow stream, precipitating itself down the side of an enormous precipice in the pyrenees. although it appears so small to us, it is really a considerable stream, and as it strikes upon the jutting rocks and dashes off into showers of spray, it is truly a beautiful sight. there are other cascades which are noted for a vast volume of water. some of these are well known, but there is one, perhaps, of which you have never heard. when dr. livingstone was travelling in africa he was asked by some of the natives if in his country there was any "smoke which sounds." they assured him that such a thing existed in their neighborhood, although some of them did not seem to comprehend the nature of it. the doctor soon understood that their remarks referred to a waterfall, and so he took a journey to it. when he came within five or six miles of the cataract, he saw five columns of smoke arising in the air; but when he reached the place he found that this was not smoke, but the vapor from a great fall in the river zambesi. these falls are very peculiar, because they plunge into a great abyss, not more than eighty feet wide, and over three hundred feet deep. then the river turns and flows, for many miles, at the bottom of this vast crack in the earth. dr. livingstone thinks these falls are one of the wonders of the world. there is no doubt, however, about the king of cataracts. that is niagara. if you have seen it you can understand its grandeur, but you can never appreciate it from a written description. a picture will give you some idea of it, but not a perfect one, by any means. [illustration: falls of zambesi.] the indians called these falls "thundering water," and it was an admirable title. the waters thunder over the great precipice, as they have done for thousands of years before we were born, and will continue to do thousands of years after we are dead. the falls of niagara are divided by an island into two portions, called the canadian and the american falls. this island lies nearer to the united states shore than to that of canada. therefore the american falls are the smallest. this island is named goat island, and you have a good view of it in the picture. [illustration] it seems as if the resistless torrent would some day tear away this lonely promontory, as it rushes upon and around it. it is not unlikely that in the course of ages the island may be carried away. even now, portions of it are occasionally torn off by the rush of the waters. you can cross over to goat island by means of a bridge, and when there you can go down _under the falls_. standing in what is called the "cave of the winds," you can look out at a thick curtain of water, from eighteen to thirty feet thick, pouring down from the rocks above. this curtain, dark and glittering, is a portion of the great falls. it is necessary to spend days at niagara before its grandeur can be fully appreciated. but we must pass on to other waters, and not tarry at this glorious cataract until we are carried away by our subject. we will now look at, for a short time, what may be called _profitable waters_. the waters of the earth are profitable in so many ways that it would be impossible for us to consider them all. but we will simply glance at a few scenes, where we can easily perceive what advantages man derives from the waters, deep or shallow. in our own country there is no more common method of making a living out of the water than by fishing with a net. the men in the picture, when they have hauled their seine to shore, will probably find as good a reward for their labor as if they had been working on the land instead of in the river; and if it is shad for which they are fishing, their profits will probably be greater. you know that our shad fisheries are very important sources of income to a great many people. and the oyster fisheries are still more valuable. when we mention the subject, of making a living out of the water, we naturally think first of nets, and hooks and lines. it is true that mills, and steamships, and packet-lines, and manufactories, are far more important; but they require capital as well as water. men fish all over the world, but on some waters vessels or saw-mills are never seen. [illustration] the styles of fishing, however, are very various. here is a company of africans, fishing with javelins or spears. they build a sort of platform or pier out into the river, and on this they stand, with their spears in their hands, and when a fish is seen swimming in the water, down comes the sharp-pointed javelin, which seldom misses him. then he is drawn upon the platform by means of the cord which is fastened to the spear. a whole family will go out fishing in this way, and spend the day on the platform. some will spear the fish, while others will clean them, and prepare them for use. one advantage that this party possesses is, that if any of them should tumble into the water, they would not get their clothes wet. [illustration] but sometimes it will not do for the fisherman to endeavor to draw up the treasures of the deep while he remains at the surface of the water; very often he must go down after them. in this way a great many of the most valuable fisheries are conducted. for instance, the sponge-fishers are obliged to dive down to the very bottom of the water, and tear off the sponges from the rocks to which they fasten themselves. some of the most valuable sponge-fisheries are on the coast of syria, and you may here see how they carry on their operations. [illustration] this is a very difficult and distressing business to the divers they have to remain under the water as long as they can possibly hold their breath, and very often they are seriously injured by their exertions in this way. but when we use the sponges we never think of this. and if we did, what good would it do? all over the world men are to be found who are perfectly willing to injure their health, provided they are paid for it. the pearl-fisheries are quite as disastrous in their effects upon the divers as those of which we have just been speaking. the pearl-diver descends by the help of a long rope, to the end of which is attached a heavy stone. he stands on the stone, holds the rope with one hand and his nose with the other, and quickly sinks to the bottom. then he goes to work, as fast as he can, to fill a net which hangs from his neck, with the pearl-oysters. when he can stay down no longer, the net and stone are drawn up by the cord, and he rises to the surface, often with blood running from his nose and ears. but then, those who employ them sometimes get an oyster with as fine pearls as this one contains. [illustration] it is perfectly possible, however, to dive to the bottom of the sea with very valuable results, without undergoing all this terrible injury and suffering. in this country and europe there are men who, clad in what is called submarine armor, will go to the bottom of a river, or bay, or the sea,--where it is not very deep--and there walk about almost as comfortably as if they were on land. air is supplied to them by long pipes, which reach to the surface, and these divers have been made very useful in discovering and removing wrecks, recovering sunken treasure, and in many other ways. [illustration] for instance, you have a picture of some divers at the bottom of the port of marseilles. a box of gold had fallen from a steamship, and the next day these two men went down after it. they found it, and it was hauled safely to the surface by means of the ropes which they attached to it. you see how strangely they are dressed. an iron helmet, like a great iron pot, is over each of their heads, and a reservoir, into which the air is pumped, is on their backs. they can see through little windows in their masks or helmets, and all they have to do is to walk about and attend to their business, for men above supply them with a sufficiency of air for all breathing purposes, by means of an air-pump and a long flexible tube. we have not even alluded to many profitable waters; we have said nothing about those vast seas where the great whale is found, or of the waters where men catch the valuable little sardine. we have not mentioned corals, nor said anything about those cod-fisheries, which are considered of sufficient importance, sometimes, to go to war about. but these, with many other subjects of the kind, we must leave unnoticed, while we cast our eyes upon some _dangerous waters_. we all know that almost any water, if it be a few feet deep, is dangerous at certain times and under certain conditions. the creek, which in its deepest parts is not up to your chin, may be the death of you if you venture upon it in winter, when the ice is thin, and you break through. without help, you may be able neither to swim out or climb out. but oceans and seas are the waters where danger may nearly always be expected. the sea may be as smooth as glass, the skies bright, and not a breath of wind be stirring; or a gentle breeze, just enough to ripple the water, may send our vessel slowly before it, and in a few hours the winds may be roaring, the waves dashing into the air, and the skies dark with storm-clouds. if we are upon a large and strong steamer, we may perhaps feel safe enough among the raging waves; but if our vessel be a fishing-boat, or a small pleasure-craft, we have good reason to be afraid yet many a little sloop like this rides bravely and safely through the storms. but many other little vessels, as strong and as well steered, go to the bottom of the ocean every year. if the sailor escapes severe storms, or sails in a vessel which is so stout and ably managed as to bid defiance to the angry waves, he has other dangers in his path. he may, for instance, meet with icebergs. if the weather is clear and the wind favorable, he need not fear these floating mountains of ice. but if it be night, or foggy, and he cannot see them, or if, in spite of all his endeavors, the wind drives him down upon them, then is his vessel lost, and, in all probability, the lives of all upon it. sometimes, however, the passengers and crew may escape in boats, and instances have been related where they have taken refuge on the iceberg itself, remaining there until rescued by a passing ship. [illustration] but, be the weather fair or foul, a ship is generally quick to leave the company of so dangerous a neighbor as an iceberg. sometimes great masses of ice take a notion to topple over, and, looking at the matter in what light you please, i think that they are not to be trusted. then there is the hurricane! a large ship may bravely dare the dangers of an ordinary storm, but nothing that floats on the surface of the water can be safe when a whirlwind passes over the sea, driving everything straight before it great ships are tossed about like playthings, and strong masts are snapped off as if they had been made of glass. [illustration] if a ship is then near a coast, her crew is seldom able, if the wind blows towards the land, to prevent her from being dashed upon the rocks; and if she is out upon the open sea, she is often utterly disabled and swallowed up by the waves. i have known boys who thought that it would be perfectly delightful to be shipwrecked. they felt certain that they would be cast (very gently, no doubt) upon a desert island, and there they would find everything that they needed to support life and make them comfortable; and what they did not get there they would obtain from the wreck of the ship, which would be lying on the rocks, at a convenient distance from the shore. and once on that island, they would be their own masters, and would not have to go to school or do anything which did not please them. [illustration] this is the good old robinson crusoe idea, which at one time or another runs in the mind of nearly every boy, and many girls, too, i expect; but a real shipwreck is never desired the second time by any person who has experienced one. sometimes, even when the crew think that they have safely battled through the storm, and have anchored in a secure place, the waves dash upon the vessel with such force that the anchor drags, the masts go by the board, and the great ship, with the hundreds of pale faces that crowd her deck, is dashed on the great rocks which loom up in the distance. [illustration] among other dangers of the ocean are those great tidal waves, which often follow or accompany earthquakes, and which are almost as disastrous to those living upon the sea-coast as to those in ships. towns have been nearly destroyed by them, hundreds of people drowned, and great ships swept upon the land, and left there high and dry. in tropical latitudes these tremendous upheavals of the ocean appear to be most common, but they are known in all regions which are subject to serious shocks of earthquakes. [illustration] waterspouts are other terrible enemies of the sailor. these, however dangerous they may be when they approach a ship, are not very common, and it is said that they may sometimes be entirely dispersed by firing a cannon-ball into the midst of the column of water. this statement is rather doubtful, for many instances have been related where the ball went directly through the water-spout without any effect except to scatter the spray in every direction. i have no doubt that sailors always keep as far away from water-spouts as they can, and place very little reliance on their artillery for their safety. and now, have you had enough water? we have seen how the waters of the earth may be enjoyed, how they may be made profitable to us, and when we should beware of them. [illustration] but before we leave them, i wish to show you, at the very end of this article, something which is a little curious in its appearance. let us take a step down to the very bottom of the sea; not in those comparatively shallow places, where the divers descend to look for wrecks and treasure, but in deep water, miles below the surface. down there, on the very bottom, you will see this strange thing. what do you suppose it is? it is not an animal or a fish, or a stone, or shell. but plants are growing upon it, while little animals and fishes are sticking fast to it, or swimming around it. it is not very thick--scarcely an inch--and we do not see much of it here; but it stretches thousands of miles. it reaches from america to europe, and it is an atlantic cable. there is nothing in the water more wonderful than that. hans, the herb-gatherer. [illustration] many years ago, when people had not quite so much sense as they have now, there was a poor widow woman who was sick. i do not know what was the matter with her, but she had been confined to her bed for a long time. she had no doctor, for in those days many of the poor people, besides having but little money, had little faith in a regular physician. they would rather depend upon wonderful herbs and simples, which were reported to have a sort of magical power, and they often used to resort to charms and secret incantations when they wished to be cured of disease. this widow, whose name was dame martha, was a sensible woman, in the main, but she knew very little about sickness, and believed that she ought to do pretty much as her neighbors told her. and so she followed their advice, and got no better. there was an old man in the neighborhood named hans, who made it a regular business to gather herbs and roots for moral and medical purposes. he was very particular as to time and place when he went out to collect his remedies, and some things he would not touch unless he found them growing in the corner of a churchyard--or perhaps under a gallows--and other plants he never gathered unless the moon was in its first quarter, and there was a yellow streak in the northwest, about a half-hour after sunset. he had some herbs which he said were good for chills and fever; others which made children obedient; others which caused an old man's gray hair to turn black and his teeth to grow again--if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who played truant, and cats that stole milk. now, to our enlightened minds it is very evident that this hans was nothing more than an old simpleton; but it is very doubtful if he thought so himself, and it is certain that his neighbors did not. they resorted to him on all occasions when things went wrong with them, whether it was the butter that would not come in their churns, or their little babies who had fevers. therefore, you may be sure that dame martha sent for hans as soon as she was taken ill, and for about a year or so she had been using his herbs, making plasters of his roots, putting little shells that he brought under her pillow, and powwowing three times a day over bunches of dried weeds ornamented with feathers from the tails of yellow hens that had died of old age. but all that hans, could do for her was of no manner of use. in vain he went out at night with his lantern, and gathered leaves and roots in the most particular way. whether the moon was full or on the wane; whether the tail of the great dipper was above the steeple of the old church, or whether it had not yet risen as high as the roof; whether the bats flew to the east or the west when he first saw them; or whether the jack o'lanterns sailed near the ground (when they were carried by a little jack), or whether they were high (when a tall jack bore them), it made no difference. his herbs were powerless, and dame martha did not get well. about half a mile from the widow's cottage there lived a young girl named patsey moore. she was the daughter of the village squire, and a prettier girl or a better one than patsey is not often met with. when she heard of dame martha's illness she sometimes used to stop at the cottage on her way to school, and leave with her some nice little thing that a sick person might like to eat. one day in spring, when the fields were full of blossoms and the air full of sunshine and delicious odors, patsey stopped on her way from school to gather a bunch of wild-flowers. they grew so thickly and there were so many different kinds, that she soon had a bouquet that was quite fit for a parlor. on her way home she stopped at dame martha's cottage. "i am sorry, dame martha," said she, "that i have nothing nice for you to-day, but i thought perhaps you would like to have some flowers, as it's spring-time and you can't go out." [illustration] "indeed, miss patsey," said the sick woman, "you could'nt have brought me anything that would do my heart more good. it's like hearing the birds sing and sittin' under the hedges in the blossoms, to hear you talk and to see them flowers." patsey was very much pleased, of course, at this, and after that she brought dame martha a bouquet every day. and soon the good woman looked for patsey and her beautiful flowers as longingly and eagerly as she looked for the rising of the sun. old hans very seldom came to see her now, and she took no more of his medicines. it was of no use, and she had paid him every penny that she had to spare, besides a great many other things in the way of little odds and ends that lay about the house. but when patsey stopped in, one afternoon, a month or two after she had brought the first bunch of flowers, she said to the widow: "dame martha, i believe you are a great deal better." "better!" said the good woman, "i'll tell you what it is, miss patsey, i've been a thinking over the matter a deal for the last week, and i've been a-trying my appetite, and a-trying my eyes, and a-trying how i could walk about, and work, and sew, and i just tell you what it is, miss patsey, i'm well!" and so it was. the widow was well, and nobody could see any reason for it, except good dame martha herself. she always persisted that it was those beautiful bunches of flowers that patsey had brought her every day. "oh, miss patsey!" she said, "if you'd been a-coming to me with them violets and buttercups, instead of old hans with his nasty bitter yarbs, i'd a been off that bed many a day ago. there was nothing but darkness, and the shadows of tomb-stones, and the damp smells of the lonely bogs about his roots and his leaves. but there was the heavenly sunshine in your flowers, miss patsey, and i could smell the sweet fields, when i looked at them, and hear the hum of the bees!" it may be that dame martha gave a little too much credit to patsey's flowers, but i am not at all sure about it. certain it is, that the daily visits of a bright young girl, with her heart full of kindness and sympathy, and her hands full of flowers from the fragrant fields, would be far more welcome and of far more advantage to many sick chambers than all the old herb-gatherers in the world, with their bitter, grave-yard roots, and their rank, evil-smelling plants that grow down in the swamps among the frogs and snakes. perhaps you know some sick person. try patsey's treatment. some cunning insects. [illustration] we hear such wonderful stories about the sense and ingenuity displayed by insects, that we are almost led to the belief that some of them must have a little reason--at least as much as a few men and women that we know. of all, these wise insects, there is none with more intelligence and cunning than the ant. how many astonishing accounts have we had of these little creatures, who in some countries build great houses, almost large enough for a man to live in; who have a regular form of government, and classes of society--soldiers, workers, gentlemen and ladies; and who, as some naturalists have declared, even have handsome funerals on the occasion of the death of a queen! it is certain that they build, and work, and pursue their various occupations according to systems that are wisely conceived and most carefully carried out. [illustration] dr. ebrard, who wrote a book about ants and their habits, tells a story of a little black ant who was building an arch at the foundation of a new ant-hill. it was necessary to have some means of supporting this arch, which was made of wet mud, until the key-stone should be put in and all made secure. the ant might have put up a couple of props, but this is not their habit in building. their laws say nothing about props. but the arch must be supported, and so mr. ant thought that it would be a good idea to bend down a tall stalk of wheat which grew near the hill, and make it support the arch until it was finished. this he did by carrying bits of wet mud up to the end of the stalk until he had piled and stuck so much upon it that the heavy top bent over. but, as this was not yet low enough, and more mud could not be put on the slender stem without danger of breaking it, the ant crammed mud in between the stalk at its root and the other stalks, so that it was forced over still more. then he used the lowered end to support his arch! [illustration] some other ants once found a cockchafer's wing, which they thought would be a capital thing to dry for winter, and they endeavored to get it into the entrance of their hill. but it was too big. so they drew it out and made the hole larger. then they tried again, but the wing was still too wide. they turned it and made several efforts to get it in sideways, and upside down, but it was impossible; so they lifted it away, and again enlarged the hole. but the wing would not yet go in. without losing patience, they once more went to work, and, after having labored for three hours and a half, they at last had the pleasure of seeing their dried wing safely pulled into their store-room. [illustration] then, there are spiders. they frequently show the greatest skill and cunning in the construction of their webs and the capture of their prey, and naturalists say that the spider has a very well developed brain. they must certainly have a geometrical talent, or they could not arrange their webs with such regularity and scientific accuracy. some spiders will throw their webs across streams that are quite wide. now, to do this, they must show themselves to be engineers of no small ability. sometimes they fasten one end of a thread to a twig on one side of the stream, and, hanging on the other end, swing over until they can land on the other side. but this is not always possible, for they cannot, in some places, get a chance for a fair swing. in such a case, they often wait until the wind is blowing across the stream from the side on which they are, and, weaving a long line, they let it out until the wind carries it over the stream, and it catches in the bushes or grass on the other side. of course, after one thread is over, the spider can easily run backward and forward on it, and carry over all the rest of his lines. [illustration] bees have so much sense that we ought almost to beg their pardon when we speak of their instinct. most of us have read what huber and others have told us of their plans, inventions, laws, and regular habits. it is astonishing to read of a bee-supervisor, going the round of the cells where the larvã¦ are lying, to see if each of them has enough food. he never stops until he has finished his review, and then he makes another circuit, depositing in each cell just enough food--a little in this one, a great deal in the next, and so on. there were once some bees who were very much disturbed by a number of great moths who made a practice of coming into their hives and stealing their honey. do what they could, the bees could not drive these strong creatures out. but they soon hit upon a plan to save their honey. they blocked up all the doors of the hive with wax, leaving only a little hole, just big enough for one bee to enter at a time. then the moths were completely dumbfounded, and gave up the honey business in despair. but the insect to which the epithet of cunning may be best ascribed, is, i think, the flea. if you doubt this, try to catch one. what double backsprings he will turn, what fancy dodges he will execute, and how, at last, you will have to give up the game and acknowledge yourself beaten by this little gymnast! [illustration] but fleas have been taught to perform their tricks of strength and activity in an orderly and highly proper manner. they have been trained to go through military exercises, carrying little sticks for guns; to work and pull about small cannon, although the accounts say nothing about their firing them off; and, what seems the most wonderful of all, two fleas have been harnessed to a little coach while another one sat on the box and drove! the whole of this wonderful exhibition was so small that a microscope had to be used in order to properly observe it. the last instance of the intelligence of insects which i will give is something almost too wonderful to believe, and yet the statement is made by a dr. lincecum, who studied the habits of the insect in question for twelve years, and his investigations were published in the _journal of the linnã¦an society_. dr. lincecum says, that in texas there is an ant called by him the agricultural ant, which not only lays up stores of grain, but prepares the soil for the crop; plants the seed (of a certain plant called ant-rice); keeps the ground free from weeds; and finally reaps the harvest, and separating the chaff from the grain, packs away the latter, and throws the chaff outside of the plantation. in "wood's bible animals" you can read a full account of this ant, and i think that after hearing of its exploits, we can believe almost anything that we hear about the intelligence of insects. a first sight of the sea. [illustration] if you have ever seen the ocean, you will understand what a grand thing it is to look for the first time upon its mighty waters, stretching away into the distance, and losing themselves in the clouds and sky. we know it is thousands of miles over to the other shore, but for all that we have a pretty good idea of that shore. we know its name, and have read about the people who live there. but when, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, vasco nuã±ez de balboa stood upon the shore of the pacific, and gazed over its boundless waters, the sight to him was both grand and mysterious. he saw that a vast sea lay beneath and before him--but that was all he knew. europeans had not visited it before, and the indians, who had acted as his guides, knew but little about it. if he had desired to sail across those vast blue waters, balboa would have had no idea upon what shores he would land or what wonderful countries and continents he would discover. now-a-days, any school-boy could tell that proud, brave soldier, what lay beyond those billows. supposing little johnny green (we all know him, don't we?) had been there, how quickly he would have settled matters for the spanish chieftain. "ah, mr. balboa," johnny would have said, "you want to know what lies off in that direction--straight across? well, i can tell you, sir. if you are standing, as i think you are, on a point of the isthmus of darien, where you can look directly westward, you may cast your eyes, as far as they will go, over a body of water, which, at this point, is about eleven thousand miles wide. no wonder you jump, sir, but such is the fact. if you were to sail directly west upon this ocean you would have a very long passage before you came upon any land at all, and the first place which you would reach, if you kept straight on your westward course, would be the mulgrave islands. but you would have passed about seven or eight hundred miles to the southward of the sandwich islands, which are a very important group, where there is an enormous volcano, and where captain cook will be killed in about two hundred and fifty years. if you then keep on, you will pass among the caroline islands, which your countrymen will claim some day; and if you are not eaten up by the natives, who will no doubt coax you to land on some of their islands and will then have you for supper, you will at last reach the philippine islands, and will probably land, for a time, at mindanao, to get water and things. then, if you still keep on, you will pass to the north of a big island, which is borneo, and will sail right up to the first land to the west, which will be part of a continent; or else you will go down around a peninsula, which lies directly in your course, and sail upon the other side of it, into a great gulf, and land anywhere you please. do you know where you will be then, mr. balboa? don't, eh? well, sir, you would be just where columbus hoped he would be, when he reached the end of his great voyage across the atlantic--in the indies! yes, sir, all among the gold, and ivory, and spices, and elephants and other things! "if you can get any ships here and will start off and steer carefully among the islands, you won't find anything in your way until you get there. but, it was different with columbus, you see, sir. he had a whole continent blocking up his road to the indies; but, for my part, i'm very glad, for various reasons, that it happened so." [illustration] it is probable that if johnny green could have delivered this little speech, that vasco nuã±ez de balboa would have been one of the most astonished men in the world! whether he and his fellow-adventurers would ever have set out to sail over those blue waters, in search of the treasures of the east, is more than i can say, but it is certain that if he had started off on such an expedition, he would have found things pretty much as johnny green had told him. the largest church in the world. [illustration] this is st. peter's at rome. is it possible to look upon such a magnificent edifice without acknowledging it as the grandest of all churches? there are some others in the world more beautiful, and some more architecturally perfect; but there is none so vast, so impressive, so grand! this great building was commenced in 1506, but it was a century and a half before it was finished. among other great architects, michael angelo assisted in its construction. the building is estimated to have cost, simply for its erection, about fifty millions of dollars, and it has cost a great deal in addition in later years. its dimensions are enormous. you cannot understand what a great building it is unless you could see it side by side with some house or church with which you are familiar. several of the largest churches in this country could be stood up inside of st. peter's without touching walls or roof, or crowding each other in the least. [illustration] there are but three works of man in the whole world which are higher than the little knob which you see on the cupola surmounting the great dome of st. peter's. these more lofty buildings are the great pyramid of egypt, the spire of strasbourg, and the tower of amiens. the highest of these, the pyramid, is, however, only forty-two feet above st. peter's. the great dome is supported by four pillars, each of which is seventy feet thick! but let us step inside of this great edifice. i think you will be there even more impressed with its height and extent than you were when you stood on the outside. is not here a vast and lofty expanse? but even from this favorable point you cannot get a complete view of the interior. in front of you, you see in the distance the light striking down from above. there is the great dome, and when you walk beneath it you will be amazed at its enormous height. there are four great halls like this one directly before us, for the church is built in the form of a cross, with the dome at the intersection of the arms. there are also openings in various directions, which lead into what are called chapels, but which are in reality as large as ordinary sized churches. the pavement of the whole edifice is made of colored marble, and, as you see, the interior is heavily decorated with carving and statuary. much of this is bronze and gold. but if you should mount (and there are stairs by which you may make the ascent) into the cupola at the top of the dome, and look down into the vast church, and see the people crawling about like little insects so far below you, you would perhaps understand better than at any other time that it is not at all surprising that this church should be one of the wonders of the world. if we ever go to europe, we must not fail to see st. peter's church at rome. the soft place. there was once a young jaguar (he was very intimately related to the panther family, as you may remember), and he sat upon a bit of hard rock, and cogitated. the subject of his reflections was very simple indeed, for it was nothing more nor less than this--where should he get his supper? he would not have cared so much for his supper, if it had been that he had had no dinner, and even this would not have made so much difference if he had had his breakfast. but in truth he had eaten nothing all day. during the summer of that year the meat-markets in that section of the country were remarkably bad. it was sometimes difficult for a panther or a wildcat to find enough food to keep her family at all decently, and there were cases of great destitution. in years before there had been plenty of deer, wild turkey, raccoons, and all sorts of good things, but they were very scarce now. this was not the first time that our young jaguar had gone hungry for a whole day. while he thus sat, wondering where he should go to get something to eat, he fell asleep, and had a dream. and this is what he dreamed. he dreamed that he saw on the grass beneath the rock where he was lying five fat young deer. three of them were sisters, and the other two were cousins. they were discussing the propriety of taking a nap on the grass by the river-bank, and one of them had already stretched herself out. "now," thought the jaguar in his dream, "shall i wait until they all go to sleep, and then pounce down softly and kill them all, or shall i spring on that one on the ground and make sure of a good supper at any rate?" while he was thus deliberating in his mind which it would be best for him to do, the oldest cousin cocked up her ears as if she heard something, and just as the jaguar was going to make a big spring and get one out of the family before they took to their heels, he woke up! [illustration] what a dreadful disappointment! not a deer, or a sign of one, to be seen, and nothing living within a mile. but no! there is something moving! it is--yes, it is a big alligator, lying down there on the rocks! after looking for a few minutes with disgust at the ugly creature, the jaguar said to himself, "he must have come on shore while i was asleep. but what matters it! an alligator! very different indeed from five fat young deer! ah me! i wish he had not that great horny skin, and i'd see if i could make a supper off of him. let me see! there is a soft place, as i've been told, about the alligator! if i could but manage and get a grip of that, i think that i could settle old mr. hardskin, in spite of his long teeth. i've a mind and a half to try. yes, i'll do it!" [illustration] so saying, the jaguar settled himself down as flat as he could and crept a little nearer to the alligator, and then, with a tremendous spring, he threw himself upon him. the alligator was asleep, but his nap came to a very sudden close, you may be sure, and he opened his eyes and his mouth both at the same time. but he soon found that he would have to bestir himself in a very lively manner, for a strong and hungry jaguar had got hold of him. it had never before entered into the alligator's head that anybody would want to eat him, but he did not stop to think about this, but immediately went to work to defend himself with all his might. he lashed his great tail around, he snapped his mighty jaws at his enemy, and he made the dust fly generally. but it all seemed of little use. the jaguar had fixed his teeth in a certain soft place in his chest, under his fore-leg, and there he hung on like grim death. the alligator could not get at him with his tail, nor could he turn his head around so as to get a good bite. the alligator had been in a hard case all his life, but he really thought that this surprising conduct of the jaguar was something worse than anything he had ever been called upon to bear. "does he really think, i wonder," said the alligator to himself, "that he is going to have me for his supper?" it certainly looked very much as if mr. jaguar had that idea, and as if he would be able to carry out his intention, for he was so charmed at having discovered the soft place of which he had so often been told that he resolved never to let go until his victim was dead; and in the midst of the struggle he could not but regret that he had never thought of hunting alligators before. as it may well be imagined, the alligator soon began to be very tired of this sort of thing. he could do nothing at all to damage his antagonist, and the jaguar hurt him, keeping his teeth jammed into the very tenderest spot in his whole body. so he came to the conclusion that, if he could do nothing else, he would go home. if the jaguar chose to follow him, he could not help it, of course. so, gradually, he pulled himself, jaguar and all, down to the river, and, as the banks sloped quite suddenly at this place, he soon plunged into deep water, with his bloodthirsty enemy still hanging fiercely to him. as soon as he found himself in the water, the alligator rolled himself over and got on top. then they both sank down, and there was nothing seen on the surface of the water but bubbles. the fight did not last very long after this, but the jaguar succeeded perfectly in his intentions. he found a soft place--in the mud at the bottom of the river--and he stayed there. a few feathered friends. [illustration: a few feathered friends.] whether dressed in broadcloth, silk, calico, home-spun, or feathers, friends are such valuable possessions that we must pay these folks who are now announced as much attention as possible. and if we do this and in every way endeavor to make them feel comfortable and entirely at home, we will soon perceive a very great difference between them and many of our friends who dress in coats and frocks. for the more we do for our feathered friends, the more they will do for us. now, you can't say that of all the men and women and boys and girls that you know. i wish most sincerely that you could. the first family who calls upon us (and the head of this family makes the very earliest calls that i know anything about) are too well known to all of us to need the slightest introduction. you will see in an instant that you have met them before. and there is no doubt but that these are among the very best feathered friends we have. those hens are liberal with their eggs, and those little chickens that are running around like two-legged puff-balls, are so willing to grow up and be broiled and roasted and stewed, that it would now be almost impossible for us to do without them. eggs seem to come into use on so many occasions that, if there was to be an egg-famine, it would make itself felt in every family in the land. not only would we miss them when boiled, fried, and cooked in omelets for breakfast; not only without them would ham seem lonely, puddings and sponge-cakes go into decline, and pound-cake utterly die, but the arts and manufactures of the whole country would feel the deprivation. merely in the photographic business hundreds of thousands of eggs are needed every year, from which to procure the albumen used in the preparation of photographic paper. [illustration] do without eggs? impossible. and to do without "chicken" for dinner would seem almost as impossible for some folks. to be sure, we might live along very comfortably without those delightful broils, and roasts, and fricassees, but it would be a great pity. and, if we live in the country, there is no meat which is so cheap and easily procured all the year round as chicken. i wonder what country-people would do, especially in the summer time, when they have little other fresh meat, without their chickens. very badly, i imagine. next to these good old friends comes the pigeon family. these are very intimate with many of us. [illustration] pigeons are in one respect even more closely associated with man than the domestic fowls, because they live with him as readily in cities as in the country. city chickens always seem out of place, but city pigeons are as much at home as anybody else. there are few houses so small that there is not room somewhere for a pigeon-box, and there are no roofs or yards so humble that the handsomest and proudest "pouters" and "tumblers" and "fan-tails" will not willingly come and strut and coo about them as long as they receive good treatment and plenty of food. but apart from the pleasure and profit which these beautiful birds ordinarily afford to their owners, some of them--the carriers--are often of the greatest value, and perform important business that would have to be left undone if it were not for them. the late war in france has fully proved this. i remember hearing persons say that now, since telegraph lines had become so common, they supposed carrier-pigeons would no longer be held in esteem, and that the breed would be suffered to die out. [illustration] but that is a mistake. there are times, especially during wars, when telegraphic and railroad lines are utterly useless, and then the carrier-pigeon remains master of the situation. the doves are such near relations of the pigeons that we might suppose they would resemble them in their character as much as in appearance. but they are not very much alike. doves are not ambitious; they don't pout, or tumble, or have fan-tails. as to carrying messages, or doing anything to give themselves renown, they never think of it. they are content to be affectionate and happy. and that is a great deal. if they did nothing all their lives but set examples to children (and to their parents also, sometimes), the doves would be among our most useful little birds. [illustration] i suppose we all have some friends whom we are always glad to see, even if they are of no particular service to us. and this is right; we should not value people's society in exact proportion to what we think we can get out of them. now, the swan is a feathered friend, and a good one, but i must say he is of very little practical use to us. but there is something more to be desired than victuals, clothes, feather-beds, and easter-eggs. we should love the beautiful as well as the useful. not so much, to be sure, but still very much. the boy or man who despises a rose because it is not a cabbage is much more nearly related to the cows and hogs than he imagines. if we accustom ourselves to look for beauty, and enjoy it, we will find it, after awhile, where we never supposed it existed--in the caterpillar, for instance, and in the snakes. there is beauty as well as practical value in almost everything around us, and we are not the lords of creation that we suppose we are, unless we are able to see it. now, then, i have preached you a little sermon, with the swans for a text. but they are certainly beautiful subjects. a goose, when it is swimming, is a very handsome bird, and it is most admirable when it appears on the table roasted of a delightful brown, with a dish of apple-sauce to keep it company. but, for some reason, the goose has never been treated with proper consideration. it has for hundreds of years, i expect, been considered as a silly bird. but there never was a greater mistake. if we looked at the thing in the proper light, we would not be at all ashamed to be called a goose. if any one were to call you an ostrich, i don't believe you would be very angry, but in reality it would be much more of an insult than to call you a goose, for an ostrich at times is a very silly bird. but geese have been known to do as many sensible things as any feathered creatures of which we know anything. i am not going to say anything about the geese which saved rome, for we have no record that they _intended_ to do anything of the kind; but i will instance the case of a goose which belonged to an old blind woman, who lived in germany. every sunday these two friends used to go to church together, the goose carefully leading the old woman by her frock. when they reached the church, the goose would lead his mistress to her seat and then go outside and eat grass until the services were over. when the people began to come out the goose would go in, and, taking the old woman in charge, would lead her home. at other times also he was the companion of her walks, and her family knew that old blind grandmother was all right if she had the goose with her when she went out. [illustration] there was another goose, in a town in scotland, who had a great attachment for a young gentleman to whom she belonged. she would follow him in his walks about the town, and always testified her delight when she saw him start for a ramble. when he went into a barber's shop to be shaved, she would wait on the pavement until he came out; and in many of his visits she accompanied him, very decorously remaining outside while her master was enjoying the society of his friends. [illustration] ducks, too, have been known to exhibit sociable and friendly traits. there is a story told of a drake who once came into a room where a young lady was sitting, and approaching her, caught hold of her dress with his bill and commenced to pull vigorously at it. the lady was very much surprised at this performance, and tried to drive the drake away. but he would neither depart or stop tugging at her dress, and she soon perceived that he wanted her to do something for him. so she rose from her chair, and the drake immediately began to lead her towards the door. when he had conducted her out on to the lawn, he led her to a little lake near the house, and there she saw what it was that troubled mr. drake. a duck, very probably his wife, had been swimming in the lake, and in poking her head about, she had caught her neck in the narrow opening of a sluice-gate and there she was, fast and tight. the lady lifted the gate, mrs. duck drew out her head and went quacking away, while mr. drake testified his delight and gratitude by flapping his wings and quacking at the top of his voice. [illustration] we have also friends among the feathered tribes, who are not quite so intimate and sociable as those to which we have already alluded, but which still are very well deserving of our friendship and esteem. for instance, what charming little companions are the canary-birds! to be sure, they would not often stay with us, if we did not confine them in cages; but they seem perfectly at home in their little wire houses, and sing and twitter with as much glee as if they were flying about in the woods of their native land--or rather, of the native land of their forefathers, for most of our canary-birds were born in the midst of civilization and in cages. [illustration] there are some birds, however, no bigger than canaries, which seem to have an attachment for their masters and mistresses, and which do not need the restraint of a cage. there was once a gold-finch which belonged to a gentleman who lived in a town in picardy, france, but who was often obliged to go to paris, where he also had apartments. whenever he was obliged to go to the great city, his gold-finch would fly on ahead of him, and, arriving there some time in advance of the carriage, the servants would know that their master was coming, in time to have the rooms ready for him. and when the gentleman drove up to the door he would generally see his little gold-finch sitting on the finger of a cook or a chamber-maid, and twittering away as if he was endeavoring to inform the good people of all the incidents of the journey. some of these little birds, however, which are very friendly and comparatively sociable as long as they are not troubled and annoyed, are not only able to distinguish their friends from their foes, but are very apt to stand up vigorously in defence of their rights. those little sparrows, which hop about so cunningly in the streets of many of our cities, understand very well that no one will hurt them, and that they may pick up crumbs wherever they can find them. but let a few boys get into the habit of throwing sticks and stones at them, and the little things will leave that neighborhood as quickly as if the rents of all their tiny houses had been raised beyond their means. [illustration] magpies, too, are very companionable in their own way, if they are well treated; but if a boy should undertake to steal away with one of their nests, when it was full of young ones, he would run a very great risk of having his eyes picked out. there is a feathered friend of ours who keeps himself so secluded, at least during the day-time, that he is very apt to escape our notice. i refer to the owl. it may not be supposed, by some, that the owl is a friend of mankind, and i am perfectly willing to admit that very often he acts very much like an enemy, especially when he kills our young chickens and turkeys. but for all that, he has his good points, and very often behaves in a commendable manner. if you have a barn or a house that is overrun with mice, there is nothing that will be more certain to drive them out than an owl. and he will not be so apt to steal your milk or kill your canary as many of the cats which you have taken into your family without a recommendation. [illustration] we once had an owl living in our house. he belonged to my young brother, who caught him in a trap, i believe. all day long, this solemn little fellow (for he was a small brown one), would sit on the back of a chair, or some such convenient place, and if any of us came near him, he would turn his head and look at us, although he could not see very well in the day-time; and if we walked behind him, or on different sides of him, he would always keep his eyes on us, turning his head around exactly as if it was set on a pivot. it was astonishing how easily he could turn his head without moving his body. some folks told us that if we walked around and around him, he would turn and turn his head, until he twisted it off, but we never tried that. it was really astonishing how soon the mice found out that there was an owl in the house. he had the range of a great part of the house all night, and in a very short time he had driven every mouse away. and the first time he found a window open, he went away himself. there is that objection to owls, as mousers. they are very good so long as they will hold the situation, but they are exceedingly apt to leave without giving the family any notice. you won't find a cat doing that. the trouble with her very often is that she will not go when you give _her_ notice to leave. when we speak of our feathered friends, it is hardly fair to exclude all but those which are domesticated with us, or which are willing, sometimes, to come and live in our houses. in the country, and very often in towns, our homes are surrounded, at certain seasons, by beautiful birds, that flutter and twitter about in the trees, and sing most charmingly in the bright hours of the early morning, making the spring-time and the summer tenfold more delightful than they would be without them. these birds ask nothing of us but a few cherries or berries now and then, and they pay well for these by picking up the worms and grubs from our gardens. i think that these little warblers and twitterers, who fill the air with their songs and frolic about on the trees and bushes, who build their nests under our eaves and in any little box that we may put up for them, who come regularly back to us every spring, although they may have been hundreds of miles away during the cold weather, and who have chosen, of their own accord, to live around our houses and to sing in our trees and bushes, ought to be called our friends, as much as the fowls in our poultry-yards. [illustration] [illustration] in a well. perhaps very few of you have ever seen such an old-fashioned well as this. no pump, no windlass, no arrangement that you are apt to call at all convenient for raising the water. nothing but that upright stake, on top of which moves a long pole, with the bucket hanging from one end of it. but the artist does not show in the picture the most important part of this arrangement. on the other end of this long pole a heavy stone is fastened, and it is easy to see that a bucket of water may be raised without much trouble, with the stone bearing down the other end of the pole. to be sure, the stone must be raised when the bucket is lowered, but that is done by pulling downward on the rope, which is not so hard as to haul a rope upward when the resistance is equal in both cases. try it some time, and you will see that the weight of your body will count for a great deal in the operation. in old mr. naylor's yard--he lived in a little town in pennsylvania--there was one of these wells. it had been dug by his father, and, as it had answered all his needs from his childhood, mr. naylor very justly considered it would continue to do so until his death, and he would listen to no one who proposed to put up a pump for him, or make him a windlass. one afternoon in the summer-time, jenny naylor, his granddaughter, had company, and after they had been playing around the orchard for an hour or two, and had slid down the straw-stacks to their heart's content, the children all went to the well to get a drink. a bucket of water was soon hauled up, and tommy barrett with a tin-cup ladled out the refreshment to the company. when they had all drank enough they began to play with the well-pole. boys and girls will play, you know, with things that no grown person would imagine could be tortured into means of amusement. in less than five minutes they had invented a game. that is, the boys had. i will give the girls the credit of standing by and looking on, in a very disapproving manner, while this game was going on. the pastime was a very simple one. when the stone-end of the pole rested on the ground, on account of the bucket being empty, one of the boys stood by the well-curb, and, seizing the rope as high up as he could, pulled upon it, the other boys lifting the stone-end at the same time. when the stone was a foot or two from the ground the boys at that end sat on the pole and endeavored to hoist up the fellow at the other end. a glorious game! the sport went on very nicely until tommy barrett took hold of the rope. he was the biggest boy, and the little fellows could not raise him. no, it was no use, so they gave it up and jumped off of the pole. but what was their amazement to see the stone rise in the air, while at the same time tommy barrett disappeared down the well! the fact was, tommy had been trying to "show off" a little before the girls, and when he found the boys could not raise him, had stepped on the well-curb, and pushing the bucket off, had stood on it, trying, on his part, to raise the boys. so, when they jumped off, down he sank. the stone was not nearly so heavy as tommy, but it was weighty enough to prevent his going down very fast, and he arrived safely at the bottom, where the boys and girls saw him, when they crowded around the well, standing up to his arm-pits in water. "pull me up, quick!" cried tommy, who still stood on the bucket, and had hold of the rope. the children did not wait to be asked twice. they seized the rope and pulled their very best. but they could not move tommy one inch. the rope hung right down the middle of the well, and as they had to reach over a good deal even to touch it, they could get no opportunity of exerting their full strength upon it. and it is very well that they could not, for had they been able to raise tommy, it is probable that one or two of them would have been jerked down the well every time he slipped down again, which he would have been certain to do a great many times before he reached the top. they soon perceived that they could not draw tommy from the well in that way. and the stone-end of the pole was far out of their reach. what should they do? there was no one at the house but the two old people, and they were scarcely as strong as the children. they all said a great deal, but jenny naylor, who was much older than any of the others, saw that something must be done instantly, for tommy was crying out that he was nearly frozen to death, and she was afraid that he would let go of the rope, slip off of the bucket, and be drowned. so, without a word to anybody, she ran to the upright stake and began to climb it. this was a very unlady-like proceeding, perhaps, but jenny did not think about anything of that kind. she was the oldest and the largest of them all, and there was no time to explain matters to the boys. up she went, as actively as any boy, and scrambling to the crotch of the stake, she seated herself upon the pole. then she began to work herself slowly up towards the stone-end. and as she gradually approached the stone, so she gradually began to sink a little, and the nearer she got to it the more she sank and the higher tommy barrett rose in the well! she and the stone were heavier than he was, and some of the children stood, with open mouths, looking at jenny slowly coming down, while the others crowded around the well to see tommy slowly coming up. when jenny had nearly touched the ground, there was tommy hanging above the well! half a dozen little hands seized the bucket, and tommy, as wet as a dish-rag, stepped on to the curb. i wish, from the bottom of my heart, that whenever there is a party of children, playing around an open well, that there could be a girl like jenny naylor with them. a vegetable gas manufactory. [illustration] there is a plant, called by botanists the fraxinella, which has the peculiar property of giving out, from its leaves and stalks, a gas which is inflammable. sometimes, on a very still day, when there is no wind to blow it away as fast as it is produced, this gas may be ignited by a match, when the plant is growing in the open air. but this is very seldom the case, for the air must be very quiet, and the plant very productive, for enough gas to be found around it to ignite when a flame is applied. but it is perfectly possible, as you may see in the engraving, to collect sufficient gas from the fraxinella to produce combustion whenever desired. if the plant is surrounded by a glass case, the gas, as fast as produced, is confined in the case, and at last there is so much collected in this novel gasometer, that it is only necessary to open the case, and apply a match, to see plant-gas burning. it is not at all probable that the least use in the world could be made of this gas, but it is certainly a very pretty experiment to collect and ignite it. there are other plants which have this property of exuding illuminating gas in very small quantities, but none, i believe, except the fraxinella, will produce enough of it to allow this experiment to be performed. a few words about bears. [illustration: a company of bears.] if you should ever be going up a hill, and should meet such a procession as that on the opposite page, coming down, i would recommend you to get just as far to one side as you can possibly go. bears, especially when there are so many of them together, are by no means pleasant companions in a walk. but it is likely that you might wander about the world for the rest of your lives, and never meet so many bears together as you see in the engraving. they are generally solitary animals, and unless you happened to fall in with a mother and her cubs, you would not be likely to see more than one at a time. in our own country, in the unsettled parts of many of the states, the black bear is still quite common; and i could tell you of places where, if you pushed carefully up mountain-paths and through lonely forests, you might come upon a fine black bear, sitting at the entrance of her cave, with two or three of her young ones playing about her. if it should so happen that the bear neither heard you, saw you, or smelt you, you might see this great beast fondling her young ones, and licking their fur as gently and tenderly as a cat with her kittens. if she perceived you at last, and you were at a distance, it is very probable that she and her young ones, if they were big enough, would all scramble out of sight in a very short time, for the black bears are very shy of man if circumstances will permit them to get away before he approaches too near to them. but if you are so near as to make the old bear-mother fearful for the safety of her children, you will find that she will face you in a minute, and if you are not well able to take care of yourself, you will wish you had never seen a bear. [illustration] but, in the western part of our country, especially in the rocky mountain region, the grizzly bear is found, and he is a very different animal from his black relations. he is the most savage and formidable animal on this continent, and very seldom is it that he runs away from a man. he is glad enough to get a chance to fight one. he is so large and powerful that he is very difficult to kill, and the hunter who has slain a grizzly bear may well be proud of the exploit. washington irving tells of a hunter who accidentally fell into a deep hole, out in the prairies, and he tumbled right on top of a great grizzly bear! how the bear got down there is not stated, and i don't suppose the hunter stopped to inquire. a fight immediately commenced between these two involuntary companions, and after a long struggle, in which the man had an arm and leg broken, and was severely bitten and torn besides, he killed the bear. the hunter had a very hard time after that, but after passing through adventures of various kinds, he floated down the mississippi on a log and was taken in at a fort. he recovered, but was maimed for life. [illustration] i think it is probable that no other man ever killed a grizzly bear in single combat, and i also have my doubts about this one having done so. it is very likely that his victim was a black bear. few men care to hunt the grizzly bear except on horseback, so that if they have to run away, they may have better legs than their own under them. the other great bear of this continent is the white or polar bear, of which we have all heard so much. up in the regions of ice and snow this bear lives just as comfortably as the tiger in the hot jungles of asia, and while he is not quite so savage as the tiger, he is almost as hard to kill. but, in speaking of his disposition, i have no intention whatever to give him a character for amiability. in fact, he is very ferocious at times. he has often been known to attack parties of men, and when wounded can make a most soul-stirring defence. the polar bear is a big fellow, with long white hair, and he lives on seals and fish, and almost anything he can pick up. sometimes he takes a fancy to have a man or two for his supper, as the following story will prove. a ship, returning from nova zembla, anchored near an island in the arctic ocean, and two of the sailors went on land. they were standing on the shore, talking to each other, when one of them cried out, "stop squeezing me!" the other one looked around, and there was a white bear, very large but very lean and scraggy, which had sneaked up behind the sailors, and now had clutched one of them, whom he very speedily killed and commenced to eat, while the other sailor ran away. the whole crew of the ship now landed, and came after the bear, endeavoring to drive him away from the body of their comrade; but as they approached him, he quietly looked at them for a minute, and then jumped right into the middle of the crowd, seized another man, and killed him. upon this, the crew ran away as fast as they could, and scuttling into their boats, rowed away to the ship. there were three of these sailors, however, who were too brave to stay there and see a bear devouring the bodies of their friends, and they returned to the island. the bear did not move as they approached him, and they fired on him, without seeming to injure him in the least. at length one of them stepped up quite close to him, and put a ball into his head just above his eye. [illustration] but even this did not kill him, although it is probable that it lessened his vigor, for he soon began to stagger, and the sailors, falling upon him with their swords, were able to put him to death, and to rescue the remains of their comrades. after these stories, i think that we will all agree that when we meet a procession of bears, be they black, white, or grizzly, we will be very wise to give them the right of way, and to endeavor to drive from our minds, as far as possible, such ideas of the animals as we may have derived from those individuals which we have seen in rural menageries, nimbly climbing poles, or sedately drinking soda-water. [illustration] an old country-house. [illustration] here is a picture of a handsome summer residence. it apparently belongs to a rich man, and a man of taste. the house is large and commodious; the grounds are well laid out; there is a garden, evidently a fine one, close at hand; there is shade, water, fruit, flowers, and apparently everything that a country-house ought to have. but yet there is a certain something strange and unusual about it. there are handsome porticos, but they are differently arranged from those to which we have been accustomed. such as those in front we have often seen; but the upper one, which appears to go nearly around the house, with short pillars on the sides, is different from anything that we see in our country neighborhoods. those long pillars at the rear of the house seem very peculiar. we have never noticed anything like them in such positions. there seems to be scarcely any portico at the back, and those slim pillars are certainly useless, and, to our eyes, not very ornamental. the windows, too, are remarkable. they are not only very small, but they are wider at the bottom than the top--a strange idea of the architect to make them in that way. the upper story of the house does not appear to have any windows at all, but we suppose that they must be in the back and front, or the artist may have accidentally left them out. even if that floor was used for lumber-rooms, there ought to be windows. the garden has a very high wall for a private estate. it is evident that there must be great fear of thieves in that neighborhood. but it is no wonder that some things about this house and its grounds strike us as peculiar, for it was built more than three thousand years ago. it was the country residence of an egyptian gentleman, and was, no doubt, replete with all the modern conveniences of the period. even in the present day he might consider himself a very fortunate man who had so good a house and grounds as these. if the windows were made a little larger, a few changes effected in the interior of the establishment, and some chimneys and fire-places built, none of our rich men need be ashamed of such a house. but, handsome as it is, it is not probable that this house cost the egyptian gentleman very much. it is very likely, indeed, that it was built, under the supervision of an architect, by his own slaves, and that the materials came from his own estates. but he may, of course, have spent large sums on its decoration and furniture, and it is very probable, judging from the outside of his house, that he did so. some of those old egyptians were most luxurious fellows. if you wish to see how his slaves worked while they were building his house, just examine this picture. to be sure, it is a temple which these men are building, but the bricklayers, hod-carriers, etc., worked in the same way when they were putting up a private house. [illustration] these poor men whom you see toiling here were probably not born slaves, and it is very likely that many of them are equal in birth and education to those who own them. a great proportion of them are captives taken in war, and condemned for the rest of their lives to labor for their victorious enemies that will be a vast temple which they are building. look at the foundations--what enormously thick walls! it is probable that several generations of slaves will labor upon that temple before it is finished. they do not work exactly as we do in the present day. the hod-carrier, who is bringing bricks from the background, has a very good way of carrying them; but those who are bearing a pile of bricks between them seem to make a very awkward business of it. and the man who is carrying mortar on his shoulder, as he ascends the ladder, might very profitably take a lesson from some of our irish hod-carriers. an earthen pot with a round bottom is certainly a poor thing in which to carry mortar up a ladder. the man who is apparently squaring a stone, and the one who is smoothing or trimming off some bricks, are using very peculiar chopping tools. but they may have answered their purpose very well. at any rate, most magnificent edifices were built by the men who used them, although it is probable that the poor fellows progressed very slowly with their work. it may be, when three thousand years more have elapsed, that our country-houses and our methods of building may appear as strange as this mansion of the egyptian gentleman, and the customs of the egyptian bricklayers, seem to us. but then we shall be the ancient americans, and it will make no sort of difference to us what the future moderns say about us. far-away forests. [illustration: pine forest.] i have no doubt that you all like to wander in the woods, but suppose we ramble for an hour or two in forests so far away that it is probable none of you have ever seen them. let us first enter a pine forest. we have plenty of pines in our own country, and it is probable that most of you have walked in the pine woods, on many a summer's day, when the soft carpet of "needles," or "pine-shatters," as some people call them, was so pleasant to the feet, the aromatic perfume of the leaves and trees was so delicious, and everything was so quiet and solemn. but here is a pine forest in the eastern hemisphere. these woods are vast and lonely. the ground is torn up by torrents, for it is a mountainous district, and the branches have been torn and broken by many a storm. it is not a pleasant place for those who love cheerful scenery, and moreover, it is not so safe to ramble here as in our own woods at home. companies of bandits inhabit many of these forests, especially those that stretch over the mountainous portions of italy. it seems strange that in this enlightened era and in one of the civilized countries of europe, bandits should still exist to terrify the traveller; but so it is. let us get out of this pine forest, so gloomy and perhaps so dangerous. here, now, is a very different place. this is a forest in the tropics. you will not be likely to meet with bandits here. in fact, it is very improbable indeed that you will meet with any one. there are vast portions of these woods which have never been trodden by the foot of man, and which you can never see unless you cut your way, hatchet in hand, among the thick undergrowth and the interlacing vines. [illustration] here are ferns as large as trees--great masses of flowers that seem as if a whole garden had been emptied down before us--vast wildernesses of green, which we know extend for miles and miles, and which, although apparently so thick and impenetrable, are full of all kinds of life, vegetable and animal. the trees are enormous, but many of them are so covered with vines and creepers that we can scarcely distinguish the massive trunks and luxuriant foliage. every color is here, rich green, royal purple, red, yellow, lilac, brown, and gray. the vines, which overrun everything, are filled with gorgeous flowers, and hang from the branches in the most graceful forms. monkeys chatter among the trees, beautiful parrots fly from limb to limb, butterflies of the most gorgeous hues flutter about the grass-tops and the leaves near the ground, and on every log and trunk are myriads of insects, lizards and little living things of endless varieties, all strange and wonderful to us. [illustration] in some parts of this interminable forest, where the light breaks through the foliage, we see suspended from the trees the wonderful air-plants or orchids. they seem like hanging-baskets of flowers, and are far more beautiful and luxuriant than anything of the kind that we have in our hothouses at home. but we shall not find it easy to walk through all these beauties. as i said before, we shall often be obliged to cut a path with our hatchets, and even then we may be unable to penetrate very far into this jungle of beauties. the natives of these countries, when they are compelled to pass through these dense forests, often take to the small streams and wade along in the water, which is sometimes up to their shoulders, occasionally finding shallower places, or a little space on the banks where they can pick their way along for a few hundred yards before they are obliged to take to the stream again. [illustration: giant trees of california.] everything is lovely and luxuriant here, but it will not do to stay too long. there are fevers and snakes. let us now go to the greatest woods in the whole world. i do not mean the most extensive forest, but that one where the trees are the grandest. this is the region where the giant trees of california grow. nowhere on the face of the earth are there such trees as these. some of them stand over four hundred feet high, and are thirty feet in diameter! their age is believed to be about eighteen hundred years. think of it! they have been growing there during the whole of the christian era! one of them, the very largest of all, has been lying on the ground for about one hundred and fifty years. when it was standing its diameter was about forty feet. another trunk, which is lying on the ground, has been hollowed out by fire, and through this great bore or tube a whole company of horsemen has ridden. one of these trees was cut down some years ago by a party of men, who, i think, should have been sent to prison for the deed. it took five men twenty-five days to cut it through with augers and saws, and then they were obliged to use a great wedge and a battering-ram to make it fall. these are the kings of all trees. after such a grand sight, we will not want to see any more trees to-day, and we will leave the forests of far-away and sit and think of them under our humble grape-vines and honeysuckles. building ships. [illustration: boat building.] it is a grand thing to own great ships, and to send them over the ocean to distant countries; but i will venture to say that few men have derived so much pleasure from their fine vessels, laden with all kinds of valuable freight, as many a boy has had in the possession of a little schooner, which would be overloaded with a quart of chestnuts. and it is not only in the ownership of these little crafts that boys delight; they enjoy the building of them quite as much. and a boy who can build a good ship is not to be laughed at by any mechanic or architect, no matter how tall or how old he may be. the young ship-builder who understands his trade, when he is about to put a vessel on the stocks--to speak technically--first makes up his mind whether it is to be a ship, a schooner, a sloop, or merely a sail-boat, and determines its size. then he selects a good piece of solid, but light wood, which will be large enough for the hull. pine is generally used; but if he can get a piece of well-seasoned white willow, he will find it to work very easily. then he shapes his hull with knife and saw, according to the best of his ability. on this process the success of the whole undertaking depends. if the bottom is not cut perfectly true on both sides, if the bow is not shapely and even, if the stern is not rounded off and cut up in the orthodox fashion, his ship will never sail well, no matter how admirably he may execute the rest of his work. if there is a ship or boat builder's establishment anywhere within reasonable walking distance, it will well pay our young shipwright to go there, and study the forms of hulls. even if he should never build a ship, he ought to know how they look out of the water. when the hull is properly shaped it must be hollowed out. this is done by means of a "gouge," or chisel with a curved edge. a small vessel can be hollowed by means of a knife or ordinary chisel, but it is best to have a "gouge," if there is much wood to be taken out. when he has made the interior of his vessel as deep and wide as he thinks proper, he will put a deck on it, if it is a ship or a schooner; but if it is a sail-boat or sloop, he will probably only put in seats (or "thwarts," as the sailors call them), or else half-deck it. then comes the most interesting part of the work--the rigging. first the masts, which must be light and tapering, and standing back at a slight angle, are set up, and the booms and yards are attached. a great deal of ingenuity can be displayed: in making the booms work well on the masts. the bowsprit is a simple matter, and the stays, or ropes which support and strengthen the masts, are very easily attached, as they are stationary affairs. but the working-tackle and the sails will show whether our young friend has a genius for boat-building or not. if his vessel has but a single mast, and he merely makes a mainsail and a jib, he will not have much trouble; but if he intends to fit out a schooner, a brig, or a ship, with sails that will work (and where is the boy with soul so dead as to have any other kind?), he will find that he will have a difficult job before him. but if he tries hard, and examines the construction and working of sails in real ships, he will also find that he can do it. if the vessel is a fine one, she ought to be painted (this, of course, to be done before the sails are finally fastened to the booms and yards), and her name should be tastefully painted on her stern, where of course, a rudder, carefully working on little hooks, is already hung. it will be very difficult to tell when the ship will be actually finished. there will always be a great deal to do after you think all is done. flags must be made, and little halyards running nicely through little pulleys or rings; ballast must be provided and adjusted; conveniences for storing away freight, if the ship is large and voyages are contemplated, must be provided; a crew; perhaps a little cannon for salutes; an anchor and windlass, and i am sure i cannot tell you what else besides, will be thought of before the ship is done. but it will be done some time, and then comes the happy hour! if the owner is fortunate enough to live near a pond or a brook, so that he can send her right across to where his partner stands ready to receive her, he is a lucky boy indeed. what a proud moment, when, with all sails set and her rudder fixed at the proper angle, she is launched! how straight she sits in the water, and how her little streamer begins to float in the wind! now see her sails gradually puff out! she moves gently from the shore. now she bends over a little as the wind fills her sails, and she is off! faster and faster she glides along, her cutwater rippling the water in front of her, and her flags fluttering bravely in the air; and her delighted owner, with laughing eyes, beholds her triumphantly scudding over the surface of the pond! i tell you what it is, boys, i have built a great many ships, and i feel very much like building another. the orang-outang. [illustration] the orang-outang and the chimpanzee approach nearer to man in their formation and disposition than any other animals, and yet these apes seldom evince as much apparent sense and good feeling as the dog or elephant. they imitate man very often, but they exhibit few inherent qualities which should raise them to the level of many of man's brute companions. i do not wish, however, to cast any aspersions on an animal generally so good-tempered and agreeable in captivity as the orang-outang. what he might become, after his family had been for several generations in a condition of domestic servitude, i cannot tell. he might then even surpass the dog in his attachment to man and his general intelligence. at all events, the orang-outang has a certain sense of humor which is not possessed by animals in general. he is very fond of imitating people, and sometimes acts in the most grotesque and amusing way, but, like many human wits of whom we read, his manner is always very solemn, even when performing his funniest feats. an old gentleman once went to see a very large and fine orang-outang, and was very much surprised when the animal approached him, and taking his hat and his cane from him, put on the hat, and, with the cane in his hand, began to walk up and down the room, imitating, as nearly as possible, the gait and figure of his venerable visitor. there was another orang-outang, who belonged to a missionary, who performed a trick even more amusing than this. his master was preaching one sunday to his congregation, when mr. orang-outang, having escaped from the room where he had been shut up, slipped very quietly into the church, and climbed up on the top of the organ, just over the pulpit, where his master was delivering his sermon. after looking about him for a minute or two, the ape commenced to imitate the preacher, making all his gestures and motions. of course the people began to smile when they saw this, and the minister, thinking that they were behaving very improperly, rebuked them for their inattention, and preached away more earnestly than before. the orang-outang, of course, followed his example, and commenced to gesticulate so earnestly and powerfully that the congregation burst into laughter, and pointed out the irreverent ape. when he turned and saw the performance of his imitator, the preacher could not help laughing himself, and the orang-outang, after a good deal of time had been spent in catching him, was put out of church, and the services went on as usual. nobody likes to be made an object of ridicule, and it is probable that this disposition of making fun of people, which seems so natural to the orang-outang, would prevent his becoming a domesticated member of our families, no matter how useful and susceptible of training he might prove to be. nearly all of us have some comical peculiarity, and we would not want an animal in the house who would be sure, at some time, to expose us to laughter by his imitative powers. so i am afraid that the orang-outangs, intelligent as they are, will have to stay in the woods. little bridget's bath. little bridget was a good girl and a pretty one, but she had ideas of her own. she liked to study her lessons, to mind her mother, and to behave herself as a little girl should, but she did despise to be washed. there was something about the very smell of soap and the touch of water which made her shrink and shiver, and she would rather have seen the doctor come to her with a teaspoonful of medicine than to have her aunt ann approach with a bowlful of water, a towel, and a great piece of soap. [illustration] for a long time little bridget believed that there was no escape from this terrible daily trial, but one bright morning, when she awoke very early, long before any one else in the house, she thought that it was too bad, when everything else was so happy,--when the birds and butterflies were flying about so gayly in the early sunbeams, and the flowers were all so gay and bright, and smelling so sweet and contented, that she should have to lie there on her little bed until her aunt ann came with that horrible soap and towel! she made up her mind! she wouldn't stand it; she would run away before she came to wash her. for one morning she would be happy. so up she jumped, and without stopping to dress herself, ran out among the birds and flowers. she rambled along by the brook, where the sand felt so nice and soft to her bare feet; she wandered through the woods, where she found blackberries and wild strawberries, and beautiful ferns; and she wandered on and on, among the rocks and the trees, and over the grass and the flowers, until she sat down by a great tree to rest. then, without intending anything of the kind, she went fast asleep. she had not slept more than five minutes, before along came a troop of fairies, and you may be assured that they were astonished enough to see a little girl lying fast asleep on the grass, at that time in the morning. "well, i never!" said the largest fairy, who was the principal one. "nor i," said the next biggest; "it's little bridget, and with such a dirty face! just look! she has been eating blackberries and strawberries--and raspberries too, for all i know; for you remember, brother, that a face dirtied with raspberries is very much like one dirtied with strawberries." "very like, indeed, brother," said the principal one, "and look at her feet! she's been walking in the wet sand!" "and her hands!" cried the very least, "what hands! they're all smeared over with mixtures of things." "well," said the next biggest, "she is certainly a dirty little girl, but what's to be done?" "done?" said the principal one. "there is only one thing to be done, and that is to wash her. there can be no doubt about that." all the fairies agreed that nothing could be more sensible than to wash little bridget, and so they gathered around her, and, with all gentleness, some of them lifted her up and carried her down towards the brook, while the others danced about her, and jumped over her, and hung on to long fern leaves, and scrambled among the bushes, and were as merry as a boxful of crickets. when they approached the brook, one of the fairies jumped in to see if the water was warm enough, and the principal one and the next biggest held a consultation, as to how little bridget should be washed. "shall we just souse her in?" said the next biggest. "i hardly think so," said the principal one. "she may not be used to that sort of thing, and she might take cold. it will be best just to lay her down on the bank and wash her there." so little bridget, who had never opened her eyes all this time (and no wonder, for you will find, if you are ever carried by fairies while you are asleep, that they will bear you along so gently that you will never know it), was brought to the brook and laid softly down by the water's edge. then all the fairies set to work in good earnest. some dipped clover blossoms in the water, and washed and rubbed her mouth and cheeks until there was not a sign left of strawberry or blackberry stain; others gathered fern leaves and soft grass, and washed her little feet until they were as white as lambs' wool; and the very least, who had been the one to carry her hand, now washed it with ever so many morning-glory-blossom-fuls of water and rubbed it dry with soft clean moss. other fairies curled her hair around flower stalks, while some scattered sweet smelling blossoms about her, until there was never such a sweet, clean, and fragrant little girl in the whole world. and all this time she never opened her eyes. but no wonder, for if you are ever washed by fairies while you are asleep, you will find that you will never know it. when all was done, and not a speck of dirt was to be seen anywhere on little bridget, the fairies took her gently up and carried her to her mother's house, for they knew very well where she lived. there they laid her down on the doorstep, where it was both warm and shady, and they all scampered away as fast as their funny little legs could carry them. it was now about the right time in the morning to get up, and very soon the front door opened and out came aunt ann, with a bucket on her arm, which she was going to fill at the well for the purpose of giving little bridget her morning wash. when aunt ann saw the little girl lying on the door step she was so astonished that she came very near dropping the bucket. "well, i never!" said she, "if it isn't little bridget, and just as clean as a new pin! i do declare i believe the sweet innocent has jumped out of bed early, and gone and washed and combed herself, just to save me the trouble!" aunt ann's voice was nothing like so soft and gentle as a fairy's, and it woke up little bridget. "you lovely dear!" cried her aunt, "i hadn't the least idea in the world that you were such a smart little thing, and there is no doubt but that you are now old enough to wash and dress yourself, and after this you may do it!" so, after that, bridget washed and dressed herself, and was just as happy as the birds, the butterflies, and flowers. some novel fishing. [illustration] fishing has one great peculiarity which makes it often vastly more interesting than hunting, gunning, or many other sports of the kind, and that is that you never know exactly what you are going to get. if we fish in waters known to us, we may be pretty sure of what we shall _not_ get, but even in our most familiar creeks and rivers, who can say that the fish which is tugging at our line is certainly a perch, a cat-fish, or an eel? we know that we shall not pull up a shad or a salmon, but there is always a chance for some of those great prizes which are to be found, by rare good luck, in every river and good-sized stream; a rock-fish, or striped-bass perhaps, or a pike, or enormous chub. but there are some fish which would not only gratify but astonish most of us, if we could be so fortunate as to pull them out of the water. for instance, here are some fish with both their eyes on one side of their heads. [illustration] these are turbots, and are accounted most excellent eating. they resemble, in their conformation but not in their color, our flounders or flat-fish, which some of you may have caught, and many of you have eaten. these fish lie on one side, at the very bottom of the water in which they live, and consequently one eye would be buried in the mud and would be of no use, if they were formed like common fish. but as their enemies and their food must come from above them, they need both their eyes placed so that they can always look upwards. in the picture at the head of this article, you will see some soles lying together at the bottom. these are formed in the same way. they are white on one side, which is always down except when they are swimming about, and a very dark green on the other, so that they can scarcely be distinguished from the mud when they are lying at the bottom. the turbot, however, as you see, is very handsomely spotted. but there are much stranger fish than these flat fellows, and we must take a look at some of them. what would you say if you were to pull up such a fish as this on your hook? [illustration] this is a _hippocampus_, or sea-horse. he is a little fellow, only a few inches in length, but he is certainly a curiosity. with a head and neck very much like those of a horse, he seems to take pleasure in keeping himself in such a position as will enable him to imitate a high mettled charger to the greatest advantage. he curves his neck and holds up his head in a manner which few horses adopt, unless they are reined up very tightly. i have seen these little fellows in aquariums, and have always regarded them as the most interesting of fishes. but although it is by no means probable that any of us will ever catch a sea-horse, we might get even stranger fish upon our hooks. if we had a very large hook, a long and strong line, and a tempting bait, it is just possible, if we were to go to exactly the right spot, and had extraordinary good fortune, that we might catch such a beauty as this. [illustration] this fellow you will probably recognize as the cuttle-fish. some persons call it the devil-fish, but the name is misapplied. the devil-fish is a different kind of a sea monster. but the cuttle-fish is bad enough to have the very worst name that could be bestowed upon him. those great arms, which sometimes grow to a length of several feet, he uses to wrap around his prey, and they are strong and tough. he has two eyes and a little mouth, and is about as pugnacious a fish as is to be found anywhere. if i should ever haul a cuttle-fish into my boat, i think i should feel very much like getting out, no matter how deep the water might be. there was once a sea captain, who was walking on a beach with some of his men, when he spied one of these cuttle-fish, travelling over the sand towards the water. he thought it would be a fine thing to capture such a strange fish, and he ran after it, and caught hold of one of its legs. but he soon wished that it had got away from him, for the horrid creature turned on him, and wrapped several of its long arms or legs--whichever they may be--around him, and the poor captain soon began to fear that he himself would not be able to escape. nothing that he could do would loosen the hold of the monster upon him, and if it had not been for a sailor who ran up with a hatchet and cut the limbs of the cuttle-fish from its body, the poor captain might have perished in the embrace of this most disagreeable of all fishes. there are a great many stories told of this fish, and it is very probable that all the worst ones are true. canary birds are very fond of pecking at the bones taken from small cuttle-fish, and india-ink is made from a black substance that it secretes, but i would rather do without canary birds altogether, and never use india-ink, than to be obliged to catch my own cuttle-fish. but while we are hauling strange things up from the deep, suppose we take something that is not exactly a fish, but which is alive and lives in the water. what do you think of a living thing like this? this is a polypier, and its particular name is the _fungia_ being so called because it resembles a vegetable fungus. the animal lives inside of that circular shell, which is formed something like the under side of a toad-stool. between the thin plates, or leaves, the polypier thrusts out its arms with little suckers at the ends. with these it seizes its food and conveys it to its mouth, which is situated at the centre of its body. [illustration] but there are more strange fish in the sea than we can ever mention, and the strange fish are by no means the most profitable. still there is a pleasure in fishing, no matter what we pull up. the greatest fishers in the world are fish. the whale will catch, in the course of a day, enough herring to last a family for many years, and in all the rivers and oceans and lakes, fishing is going on so constantly and extensively that the efforts of man in that direction seem ridiculous, by contrast. [illustration] the tunny, a large fish, measuring from two to five feet in ordinary length, is a great fisher. he, like the whale, is fond of herrings, and he likes them fresh, not salt, smoked, or pickled. often, when the fishermen are busy in their boats, setting their nets for herring, a troupe of tunnies will come along, and chase the herring in every direction, swallowing every unfortunate fellow that they can catch. some of the fishers that live in the sea are terrible fellows, and are by no means content with such small game as herring. the sword-fish, for instance, always appears to prefer large victims, and he has such strong tastes of that kind, that he has been known to attack ships, driving his long sword clean through the bottom of the vessel. but he generally comes off second best on such occasions, for his sword is very often broken off and left sticking fast in the thick hull. [illustration] the sword-fish has a better chance when he attacks a whale, and this he has often been known to do. the whale could probably kill the sword-fish, if he could get one good crack at him, but the smaller fish is generally active enough to keep out of the way of harm, while he drives his sword into the whale again and again, until the great creature often perishes from loss of blood. the shark, as you all know, is the most ferocious and dangerous of all the fishers in the sea. he considers anything suitable for a meal which will go into his mouth; he will eagerly snap at a man, a mouse, or even a tin coffee-pot, or a band-box. so savage and relentless is this "tiger of the sea" as he is sometimes called, that it is gratifying to think that he occasionally goes out fishing and gets caught himself. many instances have been related of natives of the pacific islands, who are accustomed to bathe so much in the ocean that they swim almost like fishes themselves, who have successfully given battle to sharks which have pursued them. the shark is unable, from the peculiar formation of his mouth, to seize the man, unless he can turn partially over. therefore the man takes care to keep below the shark, and a few stabs with his long knife are generally sufficient to finish the combat, and to slay the monster. [illustration] still, although it appears so easy to kill a shark in this way, i think it will generally be found preferable to try for some other kind of fish. let others go seek the shark, the sword-fish, or the squirming cuttle-fish. give us the humble perch and the tender trout. don't you say so? eagles and little girls. [illustration: the child and the eagle.] many years ago, among the mountains of switzerland, an eagle pounced down upon a little girl, and carried her away. her parents were harvesting in the field, and they did not notice the danger of their little daughter, until the great bird had lifted her up in his talons, and was flying away with her to his nest in the mountain crags. i remember having read all the particulars of this remarkable affair, but i forget whether the child was rescued alive or not. at any rate let us hope that she was. but this incident suggests the following question: ought little girls to be allowed to play out of doors in countries where there are eagles? many a child, after looking at such a picture as that upon the opposite page, might reasonably stand in awe of the national bird of our country; but i will state that it is my firm belief that a child runs quite as much risk of being swallowed up by an earthquake as it does of being carried away by an eagle. there have been a few instances where the bald-headed eagle of this country--(so called, not because its head is bald, but because it is gray)--has attacked children, but these cases are very rare indeed. the eagle which carried off the little girl in switzerland was of a very different kind from the national emblem of america,--much more powerful and fierce. but even in switzerland, if the children all lived until they were carried away by eagles, the country would soon become like one great school-house yard. so, looking at the matter in all its various aspects, i think that we may reasonably conclude that little girls, when they play out of doors, are in more danger from horses, dogs, snakes, and bad company, than of being attacked by eagles, and the children may all look upon the picture of the eagle of the alps and its baby prey without a shudder on their own account. climbing mountains. [illustration] there is nothing which can give us grander ideas of nature than to stand on the top of a high mountain. but it is very hard to get there. and yet there are very few mountains in the world which have not been ascended by man. for hundreds of years, mont blanc, that lofty peak of the alps, was considered absolutely inaccessible, but it is now frequently ascended. even ladies, and some of them americans, have stood upon its summit. but few persons, except those who have actually made the ascent of high and precipitous mountains, have any idea of the dangers and difficulties of the undertaking. the adventurers are obliged to wear shoes studded with strong iron spikes to prevent slipping; they carry long poles with iron points by which they assist themselves up the steep inclines; they are provided with ladders, and very often the whole party fasten themselves together with a long rope, so that if one slips the others may prevent him from falling. where there are steep and lofty precipices, crumbling rocks, and overhanging cliffs, such as those which obstruct the path of the party whose toilsome journey is illustrated in the accompanying engraving, the feat of climbing a mountain is hazardous and difficult enough; but when heights are reached where the rocks are covered with ice, where deep clefts are concealed by a treacherous covering of snow where avalanches threaten the traveller at every step, and where the mountain-side often seems as difficult to climb as a pane of glass, the prospect seems as if it ought to appal the stoutest heart. but some hearts are stouter than we think, and up those icy rocks, along the edges of bewildering precipices, over, under, and around great masses of rock, across steep glaciers where every footstep must be made in a hole cut in the ice, brave men have climbed and crept and gradually and painfully worked their way, until at last they stood proudly on the summit, and gazed around at the vast expanse of mountains, plains, valleys, and forests, spread far and wide beneath them. in europe there are regular associations or clubs of mountain-climbers, which at favorable periods endeavor to make the ascent of lofty and difficult mountains. nearly every peak of the pyrenees and the alps has felt the feet of these adventurers, who take as much delight in their dangerous pursuits as is generally found by the happiest of those who are content with the joys of ordinary altitudes. we have very many grand mountains in our country, but we have not yet reduced their ascent to such a system as that which these alpine clubs have adopted. but very many of our countrymen have climbed to the loftiest peaks of the white mountains, the catskills, the alleghenies, and the rocky mountains. mountain-climbing is certainly dangerous, and it is about the hardest labor of which man is capable, but the proud satisfaction of standing upon a mountain-top repays the climber for all the labor, and makes him forget all the dangers that he has passed through. andrew's plan. [illustration] "oh, andy!" said little jenny murdock, "i'm so glad you came along this way. i can't get over." "can't get over?" said andrew; "why, what's the matter?" "the bridge is gone," said jenny. "when i came across after breakfast it was there, and now it's over on the other side, and how can i get back home?" "why so it is," said andrew. "it was all right when i came over a little while ago, but old donald pulls it on the other side every morning after he has driven his cows across, and i don't think he has any right to do it. i expect he thinks the bridge was made for him and his cows." "now i must go down to the big bridge, andy, and i want you to come with me. i'm afraid to go through all those dark woods by myself," said jenny. "but i can't go, jenny," said andrew; "it's nearly school time now." andrew was a scotch boy, and a fine fellow. he was next to the head of his school, and he was as good at play as he was at his books. jenny patterson, his most particular friend, was a little girl who lived very near andrew's home. she had no brothers or sisters, but andrew had always been as good as a brother to her, and therefore, when she stood by the water's edge that morning, just ready to burst into tears, she thought all her troubles over when she saw andrew approach. he had always helped her out of her difficulties before, and she saw no reason why he should not do it now. she had crossed the creek in search of wild flowers, and when she wished to return had found the bridge removed, as andrew supposed, by old donald mckenzie, who pastured his cows on this side of the creek. this stream was not very wide, nor very deep at its edges, but in the centre it was four or five feet deep, and in the spring there was quite a strong current, so that wading across it, either by cattle or men, was quite a difficult undertaking. as for jenny, she could not get across at all without a bridge, and there was none nearer than the wagon bridge, a mile and a half below. "you will go with me, andy, won't you?" said the little girl. "and be late to school?" said he. "i have never been late yet, you know, jenny." "perhaps dominie black will think you have been sick, or had to mind the cows," said jenny. "he won't think so unless i tell him," said andrew, "and you know i won't do that." "if we were to run all the way, would you be too late?" said jenny. "if we were to run all the way to the bridge and i was to run all the way back, i would not get to school till after copy-time. i expect every minute to hear the school-bell ring," said andrew. "but what can i do, then?" said poor little jenny. "i can't wait here till school's out, and i don't want to go up to the school-house, for all the boys to laugh at me." "no," said andrew, reflecting very seriously, "i must take you home some way or other. it won't do to leave you here, and no matter where you might stay, your mother would be troubled to death about you." "yes," said jenny, "she would think i was drowned." time pressed, and jenny's countenance became more and more overcast, but andrew could think of no way in which he could take the little girl home without being late and losing his standing in the school. it was impossible to get her across the stream at any place nearer than the "big bridge;" he would not take her that way and make up a false story to account for his lateness at school, and he could not leave her alone or take her with him. what in the world was to be done? while several absurd and impracticable projects were passing through his brain the school-bell began to ring, and he must start immediately to reach the school-house in time. and now his anxiety and perplexity became more intense than ever, and jenny, looking up into his troubled countenance, began to cry. andrew, who never before had failed to be at the school door before the first tap of the bell, began to despair. was there nothing to be done? yes! a happy thought passed through his mind. how strange that he should not have thought of it before! he would ask dominie black to let him take jenny home. what could be more sensible and straightforward than such a plan? of course the good old schoolmaster gave andrew the desired permission, and everything ended happily. but the best thing about the whole affair was the lesson that young scotch boy learned that day. and the lesson was this: when we are puzzling our brains with plans to help ourselves out of our troubles, let us always stop a moment in our planning, and try to think if there is not some simple way out of the difficulty, which shall be in every respect _perfectly right_. if we do that we shall probably find the way, and also find it much more satisfactory as well as easier than any of our ingenious and elaborate plans. the wild ass. [illustration: wild asses.] if there is any animal in the whole world that receives worse treatment or is held in less esteem than the ordinary jackass, i am very sorry for it. with the exception of a few warm countries, where this animal grows to a large size, and is highly valued, the jackass or donkey is everywhere considered a stupid beast, a lazy beast, an obstinate beast, and very often a vicious beast. to liken any one to a jackass is to use very strong language. in many cases, this character of the donkey (with the exception of the stupidity, for very few donkeys are stupid, although they try to seem so) is correct, but nevertheless it is doubtful if the animal is much to blame for it. there is every reason to believe that the dullness and laziness of the donkey is owing entirely to his association with man. for proof of this assertion, we have but to consider the ass in his natural state. there can be no reasonable doubt but that the domestic ass is descended from the wild ass of asia and africa, for the two animals are so much alike that it would be impossible, by the eye alone, to distinguish the one from the other. but, except in appearance, they differ very much. the tame ass is gentle, and generally fond of the society of man; the wild ass is one of the shyest creatures in the world; even when caught it is almost impossible to tame him. the tame ass is slow, plodding, dull, and lazy; the wild ass is as swift as a race-horse and as wild as a deer. the best mounted horsemen can seldom approach him, and it is generally necessary to send a rifle-ball after him, if he is wanted very much. his flesh is considered a great delicacy, which is another difference between him and the tame animal. if any of you were by accident to get near enough to a wild ass to observe him closely, you would be very apt to suppose him to be one of those long-eared fellows which must be beaten and stoned and punched with sticks, if you want to get them into the least bit of a trot, and which always want to stop by the roadside, if they see so much as a cabbage-leaf or a tempting thistle. but you would find yourself greatly mistaken and astonished when, as soon as this wild creature discovered your presence, he went dashing away, bounding over the gullies and brooks, clipping it over the rocks, scudding over the plains, and disappearing in the distance like a runaway cannon-ball. and yet if some of these fleet and spirited animals should be captured, and they and their descendants for several generations should be exposed to all sorts of privations and hardships; worked hard as soon as their spirits were broken, fed on mean food and very little of it; beaten, kicked, and abused; exposed to cold climates, to which their nature does not suit them, and treated in every way as our jackasses are generally treated, they would soon become as slow, poky, and dull as any donkey you ever saw. if we have nothing else, it is very well to have a good ancestry, and no nobleman in europe is proportionately as well descended as the jackass. ancient riding. there are a great many different methods by which we can take a ride. when we are very young we are generally very well pleased with what most boys and girls call "piggy-back" riding, and when we get older we delight in horses and carriages, and some of us even take pleasure in the motion of railroad cars. other methods are not so pleasant. persons who have tried it say that riding a camel, a little donkey, or a rail, is exceedingly disagreeable until you are used to it, and there are various other styles of progression which are not nearly so comfortable as walking. [illustration] there were in ancient times contrivances for riding which are at present entirely unknown, except among half-civilized nations, and which must have been exceedingly pleasant. when, for instance, an egyptian princess wished to take the air, she seated herself in a palanquin, which was nothing but a comfortable chair, with poles at the sides, and her bearers, with the ends of the poles upon their shoulders, bore her gently and easily along, while an attendant with a threefold fan kept the sun from her face and gently fanned her as she rode. such a method of riding must have been very agreeable, for the shoulders of practised walkers impart to the rider a much more elastic and agreeable motion than the best made springs, and, for a well fed, lazy princess nothing could have been more charming than to be borne thus beneath the waving palm-trees, and by the banks of the streams where the lotus blossomed at the water's edge, and the ibis sniffed the cooling breeze. but when the father or brother of the princess wished to ride, especially if it happened to be a time of war, he frequently used a very different vehicle from an easy-going palanquin. he sprang into his war-chariot, and his driver lashed the two fiery horses into a gallop, while their master aimed his arrows or hurled his javelin at the foe. riding in these chariots was not a very great luxury, especially to those who were not accustomed to that kind of carriage exercise. there were no seats, nor any springs. the riders were obliged to stand up, and take all the bumps that stones and roots chose to give them, and as they generally drove at full speed, these were doubtless many and hard. there was in general no back to these chariots, and a sudden jerk of the horses would shoot the rider out behind, unless he knew how to avoid such accidents. we of the present day would be apt to turn up our noses at these ancient conveyances, but there can be no doubt that the egyptian princesses and warriors derived just as much pleasure from their palanquins and rough-going war-chariots as the ladies of to-day find in an easy-rolling barouche, or the gentlemen in a light buggy and a fast horse. beautiful bugs. [illustration] we are not apt--i am speaking now of mankind in general--to be very fond of bugs. there is a certain prejudice against these little creatures, which is, in very many cases, entirely unwarranted. the fact is that most bugs are harmless, and a great many of them are positively beautiful, if we will but take the trouble to look at them properly, and consider their wonderful forms and colors. to be sure, many insects to which we give the general name of bugs are quite destructive in our orchards and gardens, but, for all that, they are only eating their natural food, and although we may be very glad to get rid of our garden bugs as a body, we can have nothing to say against any particular bug. none of them are more to blame than the robins and other birds, which eat our cherries and whatever else we have that they like, and we never call a robin "horrid" because he destroys our fruit. true, the insects exist in such great numbers that it is absolutely necessary for us to kill as many of them as possible, and it is very fortunate that the robins and black-birds are of so much benefit to us that we are glad to let them live. but all this should not make us despise the bugs any more than they deserve, particularly as they are just as beautiful as the birds, if we only look at them in the right way. a microscope will reveal beauties in some of the commonest insects, which will positively astonish those who have never before studied bugs as they ought to be studied. the most brilliant colors, the most delicate tracery and lace-work over the wings and bodies; often the most graceful forms and beautifully-contrived limbs and bodies and wing-cases and antennã¦, are to be seen in many bugs when they are placed beneath the glasses of the microscope. [illustration: transformations of beetles.] but there are insects which do not need the aid of magnifying glasses to show us their beauties. some of the beetles, especially the large ones, are so gorgeously colored and so richly polished that they are imitated, as closely as art can imitate nature, in precious stones and worn as ornaments. there are few living things more beautiful than a great beetle, glittering in resplendent green and gold, and the girl (or woman either) who will hold one of these in her hand or let it crawl upon her arm while she examines its varied colors, shows a capacity for perceiving and enjoying the beauties of nature that should be envied by those who would dash the pretty creature upon the floor, exclaiming, "that horrid bug!" there are many insects with which we need not desire to be too familiar, such as mosquitoes, fleas, wasps, and bees; but when a "bug" is harmless as well as beautiful, there is no reason why we should not treat it as a friend. who is afraid of a butterfly? and yet a butterfly is really just as much a bug as a beetle is. the fact is that the term "bug" is applied with a certain propriety to many insects which are not at all pleasant (although the lightning bug is an exception), and we should therefore be very careful about giving what has grown to be a bad name to insects that do not deserve it, and should avoid treating such as if they were as ugly and disagreeable as the name would seem to imply. a battle on stilts [illustration: a battle on stilts.] in the year 1748 the great marshal saxe, who was travelling through the low countries, came to the town of namur in belgium. there the citizens did everything in their power to make his stay pleasant and to do him honor, and among other things they got up a battle on stilts. these inhabitants of namur were well used to stilts, for their town, which has a river on each side of it, lay very low, and was subject to overflows, when the people were obliged to use stilts in order to walk about the streets. in this way they became very expert in the use of these slim, wooden legs, and to make their stilts amusing as well as useful they used to have stilt-battles on all holidays and great occasions. the young men of the town, two or three hundred on each side, would then form themselves into opposing armies, and with flags flying and trumpets blowing they would advance to the attack. and they fought hard and well. it was against the rule to use any club or similar weapon, or to strike with the fists. punching with their elbows, to push each other down, and kicking with their stilts, to knock their opponents' legs from under them, were the methods of assault in this kind of warfare. the battle often lasted for an hour or two, the armies fighting and shouting, advancing and retreating; while their wives and sisters stood around them, encouraging them by shouts and hand-clapping, and when an unfortunate fellow was knocked down, these women would hasten to his assistance, and help him up again as soon as he had recovered from his fall. this was pretty rough sport, for the combatants fought as if their lives and fortunes depended upon the victory, and although they did not often seriously injure one another, there must have been many a sore head and bruised leg and arm after the battle was over. marshal saxe knew all about fighting, and on this occasion he declared, that if two real armies should engage with as much fury as these young fellows on stilts, the battle would be a butchery. at another time, when the archduke albert came to namur, the citizens had one of these stilt-battles, and it proved a very profitable one to them. before the fight began, the governor of the city promised the archduke to show him a battle between two bodies of men, who would be neither on horseback nor on foot; and when the engagement was over, albert was so much pleased that he gave the town the privilege of being forever exempt from the duties on beer. as the good folks of namur were nearly as good at drinking beer as they were at walking on stilts, this was a most valuable present for them. things are different in this country. it is said that in 1859 a man walked across the rapids of the niagara river on stilts, but i never heard of any of his taxes being remitted on that account. drawing the long bow. [illustration] when a man has a bow and arrows as long as those used by some of the natives of brazil, so that he has to lie down on his back, and hold the bow with his foot when he shoots, he may well be said to draw a long bow, but it is not of these people that i now intend to speak. without describing any particular school of archery, i merely wish to give a few instances where "the long bow" has been drawn in words, about feats with the bow and arrows. this expression, "drawing the long bow," does not always mean that a falsehood has been told. it often refers to a very wonderful story, which may be true enough, but which is so marvellous that it requires a firm trust in the veracity of the narrator for us to believe it. so now let us see what long bows have been drawn about bows and arrows. such stories commenced long ago. the poet virgil, in the "ã�neid," tells of four archers who were shooting for a prize, the mark being a pigeon, tied by a cord to the mast of a ship. the first man struck the mast with his arrow, the second cut the cord, and the third shot the pigeon while it was flying away. there now being nothing for the fourth archer to shoot at, he just drew his bow, and sent his arrow flying towards the sky with such velocity that the friction of the air set the feathers on fire, and it swept on, like a fiery meteor, until it disappeared in the clouds. it would be very hard, even in this progressive age, to beat that story. the greeks could tell tall stories, too, of their archers. an historian, named zosimus, tells of a man who shot, at the same time, three arrows from the same bow at three different targets, and hit them all! it is to be hoped that his histories contained some things easier to believe than this. but as we approach the present age we still find wonderful narrations about archers. robin hood, for instance, was a great fellow with the bow. it is said that on one occasion he shot an arrow so that it fell a mile from where he was standing! a long shot, and hard to be equalled by the crack rifles of the present day. sir walter scott, in "ivanhoe," introduces robin hood under the name of locksley, and in a shooting match, when his opponent had planted his arrow right in the centre of the bull's-eye, and everybody, of course, thought that nothing better than that could be done, master robin just steps up and lets fly his arrow, driving it into the arrow that was sticking in the target, splitting it from end to end! and then there is that famous story about william tell. many persons have their doubts about this performance, and either assert that there never was such a person as tell, or that no man could have confidence enough in his own skill to shoot at an apple on his son's head. but i prefer to believe this good old story, and, in fact, i see no good reason to doubt it. there was a dane, named foke, of whom the same story is told, and an englishman, named william of cloudesley, is said to have shot an apple from his son's head merely to show his expertness. most of the stories of bows and arrows relate to the accurate aim of the archers, but here is one which shows the tremendous force by which an arrow may be propelled, if the bow is strong and long enough. a french gentleman named blaise de vigenã¨re, says that he _saw_ a turk, named barbarossa, an admiral of a ship called the grand solyman, send an arrow from his bow, right through a cannon-ball! he did not state whether the cannon-ball had a hole through it, or not. but i think that the most wonderful, astounding, and altogether amazing story about arrow-shooting is told of the indians who used to inhabit florida. it is stated that these indians were in the habit of assembling, in parties of ten or a dozen, for the purpose of having some amusement in archery. they would form themselves into a circle, and one of them throwing an ear of maize or indian corn into the air, the rest would shoot at it and would shell it of every grain of corn before it fell to the ground. sometimes, the arrows would strike it so hard and fast that it would remain suspended in the air for several minutes, and the cob never fell until the very last grain had been shot from it! after such a specimen of the drawing of the long bow as this, it would not be well to introduce any feebler illustrations, and so i will keep the rest of my anecdotal arrows in my quiver. an ancient theatre. [illustration] i suppose you are all familiar with pictures of the colosseum at rome, but unless you have carefully studied detailed descriptions of this edifice it is impossible for you to properly comprehend the grand style in which the ancients amused themselves. this great theatre, the ruins of which are now standing in rome, and which will probably stand for hundreds of years longer, was built nearly eighteen hundred years ago. it is a vast oval building, four stories high, and capable of containing ninety thousand spectators! seats, one row above the other like steps, were placed around the walls, from top to bottom. there was no roof to the building, and if the sun was hot, or it rained, the people were obliged to shelter themselves as well as they could, although it is probable that the seats for the emperors and other great dignitaries were protected by awnings. in the centre of the building, down at the foot of the seats, was the great amphitheatre where the performances took place. and wonderful performances they were. there were sometimes great fights between lions, tigers, bulls, and bears; sometimes wild beasts were slain by men, and sometimes men were slain by wild beasts. there were gladiatorial combats, executions of criminals, and many other kinds of cruel and barbarous amusements. when the colosseum was inaugurated, five thousand wild beasts were put to death, and afterwards, at the celebration of a great victory, eleven thousand animals perished. under the ground, in two vast basement stories, the beasts were kept in cages until they were brought up to destroy human life or to be butchered themselves. for six hundred years these barbarous games were celebrated in the colosseum, but it afterwards became a fortress, and it was used at one time for a hospital. when it began to decay, many of the inhabitants of rome carried away portions of its materials to build houses for themselves, but such depredations have long been forbidden and now the colosseum stands, useless and ruined, a silent memento of the wickedness of man. people are bad enough in our age, but the day is past, when ninety thousand men, women, and children could be gathered together to see other men, women, and children torn and devoured by lions and tigers. let us hope, that by the time the colosseum has entirely crumbled away, men will no longer meet in thousands to kill and mangle each other on the battle-field. bird chat. [illustration: bird chat.] in a far-off country, on a summer day, it chanced that two cormorants stood on a great rock, lazily dozing. this rock was by the side of a little river that, only a few miles below, flowed into the sea; for the cormorant is a marine bird, and haunts the sea-coast. it was a lovely place, although not very far from the habitations of men, and a number of cows had laid themselves down in the grassy field that surrounded an old ruined temple on the gentle slope of a hill above the river. the day had been still and hot, but now a soft breeze was stirring the long grasses, and bending the tassels of the reeds gracefully over the water, and the scent of flowers came floating down from the vines clambering over the old ruin, and the hum of insects filled the air. but i do not think the cormorants noticed any of these things. their long necks were folded so that their heads nearly rested on their backs, for, as i said before, they were dozing. the truth is, these birds had eaten so much they had made themselves perfectly stupid, which is a bad way the cormorant has, as, no doubt, you know; for it has probably happened to you some time in your life to have indulged yourself so freely in eating something that you liked that you have been scornfully called "a little cormorant!" but this state of insensibility was passing away, and they were now in a gentle doze, and sleeping, thinking of the company they were to entertain. for these cormorants had come to this spot to meet their cousin the pelican to consult with him on some family matters. upon their first arrival at the place they had set to work to get together a good supply of fish, for this is the only food of both the cormorant and the pelican. in a short time they landed a great number, and bestowed them in a safe place, and then they set to work catching fish for themselves and eating them greedily. you might suppose such a lazy-looking bird would find it impossible to catch anything so active as fish. but you should see it when it is fully awake and hungry. the bird darts through the water with a speed greater than that of the fishes. its wings can be closed so tightly that they do not hinder its progress, and the tail serves for a rudder, while the broadly-webbed feet act as paddles. its long, snake-like neck gives it the power of darting its beak with great rapidity, and the hook at the end of the beak prevents the prey from escaping. the bird is also a diver, and can stay a long time under water. [illustration] our two cormorants opened their eyes when they heard a slight splashing in the water. something was about to invade their retreat. they had not long to wait. slowly into the stream waded a bittern. seeing the cormorants there he stopped; and, drawing himself up into as small a compass as possible, he sunk his head in his shoulders, and nothing could be seen of his long neck, while his bill was thrust up in the air as if he cared nothing for his neighbors or their affairs. the cormorants heartily wished he would go away, and they kept their eyes open and watched him, for fear he would spy the fish they had carefully hidden in the wet grass, for the bittern also lives on fish. so the cormorants winked and blinked, and thought how different the bittern looked when on the alert for his prey, or calling his mate. many a time had they been roused out of their sleep by the terrible night-cry of the bittern--a fearful sound, something between the neighing of a horse, the bellow of a bull, and a shriek of savage laughter, and so loud and deep it seemed to shake the marshy ground. [illustration] soon there appeared hovering over them a snowy cloud. as it floated nearer it proved to be a magnificent pelican with its gigantic wings outspread. it alighted near the cormorants, at the foot of a little grassy hill. it was an old male bird, very wise and very cunning. he greeted his cousin cormorants cordially, but, ruffling up the crest of curled feathers on his head, and shaking his half-folded wings angrily, he looked askance at the bittern. now the bittern is a very unsocial bird, and as he took not the least notice of the new comer, the pelican could not pick a quarrel with him. therefore he turned to his cousins, and said: "i have just come from my pleasant home on a rocky island. the waters make music there all day long, and the green moss gleams through the white foam, and gay-colored fish sparkle in the sunlight; so that when men behold it they exclaim: 'see! what a beautiful spot!' there are some birds that like dingy pools, where only coarse rushes grow, where there is nothing but blight and mildew, where even carrion crows will not fly, and at which men shudder." now this exactly described the places the bittern prefers to all others; but, as he really considered them very captivating, and hated the very sight of mankind, he did not feel abashed by the pelican's stinging rebuke, and perhaps took it for a compliment; and there is no knowing how long he would have staid there, if a frisky little hoopoe had not chanced to alight on a tree that had fallen across a foaming brook not very far from the group of birds. not liking so much company, the bittern stalked away. the hoopoe nodded so often to the birds that its beautiful tall crest trembled as if a breeze stirred it, and having preened its prettily-barred feathers for awhile, it began to talk as fast as ever it could. "i have came from a long distance, and only stopped twice on my way to get a meal of insects, which i can dig out of decaying wood with my long curved beak, very fast, i can tell you. and what do you think i saw in that place i came from? you would never guess. why, men had some pet cormorants that they had trained to catch fish for them! oh! it was fun! and i heard these men say that in the days of charles i. of england (i hope you know who he is, for i'm sure i don't), cormorants were kept by nobles and kings for the purpose of catching fish, and that there was attached to the court an officer called the king's master of the cormorants. did you ever hear the like of that?" [illustration] although this was strictly true, the cormorants had never heard of it; but, before they could answer, a loud, deep voice cried; "heigho! what is all that?" the startled birds turned towards the spot from whence the voice proceeded, and there, perched on a lonely rock, a good distance to the left of them, was a great bird with very large bright eyes and powerful curved beak. neither the hoopoe nor pelican had ever before seen him, but the cormorants knew him very well. he was the peregrine falcon. and they knew him because, like them, he chose rocky ledges, high and inaccessible, for his nest. and although his nests were usually on loftier crags than theirs, they were quite neighborly, especially as they did not chase the same prey, the cormorants drawing theirs from the sea, and the falcons finding theirs in the air. [illustration] "those people you speak of," said he sternly to the frightened hoopoe, "_may_ have had cormorants to catch their fish, but i never heard of it before. whereas all history is full of the exploits of my ancestors, and monarchs and nobles spent immense fortunes in buying and keeping falcons that hunted birds grandly." now the hoopoe knew very well that it was not this falcon, but the great gerfalcon, his cousin, that was formerly held in such high esteem; but he did not dare to say so, and, as he must be saying something, he turned to the pelican. "i have long wanted to meet with you to ask you if is true that you tear open your breast with your hooked bill, and feed your young with your own blood?" "not a word of truth in it!" replied the pelican scornfully, "i am often obliged to gather food in places far from home. i do not dive into the water like the cormorant, but catch, with a sidelong snatch of my bill, the fish that rise to the surface. this loose skin, that is now so folded up under my beak that you can scarcely see it, i can distend into an enormous pouch. this i fill with fish, and my wings being wide and powerful, i can easily carry a great weight of fish through the air. when i reach home i feed my young by pressing my beak against my breast, and thus forcing out the enclosed fish. and on the tip of my beak is a little curved hook as red as a drop of blood. and now you know the whole story." "thank you," said the hoopoe, "i must go and tell the storks all about it." and away he darted like a streak of colored light. the falcon, too, lazily spread out his large wings, and soared majestically up into the air, leaving the pelican and cormorants to discuss their family affairs and their dinner in peace. mummies. [illustration] a mummy is not a very pretty thing to look at; but, considered properly, it is certainly interesting. that stiff form, wrapped up tightly in ever so many dirty cloths, with a black shrivelled face which looks as if it had been cut out of a piece of wood and then smoked, was once, no doubt, a very pleasant person to know. if it was a woman, it played with the children; sewed a little, perhaps; complained of the heat, and went to parties. if it was a man, it probably whistled a little, and sang; settled up its accounts, was fond of horses, and took an interest in the vegetable garden. most of the mummies that have been brought from egypt to this country were originally kings, princes, princesses, noblemen, and priests, for few but those high-born folks could afford to be so well preserved as to last all this time; but it is very certain that none of them ever imagined that, thousands of years after their death, they would be carried away to countries never heard of in their day, and be gazed at by people who wore chignons and high-top hats, and who were not born until they had been dead three thousand years. when we consider the care and skill with which the dead egyptians used to be embalmed and encased in their sarcophagi, it is not surprising that their poor bodies have been so well preserved. at the head of this article you see a mummy as it appears when it has been embalmed and wrapped in its bandages. here is the stand on which it is then placed. [illustration] very often, when the body had been a king or some great personage, its face was covered with a mask of thin gold, and its bandages were ornamented with pictures and inscriptions. [illustration] when this work of decoration was completed, it was placed in a coffin which was made large enough to hold the stand. this coffin was very handsomely ornamented, and then, in order to make everything very secure indeed, it was enclosed in another or exterior coffin, which was also decorated in the highest style known to egyptian artists. [illustration] one would now suppose that this great king or priest was safe enough, looking at the matter in an ordinary light. but the egyptians did not look at these matters in ordinary lights. quite otherwise. they intended the useless bodies of their grandees to be packed away so that they should not be disturbed as long as the world lasted, little dreaming of the americans and europeans who would come along, in a few thousand years, and buy them for their museums. so they put the mummy, with its stand and its two coffins, into a great stone box called a sarcophagus, and this was fastened and plastered up so as to seem like one solid rock. then, if the inmate had ever done anything wonderful (or sometimes, no doubt, if he had not been famous for anything in particular), the history of his great achievements, real or fancied, was sculptured on the stone. these hieroglyphics have been deciphered in several instances, and we have learned from them a great deal of egyptian history. [illustration] dead poor people, as well as kings and princes, were made into mummies in egypt, but they were not preserved by such costly means as those i have mentioned. after they had been embalmed, they were wrapped up as well as the means of their relatives would allow, and were placed in tombs and vaults, sometimes with but one coffin, and sometimes without any. in many cases the mummy was not buried at all, but kept in the house of the family, so that the friends and relatives could always have it with them. this may have been very consoling to the ancient egyptians, but to us it seems a truly mournful custom. and it is by no means distressing to think, that though the people who may be in this country three thousand years hence may possibly find some of our monuments, they will discover none of our bodies. tame snakes. [illustration] we have often heard of the tamed snakes belonging to the serpent-charmers of india and africa, but it is seldom that the harmless serpents of civilized countries have been domesticated. but the common snake, sometimes called the garter-snake, which harmlessly shows its dark green and yellow colors among the grass and bushes, has been tamed and has shown quite a fair amount of respect and affection for its human friends. a french writer relates that he knew a lady who had a snake which was so tame that it came when it was called, followed its mistress about, climbed up into her lap, and gave many signs of knowing and liking her. it would even swim after her when she threw it into the water from a boat. but this last feat proved fatal to it, for once swimming thus and endeavoring to keep up with the boat, the tide became too strong for it, and it was carried away and drowned. i am very much afraid that that lady did not deserve even as much affection as the snake gave her. the boys and girls in france sometimes amuse themselves by getting up a snake-team. [illustration] they tie strings to the tails of two common harmless snakes, and then they drive them about, using a whip (i hope gently) to make these strange steeds keep together and go along lively. it is said that snakes which have been played with in this way soon begin to like their new life, and will allow the children to do what they please with them, showing all the time the most amiable disposition. there is nothing very strange in a tamed snake. toads, tortoises, spiders, and many other unpromising animals have been known to show a capacity for human companionship, and to become quite tame and friendly. in fact, there are very few animals in the world that cannot be tamed by man, if man is but kind enough and patient enough. gymnastics. every one who has a body that is worth anything at all, ought to do his best to keep it in good order, and there is no better way of attaining this desirable object than by a proper course of gymnastics. and to know just what is proper for certain ages and certain individuals, demands a great deal of thought and judgment. improper gymnastics are much worse than none. we can generally, however, find those who are able to advise us in regard to the exercise one ought to take. this necessity of training the body as well as the mind has been recognized from the earliest ages, and the ancient greeks and romans paid as much attention to their gymnasiums as they did to their academies; and from their youth, their boys and girls were taught those exercises which develop the muscles and ensure good health. some of their methods, however, were not exactly the most praiseworthy. for instance, they would encourage their youngsters to fight. [illustration] this engraving, copied from an ancient picture, shows how spiritedly the children practised this exercise. it would have been better if the individual with the stick had laid it over the backs of the young combatants, instead of using it to direct their struggles. there are three kinds of gymnastics. by the first we take exercise, simply for the sake of the good we gain from it; by the second we combine pleasure with our muscular exertion; and the third kind of gymnastics is practised for the sake of making money. the exercises of the first division are carried on in regular gymnasiums or at home, and consist of exercises with dumb-bells, bars, suspended rings, poles, and many other appliances with which most boys and girls are familiar. regular practice in a good gymnasium, under the direction of a competent teacher, is considered, by those who best understand the education of young people, an exceedingly necessary part of their education, and gymnastic instruction, both for boys and girls, is becoming more popular every year. we need give but little time to this well understood division of gymnastics, but will pass at once to the second class, where diversion and exercise are combined. this is by far the best method of gaining health and strength, and should be preferred by all instructors whenever it is possible to adopt it. it is of no use to say anything in favor of this plan to the boys and girls themselves, for they never fail to choose that form of exercise which has a good deal of play in it. and it is well they like it, for they will get more benefit from an hour of good, vigorous play, than from many lessons in the monotonous exercises in use in the gymnasiums. i shall not now speak of the lively games of boys and girls, by which their cheeks grow rosy and their legs and arms grow strong, for we all know enough about them, but i will describe some of the athletic sports of grown-up folks. there are a great many of these, some of which are of great antiquity. wrestling, boxing, vaulting, foot-racing, and similar exercises have been popular for thousands of years, and are carried on now with the same spirit as of old. out-door sports differ very much in different countries. in the united states the great game is, at present, base-ball; in england cricket is preferred, and scotland has athletic amusements peculiar to itself in the latter country a very popular game among the strong folks is called "throwing the hammer." [illustration] these hammers are not exactly what their name implies, being heavy balls of brass or iron, fitted to a long handle. the hammer is whirled around the head several times and then thrown as far as possible. the man who throws it to the greatest distance wins the game. another game, very much of this order, consists in tossing a heavy stone, instead of a hammer. the scotch call this game "putting the stone," sometimes using stones that might be called young rocks, and they "put" or throw them in a different way from the people of other countries where the game is popular. in some of the mountainous regions of the continent of europe the game is played in the manner shown in the accompanying engraving. [illustration] but it is impossible, in a short article like this, even to allude to all the different kinds of athletic games, and i will now notice some of the gymnastics by which people make a living. rope-walkers, circus-riders, and acrobats of every kind are now so common, that a description of their ordinary performances is unnecessary. they are found on every portion of the globe, some of the most proficient being now seen in china and japan. if any of you have seen the japanese troupe of acrobats with which "little allright" was connected, you will understand to what a high state of perfection physical exercises may be brought by people who give up their whole lives to the study and practice of their various feats. [illustration] in europe and this country very remarkable gymnastic performers have appeared before the public. about the middle of the last century, there lived in derby, england, a man by the name of thomas topham, who performed in public some wonderful feats of strength. at one time he lifted, by a band passed over his shoulders, three great casks of water which collectively weighed 1,836 pounds. he had a platform built for this performance, which was constructed in such a way that he could use the whole power of his body and limbs. in this feat, however, he has been surpassed by dr. winship, of boston, who has lifted, in public, heavier weights than topham ever attempted. the latter, however, was enormously strong, and performed a great many feats which made him quite famous throughout england. a favorite exhibition of public acrobats is that of pyramids, pillars, and other tall edifices, built of men, instead of bricks and stones. the venetians used to be very expert and artistic in their arrangement of these exhibitions, and the men composing the human edifice stood as immovably and gracefully as if they had been carved out of solid stone, instead of being formed of flesh and blood. [illustration] this performance has been made quite common in late years, and i have seen the celebrated "arabs" and other acrobats pile themselves up in a most astonishing manner. [illustration] one of the most popular, and at the same time dangerous, of all public gymnastic exhibitions, is that of rope-walking, and most marvellous feats on the tight-rope have been performed in many parts of the world. even in greece and rome, men practised this form of gymnastics. in later days no one has become more famous than blondin, who crossed the niagara river on a tight-rope, performing all sorts of eccentric feats while balanced on his slender support. he carried a man over on his shoulders; he wheeled a wheelbarrow across; he walked the rope blindfolded, and did many other things which would be very difficult to most people, even if they were standing on solid ground instead of being poised on a slender rope stretched high above the waters of a rapid river. in this country, however, the taste for out-door and dangerous rope-walking is not so general as it is in some countries of europe, where it is quite common to see acrobats walking on ropes stretched from the top of one high building, or steeple, to another. in venice, for instance, rope-dancers have often skipped and played on ropes reaching from the summits of two of the loftiest towers of that beautiful city. the turks were once noted for their great proficiency in rope walking, but they have been equalled by japanese, european, and american performers. many women have been famous in this line, and a madame sacqui, a frenchwoman, was such an expert artist that one of her countrymen likened her to a "homeric goddess" (although i do not know how juno or minerva would have looked on a tight-rope), and asserted that her boldness and agility were the glory of the first empire! this infatuated frenchman must have considered glory to have been very scarce in his country in madame sacqui's day. there was a french baby, however, who surpassed this lady, for the little one walked on the tight-rope before she could walk on the ground, and afterwards became famous enough to perform, in 1814, before an assembly of kings--the allied sovereigns of europe. the public performers of different kinds of gymnastic feats often make a great deal of money; but they sometimes break their necks, and frequently injure their health by over-exertion. so that exercises for health and amusement are the only kinds of gymnastics that i recommend. buying "the mirror." miss harper came into the room where george and mary conly and ella lee were playing with jack-straws. they had played everything else they could think of, and, feeling tired, had quietly settled themselves down to jack-straws. they could have amused themselves from morning until night out of doors without being weary; but mr. conly's house was in the city, and had such a tiny bit of a yard that only fairies could have got up a frolic in it. when they were in the country there were so many things they could do, and when they were tired running about, there was the see-saw on the big log under the old elm. [illustration] but they were not in the country now, and children have not the spirit to keep up their sports in the house as they do out of doors. so, when miss harper appeared with a book in her hand, george and mary sprang up from the table in delight, and exclaimed: "oh, cousin fanny! are you going to read to us?" "yes," said miss harper, "i thought you would like to hear some more of those pretty stories i read to you yesterday." "that we will!" cried george, skipping about the room, while mary, with eyes sparkling with pleasure, hastily raked the jack-straws into a pile. "we can both get into this big chair, ella," she said, "and then we can hear cumfible." now ella would much rather have played jack-straws, for she thought listening to reading was very dull business indeed; but she was a polite little girl, which is pretty much the same thing as saying she was not selfish, and seeing that george and mary were so pleased, and expected her to be so also, she made no objection, and climbed up into the big chair, and found it "cumfible," as mary had said. "it will be awfully stupid," she thought, "and this chair is so nice i am afraid i'll go to sleep, and mamma says that is very rude when any one is reading or talking to you." you see ella had not learned to be fond of books. her parents had not been in the habit of reading to her, and, although in school she could read books that had quite long words in them, still she could not read with sufficient ease to make it a pleasure to her. but she did not go to sleep, but, on the contrary, got wider and wider awake. the stories were all short, so that when the end came she remembered the beginning perfectly, and they were such lovely stories about little fairies, and how they helped children to be good, that ella was very sorry when the servant came to take her home. "i thank you very much, miss harper, for reading to us," she said, "will you please tell me the name of the book?" "it is 'the mirror,'" said miss harper, "and i will read to you often if you will come to see us." ella thought about the book all the way home, but she was so tired she was glad to go to bed after supper, and the next morning she had no time before school to say anything to her mother about the wonderful "mirror." but after dinner there was a pleasant surprise for her. her father called her into his study, and, taking her up, kissed her tenderly, and said: "i saw your teacher yesterday, and she gave me such a good account of my little girl that i am very much pleased with her. and now, if there is anything you would particularly like to have, i will get it for you, if it does not cost too much. think a moment, now! don't be in a hurry!" "oh, papa," exclaimed ella, "i don't need to think a bit! i know what i want! i do so want to have a 'mirror!'" "a _what_?" said mr. lee, suddenly putting ella down on the floor. "a 'mirror,' papa. when will you get it for me? oh! i am so glad!" and she clapped her little hands softly together. "you are a very little girl to be so vain," said mr. lee gravely, "but as i said you should have what you wanted, i will keep my promise. go and dress yourself, and we will get it this very afternoon." ella was so full of her own happy thoughts that she did not notice what he said about her being vain, or that he looked displeased, and she skipped merrily away to be dressed. in a short time she had hold of her father's hand, and was walking down broadway, looking in at the shop windows, and talking as fast as her little tongue could go. mr. lee, who knew nothing about the book with such a queer title, and supposed his daughter wanted a mirror in which to look at herself, began to hope that, as ella stopped so often to admire the pretty things in the windows, she would see something she would prefer for a present. for, though it is a very proper thing to look in the glass to see that one's face is clean, and hair smooth, he did not like it that his daughter should want a looking-glass above everything in the world. "o, papa, isn't that a lovely baby?" and ella paused in admiration before a wax doll. "yes," said mr. lee, eagerly. "would not you rather have that pretty baby than a mirror?" ella considered for a moment. she had a dolly she loved, though she was not as pretty as this one. "no, papa, i'd rather have a 'mirror.' it will be so nice to have one of my own. i hope you know where to go to get it?" she added anxiously. "certainly," said mr. lee, rather sharply, "i know just where to go." and so they went on by windows filled with floating ribbons, and shining silks; and others where there were glittering jewels, and some of the rings small enough for ella's fingers; and others where there were white fur capes spread out, with muffs that had such gay linings, and tassels; and windows hung to the very top with toys, and some of them such cunning ones--mice that could be made to run and squeak, and jumping frogs--but none of these things would ella have. at last they came to one all filled with flowers, and with this ella was in raptures. "what a very good man must live here," she said, "to put all these things out for us to see! i can smell them through the glass!" "they are put here to sell," said mr. lee, "and i know you will like that beautiful pink rose-bush a great deal better than a mirror--or that great white lily." "no, no, papa," said ella, moving impatiently away. "when will we come to the place?" "here it is," said mr. lee, as they stopped at a store where then were two huge windows filled with mirrors of all sizes. "now which one will you have? not a very large one for such a very little lady. but there is a nice little one that will just suit you, and it has a very pretty frame." "where? where, papa? i don't see it!" and ella looked about the window in a very bewildered manner. "there. in that corner, leaning against the window-frame." "why, papa, that's a looking-glass!" "and is not that what you want?" "no, sir; i want a '_mirror_'--a book." "oh! that's it!" said mr. lee, with a brighter face. "i expect you want a book called 'the mirror.'" "yes, sir," said ella, laughing, as they walked on. "how funny that you should think i wanted a looking-glass! there it is now!" she cried excitedly, pointing into the window of a book-store. it was a large sheet of paper ella saw, called a poster, but it had "the mirror" on it in very big letters. so mr. lee and ella went in, and the shopman brought her the book, but it was red, and she did not want it, and then he took down a green one, and then a brown, but ella would only have a blue one. after some trouble a blue one was found, and ella walked off hugging it close up to her. the book miss harper read had a blue cover, and i believe that ella was afraid that any other color would not contain the same stories. big game. when a man or a boy goes hunting--in a book--he might just as well go after good big game as after these little things that you see about home. so let us leave chipmunks, rabbits, and tit-birds to those poor fellows who have to shoot with real guns, and are obliged to be home in time for supper, and let us go out into the wide world, to hunt the very largest and most savage beasts we can find. it is perfectly safe,--in a book. as we can go wherever we please, suppose we try our skill in hunting the wild boar. he will be a good beast to begin with, because he is tolerably convenient, being found in southern europe, palestine, and neighboring countries, and also because he is such a destructive rascal, when he comes into the neighborhood of civilization, that every one will be much obliged to us for killing him. if he chances to get into a vineyard, in company with a set of his reckless fellows, there is small chance for a vintage that year. he tears down the vines, devours the grapes, green and ripe, and breaks and ruins trellises and everything within his reach. if we are so fortunate as to get sight of him, we will find that he is no easy game to bag. very different is he from his tame brethren with which we are acquainted--old grunters, who wallow about the mud-puddles and sleep serenely for hours, with their fat sides baking in the sun. the wild boar is as fast as a horse, and as savage as the crossest bull. he can run so that you can scarcely catch up to him with your nag at the top of his speed, and when you do reach him he will be very apt, if you are not watchful, to rip up your horse with his tusks and cut some terrible gashes in your own legs, besides. [illustration: wild boar.] we must shoot this fellow as soon as we can get a good chance, for those sharp tusks will be ready for us, if we come too close, and if he increases the distance between us, he may get among the rocks and hills, where he will surely escape, for our horses cannot go over those rough ascents at the rate the boar would gallop. when at last he is shot, the boar is capital eating. his flesh is far superior to common pork, possessing the peculiar delicate flavor which belongs to most wild meat. if we could shoot a wild boar every few days, we would be sure to fare very well during our hunting expedition. but we must press on after other game, and we will now try and get a shot at a musk-ox. we shall have to go somewhat out of our way to find this animal, for he lives in the upper portions of north america, but an ocean and a continent or two are not at all difficult to cross--in a book. the musk-ox is about as large as a small cow; he has very short legs, and horns which are very large and heavy. they extend over his forehead and seem as if they were parted in the middle, like a dandy's front hair. it is probable, if we get near enough to one of them, that we shall have no trouble in shooting him; but there is sometimes danger in this sport. a sailor once went out to hunt musk-oxen, and, to his great surprise, soon found that they intended to hunt him. a herd got after him, and one big fellow was on the point of crushing him with his great horns, when he dodged behind a rock, against which the furious animal came like a battering-ram. in the fall and winter the flesh of the musk-ox is very good indeed, but in the spring it is not so nice. it then smells like your sister's glove-box (if she uses musk), only about one hundred times as strong. if we were to cut up one of these animals when his flesh is in this condition, we would find it almost impossible to get the smell off of our knives. the winter is certainly the time to shoot this game, for then not only is his flesh very good, but his skin is covered with very long and warm hair, and we would find it even better, to keep us warm, than a buffalo robe. [illustration: the musk-ox and the sailor.] while we are thinking of skins, we might as well get a variety of them, and we will find the fur of the brown bear very valuable. so now for a brown bear. he, too, is found in the regions of ice and snow, and in the north of europe he is hunted by the peasants in a way which we will not imitate. when they find a den or cave in the rocks in which they think a bear is concealed, these sturdy hunters make all sorts of noises to worry him out, and when at last the bear comes forth to see what is the matter, he finds a man standing in front of his den, armed with a short lance with a long sharp head, and a bar of iron placed crosswise on the handle just below the head. now, a full-grown brown bear is not afraid of a man who is armed with a little weapon like this, and so he approaches the hunter, and rearing on his hind legs, reaches forth his arms to give the man a good hug, if he comes any nearer. [illustration: hunting the brown bear.] the man does come nearer, and, to the bear's great surprise, he thrusts forth his lance, which is longer than it looked, and drives the head of it into the animal's breast. the iron bar prevents the lance from entering too far into the body of the bear--a very necessary precaution, for if it was not there, the bear would push himself up along the handle of the lance and have his great paws on the man in a minute or two. but the bar keeps the bear back, and the loss of blood soon renders him so weak that the hunter can throw him down and despatch him. it is strange that the bear never tries to pull the lance out of his body. he keeps pressing it in, trying all the time to get over it at his enemy. this may be a good way to kill a bear, but i don't like it. it is cruel to the animal, and decidedly dangerous to the hunter. if i could not get a bear skin in any other way than by killing the animal with a spear, i would let the bear keep his fur. if we see any brown bears we will shoot them with our rifles, a much safer and more humane method than the pike fashion. after the bears, what shall we hunt? what do you say to a hippopotamus? that will be something that we are not accustomed to, at any rate. so away we go to the waters of africa. if we travel along the shores of the nile and other african rivers, we shall, no doubt, see some of these great creatures. but we must not expect to get a good sight of any of them, unless we are very careful to hide ourselves somewhere near where they are in the habit of coming out of the water to take a walk on land. ordinarily all that can be seen of a hippopotamus is his head or his back, sticking up out of the water. they can stay under water for a long time, occasionally sticking up their noses to get a breath of air. at night they often come on shore to see what they can find to eat. they live on grass and grains, which they find in the water and on land. these animals are generally shot or harpooned at night, when they come out of the water, but occasionally a hunter sees one on shore in the daytime, and he seldom finds any difficulty in shooting it, if he can hit it in the ear, which is its most vulnerable spot. the hippopotamus is naturally a timid animal, and seldom turns on its hunters, but sometimes it shows a courageous disposition. some hunters, having shot a young but apparently a tolerably well-grown hippopotamus, were running up to their prize, when they were astounded by the old mother beast coming up out of the water and charging towards them with tremendous roars. [illustration: a brave hippopotamus.] the hunters fired at her and then took to their heels, but having found her offspring, she stayed with it and did not pursue the men. if she had overtaken them, she would have been a terrible enemy to encounter. if, during our night-watches on the river-banks, we are so fortunate as to shoot a hippopotamus, we shall find that we have a good supply of very fine meat and what we cannot eat the natives will be delighted to get. they consider a hippopotamus a most valuable prize, and as the meat is good and there is so very much of it, their joy when they kill one is not at all surprising. the only thing that troubles them after a successful hunt is that there are so few hippopotami killed, and so many negroes to eat them. [illustration: a rhinoceros turning the tables.] and now let us try a rhinoceros hunt. this animal is found in the same regions that the hippopotamus inhabits, but he also lives in asia. he is rather a dangerous animal to hunt. he is a savage fellow when provoked; he has a great horn on his nose, and a skin so thick that it is almost bullet-proof, and, besides that, he is the largest and strongest animal on the earth, excepting the elephant. so no wonder he is a little unsafe to hunt. the rhinoceros lives on grass and herbs, and makes his home entirely on the land. his flesh, like that of the hippopotamus, is very good to eat, but rhinoceros-beef ought to be dear, if the trouble and danger in getting it is taken into consideration when the price is fixed. he very often turns and charges on the hunters, and if he gets his horn under a man or a horse, he is likely to cause trouble. it is said that a rhinoceros can kill an elephant, by ripping him up with his horn, and that the lion and all wild beasts are afraid of him. i am not at all surprised that this is the case, for i have examined the skin of a rhinoceros which i saw in a menagerie, and it was so thick and heavy that scarcely any animal could tear it, with teeth or claws, so as to get at the enemy within it. the rhinoceros which i saw in a cage was not quite full-grown. his horn was not more than an inch or two above his nose, but he was an enormous fellow, and his great hide, which was as hard as the sole of your shoe, hung on him in great folds, as if it had been made large so as to give him room to grow. he was gentle enough, and let me put my hand through the bars of his cage and take hold of his horn without making the slightest objection. but we will not find that kind of rhinoceros on the plains of africa, and if we hunt one we must kill him very soon, or be prepared to get out of his way. after a rhinoceros hunt we will not be apt to be easily frightened, no matter what beast we pursue, so we might as well go to india and hunt the bengal tiger. there is no animal more graceful in its movements, handsomer in shape and color, or more bloody and ferocious in its nature, than the royal bengal tiger. even in a cage he is a magnificent creature. when i go to a menagerie, i always look first for the bengal tigers. if we go to hunt these animals, we had better ride upon elephants, for we must go into the jungles, where the tall reeds, through which the tigers roam, are higher than our heads. [illustration: "a tiger hunt."] when we are well in the jungle, we must be careful. it is sometimes very difficult to see a tiger, even if you are quite near to him, for the stripes on his skin are very much like the reeds and leaves of the jungle, and we must keep a very sharp look-out, and as soon as we see one we must be ready with our rifles, for a tiger is very apt to begin the fight, and he will think nothing of springing on the back of an elephant and dragging one of us to the ground. sometimes the elephants are not used to hunting tigers, and when they see the savage beasts they turn and run. in that case there is often great danger, for no one can fire coolly and with certain aim from the back of a bounding elephant. if we find a tiger, and we get a good shot--or perhaps many good shots--at him, and he falls wounded or apparently dead, we must still be very careful about approaching him, for he is very hard to kill. often, when pierced with many balls, a tiger is considered to have breathed his last, he springs up all of a sudden, seizes one of his hunters in his great jaws, tears him with his claws, and then falls back dead. hunters accustomed to the pursuit of tigers, always make sure that a tiger is dead before they come near his fallen body, and they often put many balls into him after he is stretched upon the ground. we must by this time be so inured to danger in the pursuit of our big game, that we will go and hunt an animal which is, i think, the most dangerous creature with which man can contend. i mean the gorilla. this tremendous ape, as tall as a man, and as strong as a dozen men, has been called the king of the african forests. for many years travellers in africa had heard from the natives wonderful stories of this gigantic and savage beast. the negroes believed that the gorilla, or pongo, as he was called by some tribes, was not only as ferocious and dangerous as a tiger, but almost as intelligent as a man. some of them thought that he could talk, and that the only reason that he did not do so was because he did not wish to give himself the trouble. notwithstanding the stories of some travellers, it is probable that no white man ever saw a gorilla until paul du chaillu found them in africa, where he went, in 1853, for the purpose of exploring the country which they inhabit. as mr. chaillu has written several books for young folks, in which he tells his experience with gorillas, i shall not relate any of his wonderful adventures with these animals, in which he killed some enormous fellows and at different times captured young ones, all of which, however, soon died. but the researches of this indefatigable and intrepid explorer have proved that the gorilla is, as the negroes reported him to be, a most terrible animal to encounter. when found, he often comes forward to meet the hunter, roaring like a great lion, and beating his breast in defiance. if a rifle-ball does not quickly put an end to him, he will rush upon his assailants, and one blow from his powerful arm will be enough to stretch a man senseless or dead upon the ground. [illustration: "fight with a gorilla."] in a hand-to-hand combat with a gorilla, a man, even though armed with a knife, has not the slightest chance for his life. if we should be fortunate enough to shoot a gorilla, we may call ourselves great hunters, even without counting in the bears, the rhinoceroses, the tigers, and the other animals. and when we return, proud and satisfied with our endeavors, we will prove to the poor fellows who were obliged to stay at home and shoot tit-birds and rabbits, with real guns, what an easy thing it is to hunt the biggest kind of game--in a book. the bootblack's dog. [illustration] once upon a time there lived, in paris, a bootblack. he was not a boy, but a man, and he had a family to support. the profits of his business would have been sufficient for his humble wants and those of his family had it not been for one circumstance, which made trade very dull with him. and that disastrous circumstance was this: nearly every one who passed his stand had their boots and shoes already blackened! now this was hard upon our friend. there was nothing to astonish him in the fact of so many persons passing with polished boots, for his stand was in the middle of a block, and there were bootblacks at each corner. but all he could do was to bear his fate as patiently as possible, and black the few boots which came to him, and talk to his dog, his only companion, as he sat all day on the sidewalk by his box. one day, when he had just blackened his own boots (he did not charge himself anything--he only did it so as to have the air of being busy), his dog came running up to him from the muddy street, and accidentally put his dirty paw on his master's bright boots. the man, who was of an amiable disposition, did not scold much, but as he was brushing off the mud he said: "you little rascal! i wish it had been the boots of some other man that you had covered with dirt. that would have been sensible." just at that moment a thought struck the bootblack. he would teach his dog to muddy other people's boots! the man immediately acted on this idea, and gave his dog lessons every day in the art of muddying boots. in a week or two, no gentleman with highly polished boots could pass the bootblack's stand without seeing a dog rush into the street and gutter, and then come and jump on his feet, spattering his boots with mud and water, and making it necessary for him to go immediately to the nearest bootblack--which was of course the dog's master. the bootblack now had constant custom, and his circumstances began rapidly to improve. his children, being better fed, grew round and chubby; his wife had three good meals a day, and some warm flannels, and she soon lost the wan and feeble look which she had worn so long. as for the man himself, he and his dog were gay and busy all the day long. but people began to suspect something after a while. one gentleman who had his boots muddied regularly every day, once questioned the bootblack very closely, for he saw that the dog belonged to him, and the man was obliged to confess that he had taught the dog the trick. the gentleman, pleased with the smartness of the dog, and perhaps desirous of ridding his fellow-citizens of annoyance and expense, purchased the animal and took him home. but he did not keep him long. in a few days the dog escaped, and came back to his old master and his muddy trade. but i do not think that that bootblack always prospered. people who live by tricks seldom do. i have no doubt that a great many people found out his practices, and that the authorities drove him away from his stand, and that he was obliged to give up his business, and perhaps go into the army; while his wife supported the family by taking in washing and going out to scrub. i am not sure that all this happened, but i would not be at all surprised if it turned out exactly as i say. going after the cows. [illustration] if there is anything which a little country-boy likes, and which a big country-boy dislikes, it is to go after the cows. there is no need of giving the reasons why the big boy does not like this duty. it is enough to say that it is a small boy's business, and the big boy knows it. the excitement of hunting up and driving home a lot of slow, meandering cattle is not sufficient for a mind capable of grappling with the highest grade of agricultural ideas, and the youth who has reached the mature age of fifteen or sixteen is very apt to think that his mind is one of that kind. but it is very different with the little boy. to go down into the fields, with a big stick and a fixed purpose; to cross over the ditches on boards that a few years ago he would not have been allowed to put his foot upon; to take down the bars of the fences, just as if he was a real man, and when he reaches the pasture, to go up to those great cows, and even to the old bull himself, and to shake his stick at them, and shout: "go along there, now!"--these are proud things to do. and then what a feeling of power it gives him to make those big creatures walk along the very road he chooses for them, and to hurry them up, or let them go slowly, just as he pleases! if, on the way, a wayward cow should make a sudden incursion over some low bars into a forbidden field, the young director of her evening course is equal to the emergency. he is over the fence in an instant, and his little legs soon place him before her, and then what are her horns, her threatening countenance, and her great body to his shrill voice and brandished stick? admitting his superior power, she soon gallops back to the herd, with whack after whack resounding upon her thick hide. when at last the great, gentle beasts file, one by one, into the barn-yard, there is a consciousness of having done something very important in the air of the little fellow who brings up the rear of the procession, and who shuts the gate as closely as possible on the heels of the hindmost cow. there are also many little outside circumstances connected with a small boy's trip after the cows which make it pleasant to him. sometimes there are tremendous bull-frogs in the ditch. there are ripe wild-cherries--splendid, bitter, and scarce--on the tree in the corner of the field. the pears on the little tree by old mrs. hopkins's don't draw your mouth up so very much, if you peel the skins off with your knife. there is always a chance of seeing a rabbit, and although there is no particular chance of getting it, the small boy does not think of that. now, although it would hardly be worth while to walk very far for any of these things, they are very pleasant when you are going after the cows. so i think it is no wonder that the little boys like to go after the cows, and i wish that hundreds and thousands of pale-faced and thin-legged little fellows had cows to go after. the reflective stag. the more we study the habits and natures of animals the more firmly are we convinced that, in many of them, what we call instinct is very much like what we call reason. in the case of a domestic animal, we may attribute, perhaps, a great deal of its cleverness to its association with man and its capability of receiving instruction. but wild animals have not the advantages of human companionship, and what they know is due to the strength and quality of their own understanding. and some of them appear to know a great deal. there are few animals which prove this assertion more frequently than the stag. as his home is generally somewhere near the abodes of men, and as his flesh is so highly prized by them, it is absolutely necessary that he should take every possible precaution to preserve his life from their guns and dogs. accordingly, he has devised a great many plans by which he endeavors--often successfully--to circumvent his hunters. and to do this certainly requires reflection, and a good deal of it, too. he even finds out that his scent assists the dogs in following him. how he knows this i have not the slightest idea, but he does know it. therefore it is that, when he is hunted, he avoids running through thick bushes, where his scent would remain on the foliage; and, if possible, he dashes into the water, and runs along the beds of shallow streams, where the hounds often lose all trace of him. when this is impossible, he bounds over the ground, making as wide gaps as he can between his tracks. sometimes, too, he runs into a herd of cattle, and so confuses the dogs; and he has been known to jump up on the back of an ox, and take a ride on the frightened creature, in order to get his own feet partly off of the ground for a time, and thus to break the line of his scent. when very hard pressed, a stag has suddenly dropped on the ground, and when most of the dogs, unable to stop themselves, dash over him, he springs to his feet, and darts off in an opposite direction. [illustration] he will also run back on his own track, and employ many other means of the kind to deceive the dogs, showing most conclusively that he understands the theory of scent, and the dogs' power of perceiving it; and also that he has been able to devise the very best plans to elude his pursuers. not only do stags reflect in this general manner in regard to their most common and greatest danger, but they make particular reflections, suited to particular places and occasions. the tricks and manoeuvres which would be very successful in one forest and in one season would not answer at all in another place and at another time, and so they reflect on the subject and lay their plans to suit the occasion. there are many animals which possess great acuteness in eluding their hunters, but the tricks of the stag are sufficient to show us to what an extent some animals are capable of reflection. when we must not believe our eyes. there are a great number of marvellous things told us of phantom forms and ghostly apparitions--of spectres that flit about lonely roads on moonlight nights, or haunt peaceful people in their own homes; of funeral processions, with long trains of mourners, watched from a distance, but which, on nearer approach, melt into a line of mist; of wild witch-dances in deserted houses, and balls of fire bounding out of doors and windows--stories which cause the flesh of children to creep upon their bones, and make cowards of them where there is no reason for fear. for you may lay it down as a fact, established beyond dispute, that not one of these things is a _reality_. the person who tells these marvels has always what seems the best of reasons for his belief. he either saw these things himself or knew somebody, strictly truthful, who had seen them. he did not know, what i am going to prove to you, that a thing may be _true_ and yet not be _real_. in other words, that there are times when we do actually see marvels that seem supernatural, but that, on such occasions, _we must not believe our own eyes_, but search for a natural cause, and, if we look faithfully, we are sure to find one. once a vessel was sailing over a northern ocean in the midst of the short, arctic summer. the sun was hot, the air was still, and a group of sailors lying lazily upon the deck were almost asleep, when an exclamation of fear from one of them made them all spring to their feet. the one who had uttered the cry pointed into the air at a little distance, and there the awe-stricken sailors saw a large ship, with all sails set, gliding over what seemed to be a placid ocean, for beneath the ship was the reflection of it. [illustration] the news soon spread through the vessel that a phantom-ship with a ghostly crew was sailing in the air over a phantom-ocean, and that it was a bad omen, and meant that not one of them should ever see land again. the captain was told the wonderful tale, and coming on deck, he explained to the sailors that this strange appearance was caused by the reflection of some ship that was sailing on the water below this image, but at such a distance they could not see it. there were certain conditions of the atmosphere, he said, when the sun's rays could form a perfect picture in the air of objects on the earth, like the images one sees in glass or water, but they were not generally upright, as in the case of this ship, but reversed--turned bottom upwards. this appearance in the air is called a mirage. he told a sailor to go up to the foretop and look beyond the phantom-ship. the man obeyed, and reported that he could see on the water, below the ship in the air, one precisely like it. just then another ship was seen in the air, only this one was a steamship, and was bottom-upwards, as the captain had said these mirages generally appeared. soon after, the steamship itself came in sight. the sailors were now convinced, and never afterwards believed in phantom-ships. a french army marching across the burning sands of an egyptian desert, fainting with thirst and choked with fine sand, were suddenly revived in spirit by the sight of a sheet of water in the distance. in it were mirrored the trees and villages, gardens and pretty houses of a cultivated land, all reversed. the blue sky was mirrored there, too, just as you can see the banks of a lake, and the sky that bends over it, in its calm waters. the soldiers rushed towards the place, frantic with joy, but when they got there they found nothing but the hot sands. again they saw the lake at a distance, and made another headlong rush, only to be again disappointed. this happened frequently, until the men were in despair, and imagined that some demon was tormenting them. but there happened to be with this army a wise man, who did not trust entirely to his own eyes, and although he saw exactly what the others did, he did not believe that there was anything there but air. he set to work to investigate it, and found out that the whole thing was an illusion--it was the reflection of the gardens and villages that were on the river nile, thrown up into the air, like the ships the sailors saw, only in the clear atmosphere of egypt these images are projected to a long distance. and demons had nothing whatever to do with it. people used to believe in a fairy called fata morgana. wonderful things were said of her, and her dominions were in the air, where she had large cities which she sometimes amused herself by turning into a variety of shapes. the cities were often seen by dwellers on the mediterranean sea-coast. sometimes one of them would be like an earthly city, with houses and churches, and nearly always with a background of mountains. in a moment it would change into a confused mass of long colonnades, lofty towers, and battlements waving with flags, and then the mountains reeling and falling, a long row of windows would appear glowing with rainbow colors, and perhaps, in another instant, all this would be swept away, and nothing be seen but gloomy cypress trees. [illustration] these things can be seen now occasionally, as of old, but they are no longer in fairyland. now we know that they are the images of cities and mountains on the coast, and the reason they assume these fantastic forms is that the layers of air through which the rays of light pass are curved and irregular. [illustration] a gigantic figure haunts the vosges mountains, known by the name of "the spectre of the brocken." the ignorant peasants were, in former times, in great fear of it, thinking it a supernatural being, and fancying that it brought upon them all manner of evil. and it must be confessed it was a fearful sight to behold suddenly upon the summit of a lofty mountain an immense giant, sometimes pointing in a threatening attitude to a village below, as if dooming it to destruction; sometimes with arms upraised, as if invoking ruin upon all the country; and sometimes stalking along with such tremendous strides as to make but one step from peak to peak; often dwarfing himself to nothingness, and again stretching up until his head is in the clouds, then disappearing entirely for a moment, only to reappear more formidable than before. but now the spectre of the brocken is no longer an object of fear. why? because men have found him out, and he is nothing in the world but a shadow. when the sun is in the right position, an ordinary-sized man on a lower mountain will see a gigantic shadow of himself thrown upon a cloud beyond the brocken, though it appears to be on the mountain itself, and it is so perfect a representation that it is difficult to believe it is only a shadow. but it can be easily proved. if the man stoops to pick up anything, down goes the spectre; if he raises his hand, so does the spectre; if he takes a step of two feet, the spectre takes one of miles; if he raises his hat, the spectre politely returns his salute. when you behold anything marvellous, and your eyes tell you that you have seen some ghostly thing, don't believe them, but investigate the matter closely, and you will find it no more a phantom than the mirage or the spectre of the brocken. a city under the ground. under the bright skies of italy, in a picturesque valley, with the mountains close at hand and the blue waves of the mediterranean rolling at a little distance--at the foot of wonderful vesuvius, green and fertile, and covered with vines to its very top, from which smoke is perpetually escaping, and in whose heart fires are eternally raging, in this beautiful valley stands the city of pompeii. [illustration: clearing out a narrow street in pompeii.] you might, however, remain upon the spot a long time and never find out that there was a city there. all around you would see groves and vineyards, and cultivated fields and villas. for the city is beneath your feet. under the vineyards and orchards are temples filled with statues, houses with furniture, pictures, and all homelike things. nothing is wanting there but life. for pompeii is a buried city, and fully two-thirds of it has not yet been excavated. but a short walk from this place will bring you to the spot where excavations have been made, and about one-third of the ancient city lies once more under the light of heaven. it is doubtful whether you can see it when you get to it for the mounds of ashes and rubbish piled around. but, clambering over these, you will pay forty cents for admission, and pass through a turnstile into a street where you will see long rows of ruined houses, and empty shops, and broken temples, and niches which have contained statues of heathen gods and goddesses. as you wander about you will come across laborers busily employed in clearing away rubbish in obstructed streets. it is a very lively scene, as you can see in the picture. men are digging zealously into the heaps of earth and rubbish, and filling baskets which the bare-footed peasant-girls carry to the cars at a little distance. a railroad has been built expressly to carry away the earth. the cars are drawn by mules. the girls prefer carrying their baskets on their heads. the men have to dig carefully, for there is no knowing when they may come across some rare and valuable work of art. the excavations are conducted in this manner. among the trees, and in the cultivated fields there can be traced little hillocks, which are pretty regular in form and size. these indicate the blocks of houses in the buried city, and, of course, the streets run between them. after the land is bought from the owners, these streets are carefully marked out, the vines are cleared away, the trees cut down, and the digging out of these streets is commenced from the top. the work is carried on pretty steadily at present, but it is only within the last few years that it has been conducted with any degree of enterprise and skill. [illustration: a cleared street in pompeii.] let us leave this rubbish, and go into a street that has already been cleared. the first thing you will observe is that it is very narrow. it is evidently not intended for a fashionable drive. but few of the streets are any wider than this one. the greatest width of a street in pompeii is seven yards, and some are only two and a half yards, sidewalks and all. the middle of the street is paved with blocks of lava. the sidewalks are raised, and it is evident the owners of the houses were allowed to put any pavement they pleased in front of their dwellings. in one place you will see handsome stone flags the next pavement may be nothing but soil beaten down, while the next will be costly marble. the upper stories of the houses are in ruins. it is probable, therefore, that they were built of wood, while the lower stories, being of stone, still remain. they had few windows on the street, as the pompeiians preferred that these should look out on an inner square or court. to the right of the picture is a small monument, and in the left-hand corner is a fountain, or rather the stone slabs that once enclosed a fountain. as we walk slowly up the solitary street, we think of the busy, restless feet that trod these very stones eighteen hundred years ago. our minds go back to the year of our lord 79, when there was high carnival in the little city of pompeii, with its thirty thousand people, when the town was filled with strangers who had come to the great show; at the time of an election, when politicians were scheming and working to get themselves or their friends into power; when gayly dressed crowds thronged the streets on their way to the amphitheatre to see the gladiatorial fight; when there was feasting and revelry in every house; when merchants were exulting in the midst of thriving trade; when the pagan temples were hung with garlands and filled with gifts; when the slaves were at work in the mills, the kitchens, and the baths; when the gladiators were fighting the wild beasts of the arena--then it was that a swift destruction swept over the city and buried it in a silence that lasted for centuries. vesuvius, the volcano so near them, but which had been silent so many years that they had ceased to dread it, suddenly woke into activity, and threw out of its summit a torrent of burning lava and ashes, and in a few short hours buried the two cities of herculaneum and pompeii so completely that two centuries after no one could tell the precise place where they had stood, and men built houses and cultivated farms over the spot, never dreaming that cities lay beneath them. [illustration: the atrium in the house of pansa restored.] but here we are at the house of pansa. let us go in. we do not wait for any invitation from the owner, for he left it nearly two thousand years ago, and his descendants, if he have any, are totally ignorant of their illustrious descent. first we enter a large hall called the atrium. you can see from the magnificence of this apartment in what style the rich pompeiians lived. the floor is paved in black and white mosaic, with a marble basin in the centre. the doors opening from this hall conduct us to smaller apartments, two reception rooms, a parlor, the library, and six diminutive bedrooms, only large enough to contain a bedstead, and with no window. it must have been the fashion to sleep with open doors, or the sleepers must inevitably have been suffocated. at the end of the atrium you see a large court with a fountain in the middle. this was called the peristyle. around it was a portico with columns. to the left were three bedchambers and the kitchen, and to the right three bedchambers and the dining-room. behind the peristyle was a grand saloon, and back of this the garden. the upper stories of this house have entirely disappeared. this is a spacious house, but there are some in the city more beautifully decorated, with paintings and mosaics. when the rubbish was cleared out of this house, much of pansa's costly furniture was found to be in perfect preservation, and also the statues. in the library were found a few books, not quite destroyed; in the kitchen the coal was in the fire-places; and the kitchen utensils of bronze and terra-cotta were in their proper places. nearly all of the valuable portable things found in pompeii have been carried away and placed in the museum at naples. this pansa was candidate for the office of ã¦dile, or mayor of the city, at the time of the eruption of vesuvius. we know this from the placards that were found posted in various parts of the city, and which were as fresh and clean as on the day they were written. these placards, or posters, were very numerous, and there seem to have been a great many candidates for the various city offices; and it is very evident, from the inscriptions on the houses, on the walls of public buildings and the baths, that party feeling ran quite as high in this luxurious city of ancient times as it does now in any city in america. for these pompeiians had no newspaper, and expressed their sentiments on the walls, and they have consequently come down to us of the present day. these inscriptions not only related to politics, but referred often to social and domestic matters, and, taken in connection with the pictures of home scenes that were painted on the walls of the houses, give us such accurate and vivid accounts of the people that it is easy to imagine them all back in their places, and living the old life over again. pansa, and paratus, and sallust, and diomed, and julia, and sabina seem to be our own friends, with whom we have often visited the forum or the theatre, and gone home to dine. that curious-looking pin with a cupid on it is a lady's hair-pin. the necklaces are in the form of serpents, which were favorite symbols with the ancients. the stands of their tables, candelabra, &c., were carved into grotesque or beautiful designs, and even the kitchen utensils were made graceful with figures of exquisite workmanship, and were sometimes fashioned out of silver. among the pretty things found in pompeiian houses i will mention the following:-a bronze statuette of a dancing faun, with head and arms uplifted; every muscle seems to be in motion, and the whole body dancing. another of a boy with head bent forward, and the whole body in the attitude of listening. then there is a fine group of statuary representing the mighty hercules holding a stag bent over his knee; another of the beautiful apollo with his lyre in his hand leaning against a pillar. there are figures of huntsmen in full chase, and of fishermen sitting patiently and quietly "waiting for a bite." a very celebrated curiosity is the large urn or vase of blue glass, with figures carved on it in half relief, in white. (for the ancients knew how to carve glass.) these white figures look as if made of the finest ivory instead of being carved in glass. they represent masks enveloped in festoons of vine tendrils, loaded with clusters of grapes, mingled with other foliage, on which birds are swinging, children plucking grapes or treading them under foot, or blowing on flutes, or tumbling over each other in frolicsome glee. this superb urn, which is like nothing we have nowadays, is supposed to have been intended to hold the ashes of the dead. for it was a custom of ancient days to burn the bodies of the dead, and place the urns containing their ashes in magnificent tombs. [illustration: ornaments from pompeii.] instead of hanging pictures as we do, the pompeiians generally had them painted upon the smoothly prepared walls of their halls and saloons. the ashes of vesuvius preserved these paintings so well that, when first exposed to the light, the coloring on them is fresh and vivid, and every line and figure clear and distinct. but the sunlight soon fades them. they are very beautiful, and teach us much about the beliefs and customs of the old city. lovely and graceful as were these pictures, the floors of the houses are much more wonderful. they are marvels of art. not only are flowers and running vines and complicated designs there laid in mosaics, but pictures that startle with their life-like beauty. there are many of these, but perhaps the finest of all is the one found in the same house with the dancing faun. it represents a battle. a squadron of victorious greeks is rushing upon part of a persian army. the latter are turning to flee. those around the vanquished persian king think only of their safety, but the king, with his hand extended towards his dying general, turns his back upon his flying forces, and invites death. every figure in it seems to be in motion. you seem to hear the noise of battle, and to see the rage, fear, triumph, and pity expressed by the different faces. think of such wonderful effects being produced by putting together pieces of glass and marble, colored enamel, and various stones! but, leaving all these beauties, and descending to homely everyday life, we will go into a bakery. here is one in a good state of preservation. [illustration: discoveries of loaves of bread baked eighteen hundred years ago.] it is a mill and bakery together. the pompeiians sent their grain to the baker, and he ground it into flour, and, making it into dough, baked it and sent back loaves of bread. the mills look like huge hour-glasses. they are made of two cone-shaped stones with the small ends together. the upper one revolved, and crushed the grain between the stones. they were worked sometimes by a slave, but oftenest by a donkey. there is the trough for kneading the bread, the arched oven, the cavity below for the ashes, the large vase for water with which to sprinkle the crust and make it "shiny," and the pipe to carry off the smoke. in one of these ovens were found eighty-one loaves, weighing a pound each, whole, hard, and black, in the order in which they had been placed on the 23d of november, 79. suppose the baker who placed them there had been told that eighteen hundred years would elapse before they would be taken out! having wandered about the city, and looked at all the streets, monuments, and dwellings, and having seen very much more than i have here described--the forum, or town hall, the theatres, baths, stores, temples, the street where the tombs are--and having looked at the rude cross carved on a wall, showing that the religion of christ had penetrated to this pagan city--having examined all these, you will visit the amphitheatre. to do this we must leave the part of the city that has interested us so much, and, passing once more through the vineyards and orchards that still cover a large portion of the city, descend again into a sort of ravine, where we will find the amphitheatre. it was quite as the end of the city, next to the wall. it is a circus. the large open space in the centre was called the arena. here there were fierce and bloody fights; wild beasts fought with each other, or with men trained to the business and called gladiators, and these gladiators often fought with each other--all for the amusement of the people, who were never satisfied unless a quantity of blood was shed, and many were killed. this arena was covered with sand, and a ditch filled with water separated it from the seats. the seats arose from this arena, tier above tier. there were three divisions of them, separating the rich from the middle class, and these again from the slaves. it was well arranged for the comfort of the audience, having wide aisles and plenty of places of exit. the whole was covered with an awning. in the wall around the arena are the holes where thick iron bars were inserted as a precaution against the bounds of the panthers. to the right of the principal entrance are two square rooms with gratings where the wild beasts were kept. this amphitheatre would hold twenty thousand persons! [illustration: the amphitheatre of pompeii.] we visit this place last because it was while the amphitheatre was crowded with people intent upon the bloody spectacle; while wild beasts, and men more cruel than the beasts, were fighting together, and spectators less pitiful than either were greedily enjoying it, that suddenly the ground trembled violently. this perhaps was not perceived in the circus, on account of the excitement all were in, and the noise that was going on in the arena. but it was soon followed by a whirlwind of ashes, and lurid flashes of flame darted across the sky. the beasts were instantly tamed, and cowered down in abject terror, and the gladiators, for the first time in their lives, grew pale with fear. then the startled crowd within the vast building heard from the streets the fearful cry: "vesuvius is on fire!" in an instant the spectacle is forgotten; the terrified crowd rush out of the building, and happy is it for them that the architects have provided so many places of exit. some fled towards the sea, and some to the open country. those who reached the ships were saved, but woe to those who went to their homes to collect their valuables to take with them, or who took refuge under cover in the cellars. after the rain of ashes came a shower of blazing stones, which fell uninterruptedly, setting fire to all parts of the city and blocking up the streets with burning masses. and then a fresh storm of ashes sweeping down would partly smother the flames, but, blocking up the doorways, would stifle those within the houses. and to add to the horror, the volumes of smoke that poured from the mountain caused a darkness deeper than night to settle on the doomed city, through which the people groped their way, except when lighted by the burning houses. what horror and confusion in the streets! friends seeking each other with faces of utter despair; the groans of the dying mingled with the crash of falling buildings; the pelting of the fiery stones; the shrieks of women and children; the terrific peals of thunder. so ended the day, and the dreadful scene went on far into the night. in a few hours the silence of death fell upon the city. the ashes continued to pour steadily down upon it, and drifting into every crevice of the buildings, and settling like a closely-fitting shroud around the thousands and thousands of dead bodies, preserved all that the flames had spared for the eyes of the curious who should live centuries after. and a gray ashy hill blotted out pompeii from the sight of that generation. hundreds of skeletons have already been found, and their expressive attitudes tell us the story of their death. we know of the pitiful avarice and vanity of many of the rich ladies who went to their homes to save their jewels, and fell with them clutched tightly in their hands. one woman in the house of the faun was loaded with jewels, and had died in the vain effort to hold up with her outstretched arms the ceiling that was crushing down upon her. but women were not the only ones who showed an avaricious disposition in the midst of the thunders and flames of vesuvius. men had tried to carry off their money, and the delay had cost them their lives, and they were buried in the ashes with the coins they so highly valued. diomed, one of the richest men of pompeii, abandoned his wife and daughters and was fleeing with a bag of silver when he was stifled in front of his garden by noxious vapors. in the cellar of his house were found the corpses of seventeen women and children. a priest was discovered in the temple of isis, holding fast to an axe with which he had cut his way through two walls, and died at the third. in a shop two lovers had died in each other's arms. a woman carrying a baby had sought refuge in a tomb, but the ashes had walled them tightly in. a soldier died bravely at his post, erect before a city gate, one hand on his spear and the other on his mouth, as if to keep from breathing the stifling gases. thus perished in a short time over thirty thousand citizens and strangers in the city of pompeii, now a city under the ground. the coachman. [illustration] when a boy sees a coachman driving two showy, high-stepping horses along the street, or, better still, over a level country road, with his long whip curling in the air, which whip he now and then flirts so as to make a sharp, cracking noise over the horses' heads, and occasionally brings down with a light flick upon the flanks of the right or left horse,--the carriage, shining with varnish and plate, rolling along swiftly and smoothly,--the little boy is apt to think that coachman must be a very happy mortal. if the man on the carriage-box sees the boy looking at him with so much admiration, he will probably throw him a jolly little laugh and a friendly nod, and, gathering up the reins and drawing them in tightly so as to arch the horses' necks and make them look prouder and more stately than before, he will give a loud crack with his curling whip-lash, and the horses will start off at a rapid trot, and the carriage will sweep around a curve in the road so gracefully that the boy's heart will be filled with envy--not of the persons in the carriage--oh, no! riding in a close carriage is a very tame and dull affair; but he will envy the driver. an ambition springs up in his mind at that instant. of all things in the world he would rather be a coachman! that shall be his business when he grows up to be a man. and the chances are that when he goes home he tells his father so. but if the little boy, instead of lying tucked in his warm bed, should be set down at twelve o'clock at night upon the pavement in front of that great house with the tall lamps on the steps, he would see this same coachman under conditions that he would not envy at all. the empty carriage is close to the curb-stone, with the door swinging open as if to urge the owners to hurry and take possession. the high-stepping trotters are covered with blankets to protect them from the piercing cold, and, with their heads drooping, are either asleep or wondering why they are not put into the stable to take their night's rest; and the coachman is dancing about on the pavement to keep his feet warm--not by any means a merry kind of dance, although he moves about pretty briskly. he has taken off his gloves, for they seem to make his hands colder, and now he has thrust one hand into his pocket and is blowing on the other with all his might. his whip, that curled so defiantly in the air, is now pushed under his arm, and the lash is trailing, limp and draggled, on the stones. he is warmly clad, and his great-coat has three capes, but all cannot put sufficient heat into his body, for it is a bitter cold night, and the wind comes howling down the street as if it would like to bite off everybody's ears and noses. it shakes the leafless branches of the trees until they all seem to be moaning and groaning together. the moon is just rising over the church, and the coachman is standing right in a broad patch of its light. but moonlight, though very beautiful when you are where you can comfortably admire it, never warmed anybody yet. and so the poor coachman gets no good out of that. there is a party in the great house. the boy is standing where he can only see the lower steps and the tall lamps, but the coachman can see that it is lighted from garret to cellar. he knows that it is warm as summer in there. there are stands of flowers all the way up the stairways, baskets of them are swinging from the ceilings, and vines are trailing over the walls. who in there could ever guess how bleak and cold it is outside! ladies in shimmering silks and satins, and glittering with jewels, are flitting about the halls, and floating up and down the rooms in graceful dances, to the sound of music that only comes out to the coachman in fitful bursts. he has amused himself watching all this during part of the evening, but now he is looking in at the side-light of the door to see if there are any signs of the breaking up of the party, or if those he is to take home are ready to go away. he is getting very impatient, and let us hope they will soon come out and relieve him. geysers, and how they work. [illustration: the grand geyser of iceland.] geysers, or fountains of hot water or mud, are found in several parts of the world. iceland possesses the grandest one, but in california there are a great many of these natural hot fountains, most of which throw forth mud as well as water. some of the american geysers are terrible things to behold. they are generally found near each other, in particular localities, and any one wandering about among them sees in one place a great pool full of black bubbling contents, so hot that an egg thrown in the spring will be boiled in a minute or two; there he sees another spring throwing up boiling mud a few feet in the air; there another one, quiet now, but which may at any time burst out and send its hot contents high above the heads of the spectators; here a great hole in the ground, out of which constantly issues a column of steam, and everywhere are cracks and crevices in the earth, out of which come little jets of steam, and which give the idea that it would not require a very heavy blow to break in, at any point, the crust of the earth, and let the adventurous traveller drop down into the boiling mass below. in iceland the geysers are not quite so terrible in their aspect as those in california, but they are bad enough. their contents are generally water, some hot and bubbling, and some hot and still; while the great geyser, the grandest work of the kind in the world, bursts forth at times with great violence, sending jets of hot water hundreds of feet into the air. these wonderful hot springs, wherever they have been found, have excited the greatest attention and interest, in travellers and scientific men, and their workings have been explained somewhat in this way:-water having gradually accumulated in vast underground crevices and cavities, is heated by the fires, which, in volcanic regions, are not very far from the surface of the earth. if there is a channel or tube from the reservoir to the surface, the water will expand and rise until it fills the basin which is generally found at the mouth of hot springs. but the water beneath, being still further heated, will be changed into steam, which will at times burst out with great force, carrying with it a column of water high into the air. when this water falls back into the basin it is much cooler, on account of its contact with the air, and it cools the water in the basin, and also condenses the steam in the tube or channel leading from the reservoir. the spring is then quiet until enough steam is again formed to cause another eruption. a celebrated german chemist named bunsen constructed an apparatus for the purpose of showing the operations of geysers. here it is. [illustration: the artificial geyser.] you see that the two fires in the engraving--one lower and larger than the other, because the heat of the earth increases as we get farther from the surface--will heat the water in the iron tube very much as water is heated in a real geyser; and when steam enough is formed, a column of hot water is thrown out of the basin. the great subterranean reservoir is not imitated in this apparatus, but the action is the same as if the tube arose from an iron vessel. there is a great deal in bunsen's description of this contrivance, in regard to the difference in the temperature of the water in that part of the tube between the two fires, and that in the upper portion, which explains the intermittent character of the eruptions of a geyser, but it is not necessary for us to go into all his details. when we know that under a geyser the water is boiling in a great reservoir which communicates with the surface by a natural tube or spout, we need not wonder that occasionally a volume of steam bursts forth, sending a column of water far into the air. a giant puff-ball. [illustration] i suppose you have all seen puff-balls, which grow in the fields like mushrooms and toadstools, but i am quite sure that you never saw anything of the kind quite so large as that one in the picture. and yet that engraving was made from a drawing from the puff-ball itself. so we need not suppose that there is anything fanciful about it. the vegetable in question is a kind of _fungi_ called the giganti lycoperdon, and it attains its enormous size in one night! it springs from a seed so small that you could not see it, and grows, while you are asleep, to be bigger, perhaps, than you are yourself! think of that! how would you like to plant the whole garden, some afternoon, with that kind of seed? would not your father and mother, and everybody else, be astounded when they woke up and saw a couple of hundred of those things, as big as barrels, filling up every bed! they would certainly think it was the most astonishing crop they had ever seen, and there might be people who would suppose that fairies or magicians had been about. the great trouble about such a crop would be that it would be good for nothing. i cannot imagine what any one would do with a barnful of lycoperdons. but it would be wonderfully interesting to watch the growth of such a _fungus_. you could see it grow. in one night you could see its whole life, from almost nothing at all to that enormous ball in the picture. nature could hardly show us a more astonishing sight than that. tickled by a straw. [illustration] from his dreams of tops and marbles, where the soaring kites he saw, is that little urchin wakened, tickled by a wheaten straw. how do you suppose he likes it, young one with annoying paw? if i only were your mother, i'd tickle you with birchen straw. soon enough, from pleasant dreaming, you'll be wakened by the law, which provides for every vision some sort of provoking straw. in dreams of play, or hope, or loving, when plans of happiness you draw, underneath _your_ nose may wiggle life's most aggravating straw the light in the castle. on a high hill, in a lonely part of europe, there stood a ruined castle. no one lived there, for the windows were destitute of glass; there were but few planks left of the floors; the roof was gone; and the doors had long ago rotted off their hinges. so that any persons who should take up their residence in this castle would be exposed to the rain, when there was a storm; to the wind, when it blew; and to robbers, if they should come; besides running the risk of breaking their necks by falling between the rafters, every time they attempted to walk about the house. it was a very solemn, lonely, and desolate castle, and for many and many a year no human being had been known to set foot inside of it. it was about ten o'clock of a summer night that hubert flamry and his sister hulda were returning to their home from an errand to a distant village, where they had been belated. their path led them quite near to the ruined castle, but they did not trouble themselves at all on this account, for they had often passed it, both by night and day. but to-night they had scarcely caught sight of the venerable structure when hubert started back, and, seizing his sister's arm, exclaimed: "look, hulda! look! a light in the castle!" little hulda looked quickly in the direction in which her brother was pointing, and, sure enough, there was a light moving about the castle as if some one was inside, carrying a lantern from room to room. the children stopped and stood almost motionless. "what can it be, hubert?" whispered hulda. "i don't know," said he. "it may be a man, but he could not walk where there are no floors. i'm afraid it's a ghost." "would a ghost have to carry a light to see by?" asked hulda. "i don't know," said hubert, trembling in both his knees, "but i think he is coming out." it did seem as if the individual with the light was about to leave the castle. at one moment he would be seen near one of the lower windows, and then he would pass along on the outside of the walls, and directly hubert and hulda both made up their minds that he was coming down the hill. "had we better run?" said hulda. "no," replied her brother. "let's hide in the bushes." so they hid. in a few minutes hubert grasped his sister by the shoulder. he was trembling so much that the bushes shook as if there was a wind. "hulda!" he whispered, "he's walking along the brook, right on top of the water!" "is he coming this way?" said hulda, who had wrapped her head in her apron. "right straight!" cried hubert. "give me your hand, hulda!" and, without another word, the boy and girl burst out of the bushes and ran away like rabbits. when hulda, breathless, fell down on the grass, hubert also stopped and looked behind him. they were near the edge of the brook, and there, coming right down the middle of the stream, was the light which had so frightened them. "oh-h! bother!" said hubert. "what?" asked poor little hulda, looking up from the ground. "why, it's only a jack-o'-lantern!" said hubert. "let's go home, hulda." as they were hurrying along the path to their home, hubert seemed very much provoked, and he said to his sister: [illustration] "hulda, it was very foolish for you to be frightened at such a thing as that." "me?" said hulda, opening her eyes very wide, "i guess you were just as much frightened as i was." "you might have known that no real person would be wandering about the castle at night, and a ghost couldn't carry anything, for his fingers are all smoke." "you ought to have known that too, i should say, mr. hubert," answered hulda. "and then, i don't believe the light was in the castle at all. it was just bobbing about between us and the castle, and we thought it was inside. you ought to have thought of that, hulda." "me!" exclaimed little hulda, her eyes almost as big as two silver dollars. it always seems to me a great pity that there should be such boys as hubert flamry. the oak tree. [illustration] i really don't know which liked the great oak best, harry or his grandfather. harry was a sturdy little fellow, seven years old, and could play ball, and fly kites, and all such things, when he had anybody to play with. but his father's house was a long distance from the village, and so he did not often have playmates, and it is poor sport to play marbles or ball by one's self. he did sometimes roll his hoop or fly his kite when alone, but he would soon get tired, and then, if it was a clear day, he would most likely say: "grandpa, don't you want to go to the big oak?" and grandpa would answer: "of course, child, we will go. i am always glad to give you that pleasure." this he said, but everybody knew he liked to go for his own pleasure too. so harry would bring grandpa his cane and hat, and away they would go down the crooked path through the field. when they got to the draw-bars, harry took them down for his grandpa to pass through, and then put them carefully up again, so that the cows should not get out of the pasture. and, when this was done, there they were at the oak-tree. this was a very large tree, indeed, and its branches extended over the road quite to the opposite side. right at the foot of the tree was a clear, cold spring, from which a little brook trickled, and lost itself in the grass. a dipper was fastened to a projecting root above the spring, that thirsty travellers might drink. the road by the side of which the oak stood was a very public one, for it led to a city twenty miles away. so a great many persons passed the tree, and stopped at the spring to drink. and that was the reason why little harry and his grandpa were so fond of going there. it was really quite a lively place. carriages would bowl along, all glittering with plate and glass, and with drivers in livery; market wagons would rattle by with geese squawking, ducks quacking, and pigs squealing; horsemen would gallop past on splendid horses; hay wagons would creak slowly by, drawn by great oxen; and, best of all, the stage would dash furiously up, with the horses in a swinging trot, and the driver cracking his whip, and the bright red stage swaying from side to side. it generally happened that somebody in the stage wanted a drink from the spring, and harry would take the cup handed out of the window, and dip it full of the cold, sparkling water, and then there would be a few minutes of friendly chat. but the most of the talk was with the foot-passengers. the old man sat on a bench in the cool shade, and the child would run about and play until some one came along. then he would march up to the tree and stand with his hands in his pockets to hear what was said, very often having a good deal to say himself. sometimes these people would stay a long time under the shade of the tree, and there were so many different people, and they had so many different kinds of things to say, that harry thought it was like hearing a book read, only a great deal better. at one time it would be a soldier, who had wonderful things to tell of the battles he had fought. another day it would be a sailor, who, while smoking his pipe, would talk about the trackless deserts of burning sands; and of the groves of cinnamon, and all sweet spices, where bright-colored parrots are found; and of the great storms at sea, when the waves dashed ships to pieces. another time a foreigner would have much to say about the strange people and customs of other lands; and sometimes they talked in a strange language, and could not be understood, and that was very amusing. the organ-grinders were the best, for they would play such beautiful tunes, and perhaps there would be children who would tinkle their tambourines, and sing the songs that the girls sing in italy when they tread out the grapes for wine. and sometimes there would be--oh, joy! a monkey! and then what fun harry would have! and sometimes there were poor men and women, tired and sick, who had nothing to say but what was sad. occasionally an artist would stop under the tree. he would have a great many of his sketches with him, which he would show to harry and grandpa. and then he would go off to a distance, and make a picture of the splendid oak, with the old man and child under it, and perhaps he would put into it some poor woman with her baby, who happened to be there, and some poor girl drinking out of the spring. and harry and grandpa always thought this better than any of the other pictures he showed them. [illustration] the sea-side. the ocean is so wonderful itself, that it invests with some of its peculiar interest the very sands and rocks that lie upon its edges. there is always something to see at the sea-side; whether you walk along the lonely coast; go down among the fishermen, and their nets and boats; or pass along the sands, lively with crowds of many-colored bathers. but if there was nothing but the grand old ocean itself, it would be enough. whether it is calm and quiet, just rolling in steadily upon the shore, in long lines of waves, which come sweeping and curling upon the beach and then breaking, spread far out over the sand--or whether the storm-waves, tossing high their lofty heads, come rushing madly upon the coast, dashing themselves upon the sands and thundering up against the rocks, the sea is grand! what a tremendous thing an ocean is! ever in powerful motion; so wonderful and awful in its unknown depths, and stretching so far, far, far away! but, even on the coasts of this great ocean, our days seem all too short, as we search among the rocks and in the little pools for the curiosities of the sea-side. here are shells, and shells, and shells,--from the great conch, which you put up to your ear to hear the sound of the sea within, to the tiny things which we find stored away in little round cases, which are all fastened together in a string, like the rattles of a snake. in the shallow pools that have been left by the tide we may find a crab or two, perhaps, some jelly-fish, star-fish, and those wonderful living flowers, the sea-anemones. and then we will watch the great gulls sweeping about in the air, and if we are lucky, we may see an army of little fiddler-crabs marching along, each one with one claw in the air. we may gather sea-side diamonds; we may, perhaps, go in and bathe, and who can tell everything that we may do on the shores of the grand old ocean! [illustration] and if we ever get among the fishermen, then we are sure to have good times of still another kind. then we shall see the men who live by the sea, and on the sea. we shall wander along the shore, and look at their fishing-vessels, which seem so small when they are on the water, but which loom up high above our heads when they are drawn up on the shore--some with their clumsy-looking rudders hauled up out of danger, and others with rudder and keel resting together on the rough beach. anchors, buoys, bits of chains, and hawsers lie about the shore, while nets are hanging at the doors of the fishermen's cottages, some hung up to dry and some hung up to mend. here we may often watch the fishermen putting out to sea in their dirty, but strong, little vessels, which go bouncing away on the waves, their big sails appearing so much too large for the boats that it seems to us, every now and then, as if they must certainly topple over. and then, at other times, we will see the fishermen returning, and will be on the beach when the boats are drawn up on the sand, and the fish, some white, some gray, some black, but all glittering and smooth, are tumbled into baskets and carried up to the houses to be salted down, or sent away fresh for the markets. then the gulls come circling about the scene, and the ducks that live at the fishermen's houses come waddling down to see about any little fishes that may be thrown away upon the sand; and men with tarpaulin coats and flannel shirts sit on old anchors and lean up against the boats, smoking short pipes while they talk about cod, and mackerel, and mainsails and booms; and, best of all, the delightful sea-breeze comes sweeping in, browning our cheeks, reddening our blood, and giving us such a splendid appetite that even the fishermen themselves could not throw us very far into the shade, at meal-times. as for bathing in the sea, plunging into the surf, with the waves breaking over your head and the water dashing and sparkling all about you, i need not say much about that. i might as well try to describe the pleasure of eating a saucer of strawberries-and-cream, and you know i could not do it. there are nations who never see the ocean, nor have anything to do with it. they have not even a name for it. they are to be pitied for many things, but for nothing more than this. the sick pike. there is no reason why a pike should not be sick. everything that has life is subject to illness, but it is very seldom that any fish has the good sense and the good fortune of the pike that i am going to tell you about. this pike was a good-sized fellow, weighing about six pounds, and he belonged to the earl of stamford, who lived near durham, england. his story was read by dr. warwick to the literary and philosophical society of liverpool. i am particular about these authorities because this story is a little out of the common run. dr. warwick was walking by a lake, in the earl's park, and the pike was lying in the water near the shore, probably asleep. at any rate, when it saw the doctor it made a sudden dart into deep water and dashed its head against a sunken post. this accident seemed to give the fish great pain, for it pitched and tossed about in the lake, and finally rushed up to the surface and threw itself right out of the water on to the bank. the doctor now stooped to examine it, and to his surprise the fish remained perfectly quiet in his hands. he found that the skull was fractured and one eye was injured by the violence with which the fish had struck the post. with a silver tooth-pick (he had not his instruments with him) the doctor arranged the broken portion of the pike's skull, and when the operation was completed he placed the fish in the water. for a minute or two the pike seemed satisfied, but then it jumped out of the water on to the bank again. the doctor put the fish back, but it jumped out again, and repeated this performance several times. it seemed to know (and how, i am sure i have not the least idea) that that man was a doctor, and it did not intend to leave him until it had been properly treated--just as if it was one of his best patients. the doctor began to see that something more was expected of him, and so he called a game-keeper to him, and with his assistance he put a bandage around the pike's head. [illustration] when this surgical operation had been completed the pike was put back into the water, and this time it appeared perfectly satisfied, and swam away. the next day, as dr. warwick was sitting by the lake, the pike, with, the bandage around its head, swam up and stuck its head out of the water, near the doctor's feet. the good physician took up the fish, examined the wound, and finding that it was getting on very well, replaced the bandage and put mr. pike into the lake again. this was a very grateful pike. after the excellent surgical treatment it received from dr. warwick, it became very fond of him, and whenever he walked by the side of the lake it would swim along by him, and although it was quite shy and gloomy when other people came to the waterside, it was always glad to see the doctor, and would come when he whistled, and eat out of his hand. i suppose in the whole ocean, and in all the rivers and lakes of the world, there are not more than two or three fish as sensible and grateful as this pike. in fact, it was very well for dr. warwick that there were no more such on the earl of stamford's estate. a large practice in the lake must soon have made a poor man of him, for i do not suppose that even that sensible pike would have paid a doctor's bill, if it had been presented to him. two kinds of blossoms. [illustration] when the winter has entirely gone, and there is not the slightest vestige left of snow or ice; when the grass is beginning to be beautifully green, and the crocuses and jonquils are thrusting their pretty heads up out of the ground; when the sun is getting to be quite warm and the breezes very pleasant, then is the time for blossoms. then it is especially the time for apple-blossoms. not that the peach and the pear and the cherry trees do not fill their branches with pink and white flowers, and make as lovely a spring opening as any apple-trees in the land. oh no! it is only because there are so many apple-trees and so many apple-orchards, that the peaches and pears are a little overlooked in blossom-time. a sweet place is the apple-orchard, when the grass is green, the trees are full of flowers, the air full of fragrance, and when every breeze brings down the most beautiful showers of flowery snow. and how beautiful and delicate is every individual flower! we are so accustomed to looking at blossoms in the mass--at treesful and whole orchardsful--that we are not apt to think that those great heaps of pink and loveliness are composed of little flowers, each one perfect in itself. and not only is each blossom formed of the most beautiful white petals, shaded with pink; not only does each one of them possess a most pleasant and delicate perfume, but every one of these little flowers--every one which comes to perfection, i mean--is but the precursor of an apple. this one may be a golden pippin; that one which looks just like it may be the forerunner of a belle-flower; while the little green speck at the bottom of this one may turn into a russet, with his sober coat. the birds that are flying among the branches do not think much about the apples that are to come, i reckon, and neither do the early butterflies that flutter about, looking very much like falling blossoms themselves. and, for that matter, we ourselves need not think too much about the coming apple crop. we ought sometimes to think of and enjoy beauty for its own sake, without reference to what it may do in the future for our pockets and our stomachs. there are other kinds of blossoms than apple-blossoms, or those of any tree whatever. there are little flowers which bloom as well or better in winter than in summer, and which are not, in fact, flowers at all. these are ice-blossoms. perhaps you have never seen any of them, and i think it is very likely, for they can only be formed and perceived by the means of suitable instruments. and so here is a picture of some ice-blossoms. [illustration] these curious formations, some of which appear like stars, others like very simple blossoms, while others are very complex; and some of which take the form of fern-leaves, are caused to appear in the centre of a block of ice by means of concentrated rays of lights which are directed through the ice by means of mirrors and lenses. sometimes they are observed by means of a magnifying-glass, and in other experiments their images are thrown upon a white screen. [illustration] we may consider these ice-flowers as very beautiful and very wonderful, but they are not a whit more so than our little blossoms of the apple-orchard. the latter are more common, and have to produce apples, while the ice-flowers are uncommon, and of no possible use. that is the difference between them. about glass. glass is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful for it. but if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course, had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by glass windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our thankfulness. it would have been like taking a man out of a dreary prison and setting him in the bright world of god's blessed sunshine. after a time men made small windows of stones that were partly transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them they put oiled paper. and when at last glass came into use, it was so costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as people now store away pictures and silver-plate. now, when a boy wants a clear, white glass vial for any purpose, he can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. these her elder sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were proud to wear such. the oldest article of glass manufacture in existence is a bead. it has an inscription on it, but the writing, instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures. here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. the pictures mean this: "the good queen ramaka, the loved of athor, protectress of thebes." this queen ramaka was the wife of a king who reigned in thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is certainly a very long time for a little glass bead to remain unbroken! the great city of thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for hundreds of years. no doubt this bead was part of a necklace that queen ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their rubies. it was found in the ruins of thebes by an englishman. [illustration] it may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about there being a time when glass was unknown, and that time only a few centuries ago. but it is a singular fact that a nation will perfectly understand some art or manufacture that seems absolutely necessary to men's comfort and convenience, and yet this art in time will be completely lost, and things that were in common use will pass as completely out of existence as if they had never been, until, in after ages, some of them will be found among the ruins of cities and in old tombs. in this way we have found out that ancient nations knew how to make a great many things that enabled them to live as comfortably and luxuriously as we do now. but these things seem to have perished with the nations who used them, and for centuries people lived comfortlessly without them, until, in comparatively modern times, they have all been revived. glass-making is one of these arts. it was known in the early ages of the world's history. there are pictures that were painted on tombs two thousand years before christ's birth which represent men blowing glass, pretty much as it is done now, while others are taking pots of it out of the furnaces in a melted state. but in those days it was probably costly, and not in common use; but the rich had glass until the first century after christ, when it disappeared, and the art of making it was lost. [illustration] the city of venice was founded in the fifth century, and here we find that glass-making had been revived. you will see by this picture of a venetian bottle how well they succeeded in the manufacture of glass articles. venice soon became celebrated for this manufacture, and was for a long time the only place where glass was made. the manufacturers took great pains to keep their art a secret from other nations, and so did the government, because they were all growing rich from the money it brought into the city. in almost any part of the world to which you may chance to go you will find silica. you may not know it by that name, but it is that shining, flinty substance you see in sand and rock-crystal. it is found in a very great number of things besides these two, but these are the most common. lime is also found everywhere--in earth, in stones, in vegetables and bones, and hundreds of other substances. soda is a common article, and is very easily produced by artificial means. potash, which has the same properties as soda, exists in all ashes. now silica, and lime, and soda, or potash, when melted together, form glass. so you see that the materials for making this substance which adds so much to our comfort and pleasure are freely given to all countries. and after venice had set the example, other nations turned their attention to the study of glass-making, and soon found out this fact, in spite of the secrecy of the venetians. after a time the germans began to manufacture glass; and then the bohemians. the latter invented engraving on glass, which art had also been known to the ancients, and then been lost. they also learned to color glass so brilliantly that bohemian glass became more fashionable than venetian, and has been highly thought of down to the present day. on the next page we see an immense drinking-glass of german manufacture, but this one was made many years after glass-making was first started there. this great goblet, which it takes several bottles of wine to fill, was passed around at the end of a feast, and every guest was expected to take a sip out of it. this was a very social way of drinking, but i think on the whole it is just as well that it has gone out of fashion. the old egyptians made glass bottles, and so did the early romans, and used them just as we do for a very great variety of things. their wine-bottles were of glass, sealed and labelled like ours. we might suppose that, having once had them, people would never be without glass bottles. but history tells a different story. there evidently came a time when glass bottles vanished from the face of the earth; for we read of wooden bottles and those of goat-skin and leather, but there is no mention of glass. and men were satisfied with these clumsy contrivances, because in process of time it had been forgotten that any other were ever made. [illustration] hundreds of years rolled away, and then, behold! glass bottles appeared again. now there is such a demand for them that one country alone--france--makes sixty thousand tons of bottles every year. to make bottle-glass, oxide of iron and alumina is added to the silica, lime, and soda. it seems scarcely possible that these few common substances melted over the fire and blown with the breath can be formed into a material as thin and gossamer, almost, as a spider's web, and made to assume such a graceful shape as this jug. [illustration] this is how glass bottles, vases, etc., are made. when the substances mentioned above are melted together properly, a man dips a long, hollow iron tube into a pot filled with the boiling liquid glass, and takes up a little on the end of it. this he passes quickly to another man, who dips it once more, and, having twirled the tube around so as to lengthen the glass ball at the end, gives it to a third man, who places this glass ball in an earthen mould, and blows into the other end of the tube, and soon the shapeless mass of glass becomes a bottle. but it is not quite finished, for the bottom has to be completed, and the neck to have the glass band put around it. the bottom is finished by pressing it with a cone-shaped instrument as soon as it comes out of the mould. a thick glass thread is wound around the neck. and, if a name is to be put on, fresh glass is added to the side, and stamped with a seal. [illustration] this is also the process of making the beautiful jug just mentioned, except that three workmen are engaged at the same time on the three parts--one blows the vase itself, another the foot, and the third the handle. they are then fastened together, and the top cut into the desired shape with shears, for glass can be easily cut when in a soft state. you see how clearly and brightly, and yet with what softness, the windows of the room are reflected in that exquisite jug it was made only a few years ago. i will now show you an old venetian goblet, but you will have to handle it very carefully, or you will certainly break off one of the delicate leaves, or snap the stem of that curious flower. such glasses as these were certainly never intended for use. they were probably put upon the table as ornaments. the bowl is a white glass cup, with wavy lines of light blue. the spiral stem is red and white, and has projecting from it five leaves of yellow glass, separated in the middle by another leaf of a deep blue color. the large flower has six pale-blue petals. [illustration] and now we will look at some goblets intended for use. they are of modern manufacture, and are plain and simple, but have a beauty of their own. the right-hand one is of a very graceful shape, and the one in the middle is odd-looking, and ingeniously made with rollers, and all of them have a transparent clearness, and are almost as thin as the fragile soap-bubbles that children blow out of pipe-bowls. they do not look unlike these, and one can easily fancy that, like them, they will melt into air at a touch. [illustration] because the ancients by some means discovered that the union of silica, lime, and soda made a perfectly transparent and hard substance it by no means follows that they knew how to make looking-glasses for this requires something behind the glass to throw back the image. but vanity is not of modern invention, and people having from the beginning of time had a desire to look at themselves, they were not slow in providing the means. the first mirrors used were of polished metal, and for ages nobody knew of anything better. but there came a time when the idea entered the mind of man that "glass lined with a sheet of metal will give back the image presented to it," for these are the exact words of a writer who lived four centuries before christ. and you may be sure that glass-makers took advantage of this suggestion, if they had not already found out the fact for themselves. so we know that the ancients did make glass mirrors. it is matter of history that looking-glasses were made in the first century of the christian era, but whether quicksilver was poured upon the back, as it is now, or whether some other metal was used, we do not know. but these mirrors disappeared with the bottles and other glass articles; and metal mirrors again became the fashion. for fourteen hundred years we hear nothing of looking-glasses, and then we find them in venice, at the time that city had the monopoly of the glass trade. metal mirrors were soon thrown aside, for the images in them were very imperfect compared with the others. these venetian glasses were all small, because at that time sheet glass was blown by the mouth of man, like bottles, vases, etc., and therefore it was impossible to make them large. two hundred years afterward, a frenchman discovered a method of making sheet glass by machinery, which is called _founding_, and by this process it can be made of any size. but even after the comparatively cheap process of founding came into use, looking-glasses were very expensive, and happy was the rich family that possessed one. a french countess sold a farm to buy a mirror! queens had theirs ornamented in the most costly manner. here is a picture of one that belonged to a queen of france, the frame of which is entirely composed of precious stones. [illustration] i have told you how the venetians kept glass-making a secret, and how, at last, the germans learned it, and then the french, and their work came to be better liked than that of the venetians. but these last still managed to keep the process of making mirrors a profound secret, and the french were determined to get at the mystery. several young glass-makers went from france to venice, and applied to all the looking-glass makers of venice for situations as workmen, that they might learn the art. but all positively refused to receive them, and kept their doors and windows tightly closed while they were at work, that no one might see what they did. the young frenchmen took advantage of this, and climbed up on the roofs, and cautiously made holes through which they could look; and thus they learned the carefully-kept secret, and went back to france and commenced the manufacture of glass mirrors. twenty years after, a frenchman invented founding glass, which gave france such a great advantage that the trade of venice in looking-glasses was ruined. you would be very much interested in watching this process of founding glass. this is the way it is done. as soon as the glass is melted to the proper consistency, the furnaces are opened, and the pots are lifted into the air by machinery, and passed along a beam to an immense table of cast iron. a signal is given, and the brilliant, transparent liquid glass falls out and spreads over the table. at a second signal a roller is passed by machinery over the red-hot glass, and twenty men stand ready with long shovels to push the sheet of glass into an oven, not very hot, where it can slowly cool. when taken out of the oven the glass is thick, and not perfectly smooth, and it has to be rubbed with sand, imbedded in plaster of paris, smoothed with emery, and polished by rubbing it with a woollen cloth covered with red oxide of iron, all of which is done by machinery. we know that cut glass is expensive, and the reason is that cutting it is a slow process. four wheels have to be used in succession, iron, sandstone, wood, and cork. sand is thrown upon these wheels in such a way that the glass is finely and delicately cut. but this is imitated in pressed glass, which is blown in a mould inside of which the design is cut. this is much cheaper than the cut glass. [illustration] a higher art than cutting is engraving on glass, by which the figures are brought out in relief. distinguished artists are employed to draw the designs, and then skilful engravers follow the lines with their delicate tools. if you will examine carefully the engraving on this bohemian goblet, you will see what a wonderful piece of workmanship it is. it seems almost a pity that so much time and labor, skill and genius should be given to a thing so easily broken. and yet we have seen that a good many glass articles have been preserved for centuries. the engraving on the bohemian goblet is ingenious, and curious, and faithful in detail, but the flowers on this modern french flagon are really more graceful and beautiful. [illustration] about four hundred years ago there was found in a marble coffin, in a tomb near rome, a glass vase which is now famous throughout the world. there is good reason for supposing it to have been made one hundred and thirty-eight years before christ, consequently it is now about two thousand years old. for many years this was in the barberini palace in rome, and was called the barberini vase. then it was bought by the duchess of portland, of england, for nine thousand dollars, and since then has been known as the portland vase. she loaned it to the british museum, and everybody who went to london wanted to see this celebrated vase. [illustration] one day a crazy man got into the museum, and with a smart blow of his cane laid in ruins the glass vase that had survived all the world's great convulsions and changes for two thousand years! this misfortune was supposed to be irreparable, but it has been repaired by an artist so cleverly that it is impossible to tell where it is joined together. [illustration] this vase is composed of two layers of glass, one over the other. the lower is of a deep blue color, and the upper an opaque white, so that the figures stand out in white on a deep blue background. [illustration] the picture on it represents the marriage of peleus and thetis. the woman seated, holding a serpent in her left hand, is thetis, and the man to whom she is giving her right hand is peleus. the god in front of thetis is neptune, and a cupid hovers in the air above. on the reverse side are thetis and peleus, and a goddess, all seated. at the foot of the vase is a bust of ganymede, and on each side of this in the picture are copies of the masks on the handles. now i have shown you a few of the beautiful things that have been made of glass, but there are very many other uses to which glass is applied that have not even been alluded to. steam engines, that work like real ones, have been made of glass; palaces have been built of it; great telescopes, by which the wonders of the heavens have been revealed, owe their power to it; and, in fact, it would seem to us, to-day, as if we could as well do without our iron as without our glass. carl. in the middle of a dark and gloomy forest lived carl and greta. their father was a forester, who, when he was well, was accustomed to be away all day with his gun and dogs, leaving the two children with no one but old nurse heine; for their mother died when they were very little. now carl was twelve years old, and greta nine. carl was a fine-looking boy, but nurse heine said that he had a melancholy countenance. greta, however, was a pretty, bright-faced, merry little girl. they were allowed to wander through a certain part of the forest, where their father thought there was no especial danger to fear. in truth, carl was not melancholy at all, but was just as happy in his way as greta was in hers. in the summer, while she was pulling the wood flowers and weaving them into garlands, or playing with her dogs, or chasing squirrels, carl would be seated on some root or stone with a large sheet of coarse card-board on his knee, on which he drew pictures with a piece of sharpened charcoal. he had sketched, in his rough way, every pretty mass of foliage, and every picturesque rock and waterfall within his range. and in the winter, when the icicles were hanging from the cliffs, and the snow wound white arms around the dark green cypress boughs, carl still found beautiful pictures everywhere, and greta plenty of play in building snow-houses and statues. and, moreover, carl had lately discovered in the brooks some colored stones, which were soft enough to sharpen sufficiently to give a blue tint to his skies, and green to his trees; and thus he made pictures that nurse heine said were more wonderful than those in the chapel of the little village of evergode. i have said that the forest was dark and gloomy, because it was composed chiefly of pines and cypresses, but it never seemed so to the children. they knew how to read, but had no books that told them of any lands brighter and sunnier than their own. and then, too, beyond the belt of pines in which was their home, there was a long stretch of forest of oaks and beeches, and in this the birds liked to build their nests and sing; and there were such splendid vines, and lovely flowers! and, right through the pine forest, not more than half a mile from their cottage, there was a broad road. it is true, it was a very rough one, and but little used, but it represented the world to carl and greta. for it did sometimes happen that loaded wagons would jolt over it, or a rough soldier gallop along, and more rarely still, a gay cavalier would prance by the wondering children. for there was a war in the land. and when, after a time, the armies came near enough to the forest for the children to hear occasionally the roll of the heavy guns, a strange thing happened. one evening when they arrived at home, they found in their humble little cottage one of the gay-looking cavaliers they had sometimes seen on the forest road, and with him was a very beautiful lady. old nurse heine was getting the spare room ready by beating up the great feather bed, and laying down on the floor the few strips of carpet they possessed. their father was talking with the strangers, and he told them that carl and greta were his children; but they took no notice of them, for they were completely taken up with each other, for the gentleman, it appeared, was going away, and to leave the lady there. carl greatly admired this cavalier, and had no doubt he was the noblest-looking man in the world, and studied him so closely that he would have known him among a thousand. presently the forester led his children out of the cottage, and soon after the cavalier came out, and springing upon his horse, galloped away among the dark pines. [illustration] the strange lady was at the cottage several weeks, and the children soon learned to love her dearly. she was fond of rambling about with them, and was seldom to be found within the house when the weather was fair. she never went near the road, but preferred the oak wood, and sometimes when the children were amusing themselves she would sit for hours absorbed in deep thought or singing to herself in a sad and dreamy way. at other times she would interest herself in the children, and tell them of things in the world outside the forest. she praised carl's pictures, and showed him how to work in his colors so as to more effectively bring out the perspective, and tried to educate his taste, as far as she could, by describing the pictures of the great masters. she often said afterwards that she could never have lived through those dark days but for the comfort she found in the children. carl saw that she was sorrowful, and he understood that her sadness was not because of the plain fare and the way of living at the forester's cottage, which he knew must seem rough indeed to her, but because of some great grief. what this grief was he could not guess, for the children had been told nothing about the beautiful lady, except that her name was lady clarice. she never complained, but the boy's wistful eyes would follow her as she moved among the trees, and his heart would swell with pity; and how he would long to do something to prove to her how he loved her! the forester told carl that the cavalier was with the army. but he did not come to the cottage, and there was no way for the lady clarice to hear from him, and she shuddered at the sound of the great guns. and finally she fell sick. nurse heine did what she could for her, but the lady grew worse. she felt that she should die, and it almost broke carl's heart to hear her moaning: "oh! if i could but see him once more!" he knew she meant the noble cavalier, but how should he get word to him? the old forester was just then stiff with rheumatism, and could scarcely move from his chair. "i will go myself!" said carl to himself one day, "or she will die with grief!" without saying a word to anybody about the matter, for fear that he would not be allowed to go, he stole out of the house in the gray of the morning, while all were asleep, and, making his way to the open road, he turned in the direction from whence, at times, had come the sound of the cannon. as long as he was in the part of the road that he knew, he kept up a stout heart, but when he left that he began to grow frightened. the road was so lonely, and strange sounds seemed to come out of the forest that stretched away, so black and thick, on each side! he wondered if any fierce beasts were there, or if robbers were lurking behind the rocks. but he thought of the beautiful lady, his kind friend, sick and dying, and that thought was more powerful than his fear. at noon he rested for awhile, and ate a few dry biscuits he had put in his pockets. it was near sunset when he saw that the trees stood less closely together, the road looked more travel-worn, and there came with the wind a confused and continuous noise. then carl was seized with terror. "i am now near the camp," he thought. "suppose a battle is going on, and i am struck with a ball. i shall die, and father and little greta will not know what became of me, and the beautiful lady will never know that i died in her service! or if i meet a soldier, and he don't believe my story, maybe he'll run a bayonet through me!" it was not too late then to turn back and flee swiftly up the forest road, and carl paused. but in a few moments he went on, animated by the noblest kind of courage--that which feels there is danger, but is determined to face it in the cause of duty, affection, and humanity. at last he stepped out of the forest, and there, before him, was spread out the vast encampment of the army! there was not time to wonder at the sight before he was challenged by a sentinel. carl had made up his mind what to say, and that he would not mention the lady. so he promptly replied that he wanted to see a noble lord who had a sick friend at a cottage in the forest. as the boy could not tell the name or rank of the noble lord, the sentinel sent him to an officer, and to him carl told the same story, but he described the man of whom he was in search so accurately that the officer sent him at once to the proper person. and carl found that he was a very great personage indeed, and held a high command in the army. he did not recognize carl, but as soon as the boy told his errand he became very much agitated. "i will go at once," he said; "but i cannot leave you here, my brave boy! can you ride?" now carl knew how to sit on a horse, and how to hold the bridle, for he had ridden the wood-cutters' horses sometimes, so he answered that he thought he could ride. the duke (for such was his title) ordered some refreshments set before the boy, and then went out to make his arrangements, choosing his gentlest horse for carl. in half an hour they were in the forest, speeding like the wind. carl felt as if he was flying. the horse chose his own gait, and tried to keep up with the one that the duke was riding; but finally, finding this impossible, he slackened his pace, greatly to carl's relief. but the duke was too anxious about his lady to accommodate himself to the slower speed of the boy, and soon swept out of sight around a bend in the road. his cloak and the long feathers of his hat streamed on the night wind for a moment longer. then they vanished, and carl was alone. carl was somewhat afraid of the horse, for he was not used to such a high-mettled steed; but, on the whole, he was glad he was mounted on it. for if the woods had seemed lonely in the daylight they were ten times more so in the night. and the noises seemed more fearful than before. and carl thought if any furious beast or robber should dart upon him, he could make the horse carry him swiftly away. as it was he let the horse do as he pleased, and as carl sat quietly and did not worry him in any way, he pleased to go along very smoothly, and rather slowly, so it was past midnight when they reached home. [illustration] carl found that the duke had been there a long time; that the lady was overjoyed to see him, and nurse heine said she began to grow better from that moment. the next morning the duke went away; but before he left he thanked carl for the great service he had done him, and gave him a piece of gold. but carl was better pleased when the lady called him into her room, and kissed him, and cried over him, and praised him for a kind, brave boy, and said he had saved her life. and when she got well carl noticed that she was brighter and happier than she had been before. in a short time, however, she went away with the duke, in a grand coach, with servants and outriders. and carl and greta watched them as they were whirled up the forest road, and then walked home through the pines with sad hearts. then the forester told his children that the duke had married this lady secretly, against the king's command, and he had so many bitter and cruel enemies that he was afraid they would do her some evil while he was away in the war. she knew of the forester, because his wife had been a maid of her mother's, so she came to this lonely place for safety. but now the king was pleased, and it was all right. the winter came and went. the war was over. and then lady clarice, whom the children never expected to see again, sent for them, and the forester, and nurse heine, to her castle. she provided for them all, and greta grew up into a pretty and well-bred young lady. lady clarice had not forgotten the brave act of the boy, and also remembered what he liked best in the world. so she had him taught to draw and paint, and in process of time he became a great artist, and all the world knew of his name and fame. school's out! [illustration] what a welcome and joyful sound! in the winter, when the days are short, and the sun, near the end of the six school hours, sinks so low that the light in the room grows dim and gray, with what impatience, my dear child, do you wait for this signal! but it is in the long summer days that you find school most tiresome. the air in the room is hot and drowsy, and outside you can see there is a breeze blowing, for the trees are gently tossing their green boughs as if to twit you with having to work out sums in such glorious weather. and there come to your ears the pleasant sounds of the buzzing of insects and twittering of birds, and the brook splashing over the stones. then the four walls of the school-room look very dreary, and the maps glare at you, and the black-boards frown darkly, and the benches seem very hard, and the ink-bespattered desks appear more grimy than ever. this was the time when the heart of the dominie would be touched with pity, and he would say in his bright way: "now, children, i am going to read you something!" instantly the half-closed eyes would open, the drooping heads would be raised, the vacant faces would brighten, and the little cramped legs would be stretched out with a sigh of relief. and then the dominie would read them something that was not only instructive, but very entertaining. sometimes, instead of reading to them, he would set them to declaiming or reciting poetry, or they would choose sides and have a spelling match. they would get so interested that they would forget all about the birds and sunshine without. they did not even know that they were learning all this time. for the dominie had all sorts of pleasant ways of teaching his scholars. not but what they had to work hard too, for nobody can accomplish anything worth having without putting a good deal of hard work in it. you see the dominie's portrait in the picture. the fringe of hair around his bald head was as white as snow; his black eyes were bright and merry; and he had a kindly face. his name was morris harvey, but everybody called him dominie, and he liked that name best. all the village people respected and loved the old man; and every child in the village school that he taught, from the largest boy, whose legs were so long that he did not know what to do with them, down to bessie gay, who could scarcely reach up to the top of a desk, were very fond indeed of him. but even under the dominie's kindly rule, "school's out!" was always a welcome sound. what a noise there would be in the school-room for a minute; and then such a grand rush out into the open air! and such merry shouts! the dominie would look after them with a smile. he wanted them to study, but he was glad that it was natural for them to love to play. if little charlie lane had known this he would not have had such a cry the morning he went to school for the first time. he thought his mother very cruel to make him go, and, i am sorry to say, not only cried before he started, but all the way to the school-house. the dominie took no notice of this, and charlie soon found that school was not such a very dreadful place. and there was the nice playtime in the middle of the day. and, when school was out, the dominie took him on his knee and gave him a big apple, and showed him a book full of bright pictures, and told him a story about every one of them. you can see the little fellow on the dominie's lap, looking earnestly at a picture in the book; and the old man is pleased that the child is pleased. the dominie is sitting in his big chair, and his dinner-bag is hanging on the back of it. on the black-board over his head you see little charlie's lesson for that day. it is on the right, and consists of the letters a, b, c, which the child has been staring at until he knows them perfectly in any book that is given to him. on the left, is a sum; and somebody has tried to draw an almanac sun on the lower part of the board. across the top the dominie has written a copy. you can read it plainly. it was a favorite saying of his; and a very good one too. have we not, all of us, a great deal to make us happy? what pleasure is it to you to go about with a cross or melancholy face? try to think of something pleasant, and call up a smile. put the ill-natured feelings out of your heart, and then the brightness will come to your face without further trouble. if you have a hard task to do, being cross won't help you along one bit. go to work at it with a will, and you will be surprised to find how soon it will be done. then, with a clear conscience and a glad heart, you can sit waiting for the welcome sound, "school's out!" nest-builders. "birds in their little nests agree," but they do not at all agree in their manner of building the said nests. they have all sorts of ideas on this subject. nearly every species of bird has a nest peculiar to itself, and the variety is astonishing. there are nests like cups, and nests like saucers; nests which are firmly fixed among the solid rocks, and nests which wave about on the ends of slender branches; nests which are perched on the very tops of the tallest trees, and nests which are hidden in the ground. there are great nests, which will hold a bushel or two of eggs, and little bits of things, into which you could scarcely put half a dozen peas. in mentioning some of these nests, it will be needless for us to say much of those with which we are all familiar. in our rambles together we must try and see as many novelties as possible, for we may not always have the chance of wandering freely into any part of the world to which our fancy may lead us. i remember a little girl who used to come to our house when i was a boy, and who never cared for anything at table that was not something of a novelty to her. when offered potatoes, she would frankly say: "no, thank you; i can get them at home." so we will not meddle with hens' nests, robins' nests, and all the nests, big and little, that we find about our homes, for they are the "potatoes" of a subject like this, but will try and find some nests that are a little out of the way, and curious. but we must stop--just one moment--before we leave home, and look at a wren's nest. the wren, although a very common little bird with us, does not build a common nest. she makes it round, like a ball, or a woolly orange, with a little hole at one side for a door. inside, it is just as soft and comfortable as anything can be. being such a little bird herself, she could not cover and protect her young ones from cold and danger so well as the larger cat-birds and robins, and her nest is contrived so that there will not be much covering to do. [illustration] that beautiful bird, the baltimore oriole, which may be familiar to some of you, makes its nest somewhat on the plan of the wren, the similarity consisting in the fact that the structure is intended to shelter both parent and young. the oriole, which is a great deal larger than a wren, builds a much larger nest, forming it like a bag, with a hole in one end, and hangs it on the branch of a tree. [illustration] it is scarcely possible for any harm to come to the young orioles, when they are lying snugly at the bottom of the deep nest and their mother is sitting on a twig near by, ready to protect them at the hazard of her life. but, for all the apparent security of this nest, so deep, so warm, so firmly secured to the twigs and branches, the little orioles are not entirely safe. their mother may protect them from rain and cold; from winged enemies and creeping serpents, but she cannot defend them against the attacks of boys and men. an oriole's nest is such a curious structure, and the birds are known to be of such fine form and gorgeous plumage, that many boys cannot resist the temptation of climbing up after them and, if there are young ones within, of carrying the whole affair away in order to try and "raise" the young birds. sometimes the nest is put in a cage, where the old bird can come and feed its young, and in other cases the captor undertakes to do the feeding himself. i have seen experiments of this kind tried, but never knew the slightest success to follow them, and the attempt, generally useless, is always cruel. but we must positively get away from home and look at some nests to which few or none of us are accustomed. there, for instance, is the nest of the burrowing-owl, a native of south america and the regions west of the rocky mountains. this little bird, much smaller than our common owls, likes to live in the ground. but not having been provided by nature with digging appendages, he cannot make a hole or burrow for himself, and so he takes up his abode in the underground holes made by the little prairie-dogs for their own homes. it is not at all certain that these owls should be called usurpers or thieves. they may, in some cases, get entire possession of the holes, but very often they live very sociably with the prairie-dogs, and may, for all we know, pay for their lodgings by bringing in grain and seeds, along with the worms and insects which they reserve for their own table. any one who does not possess a habitation of his own, must occasionally expect to be thrown among strange companions, and this very often happens to the burrowing-owl. travellers tell us that not only do the prairie-dogs and owls live together in these burrows, but that great rattlesnakes sometimes take up their residence therein--all three families seeming to live together in peace and unity. i think that it is probable, however, that the little dogs and owls are not at all pleased with the company of the snakes. a prairie-dog will not eat an owl, and without the dog is very young indeed, an owl will not eat him; but a great snake would just as soon swallow either of them as not, if he happened to be hungry, which fortunately is not often the case, for a good meal lasts a snake a long time. but the owls and the prairie-dogs have no way of ridding themselves of their unwelcome roommates, and, like human beings, they are obliged to patiently endure the ills they cannot banish. perhaps, like human beings again, they become so accustomed to these ills that they forget how disagreeable they are. [illustration] there is a bird--and it is a flamingo--which builds a nest which looks to me as if it must be very unpleasant to sit upon. and yet it suits the bird very well. in fact, on any other kind of a nest, the flamingo might not know what to do with its legs. [illustration] it would appear as if there had been a waste of material in making such a large high nest, when only two or three moderate-sized eggs are placed in the slight depression at the top; but, when we consider that the flamingo uses this tall affair as a seat, as well as a nest, we can easily understand that flamingoes, like most other birds, understand how to adapt their nests to their own convenience and peculiarities. sitting astraddle on one of these tall nests, which look something like peach-baskets turned upside down, with her head stuck as far under her wing as she can get it, the flamingo dozes away, during the long sultry hours of day, as comfortably and happily as if she was a little wren snugly curled up inside of its cosey nest. it is not mere situation which makes us happy. some people enjoy life in cottages, others in palaces, and some birds sit in a pile of hard sticks and think themselves quite as cosey as those which repose upon the softest down. it is almost impossible to comprehend the different fancies of birds in regard to their nests. for instance, why should any bird want to sail about in its nest? yet there is one--called the little grebe--which builds a water-tight nest, in which she lays her eggs, and, while she is hatching them, she paddles herself around on the water. it seems to me that these birds must have a very pleasant time during the setting season. to start out some fine morning, after it has had its breakfast of bugs and things, to gently push its nest from shore; to jump on board; to sit down comfortably on the eggs, and sticking out its web-footed legs on each side, to paddle away among the water-lilies and the beautiful green rushes, in company with other little grebes, all uniting business and pleasure in the same way, must be, indeed, quite charming to an appreciative duck. [illustration] if it were to happen to storm, however, when the grebe was at a distance from shore, her little craft might be upset and her cargo of eggs go to the bottom. but i expect the grebes are very good sailors, and know when to look for bad weather. a nest full of young grebes just hatched, with the mother swimming behind, pushing them along with her beak, or towing them by the loose end of a twig, must be a very singular and interesting sight. [illustration] an ostrich has very different views in regard to a nest from a little grebe. instead of wishing to take its nest about with it, wherever it goes, the ostrich does not care for a great deal of nest-work. it is, however, a bird of more domestic habits than some writers would have us believe; for although it does cover up its eggs in the sand, and then let the sun help hatch them, it is not altogether inattentive to its nest. the ostrich makes a large nest in the sand, where, it is said, the eggs of several families are deposited. these eggs are very carefully arranged in the great hole or basin that has been formed in the soft sand, and, during the daytime, they are often covered up and left to be gently heated by the rays of the sun. but the ostrich sits upon her nest at night, and in many cases the male bird has been known to sit upon the eggs all day. an ostrich nest is a sort of a wholesale establishment. there are not only a great many eggs in the nest, but dozens of them are often found lying about on the sand around it. this apparent waste is explained by some naturalists by the statement that these scattered eggs are intended for the food of the young ones when they are hatched. this may be true; but in that case young ostriches cannot be very particular about the flavor of the eggs they eat. a few days in the hot sun of the desert would be very likely to make eggs of any kind taste rather strongly. but ostrich eggs are so large, and their shells are so thick, that they may keep better than the eggs to which we are accustomed. from nests which are built flat on the ground, let us now go to some that are placed as high from the earth as their builders can get them. the nests of the storks are of this kind. a pair of storks will select, as a site for their nest, a lofty place among the rocks; the top of some old ruins; or, when domesticated, as they often are, the top of a chimney. but when there are a number of storks living together in a community, they very often settle in a grove of tall trees and build their nests on the highest branches. [illustration: the nest of a stork.] in these they lay their eggs, and hatch out their young ones. soon after the time when these young storks are able to fly, the whole community generally starts off on its winter pilgrimage to warm countries; but the old storks always return in the spring to the same nest that they left, while the young ones, if they choose to join that community at all, must make nests for themselves. although these nests are nothing but rude structures of sticks and twigs, made apparently in the roughest manner, each pair of storks evidently thinks that there is no home like its own. the stork is a very kind parent, and is, in fact, more careful of the welfare of its young than most birds; but it never goes to the length of surrendering its homestead to its children. the young storks will be carefully nurtured and reared by their parents; when they grow old enough they will be taught to fly, and encouraged in the most earnest way to strengthen and develop their wings by exercise; and, in the annual expedition to the south, they are not left to themselves, but are conducted to the happy lands where all good storks spend their winters. but the young storks cannot have everything. if they wish to live in the nest in which they were born, they must wait until their parents are dead. it may be that we have now seen enough of birds' nests, and so i will not show you any more. the next nest which we will examine-"but i thought you were not going to show us any more birds' nests!" you will say. that is true. i did say so, and this next one is not a bird's nest but a fish's nest. it is probably that very few of you, if any, ever saw a fish's nest; but there certainly are such things. [illustration] the fish which builds them is called the stickleback. it is a little fish, but it knows how to make a good nest. the male stickleback is the builder, and when he thinks of making a nest he commences by burrowing a hole in the mud at the bottom of the stream where he lives. when with his nose and body he has made this hole large enough, he collects bits of grass, roots, and weeds, and builds his nest over this hole, which seems to be dug for the purpose of giving security to the structure. the grass and other materials are fastened to the mud and earth by means of a sticky substance, which exudes from the body of the fish, and every part of the nest is stuck together and interlaced so that it will not be disturbed by the currents. there are generally two openings to this nest, which is something like a lady's muff, although, of course, it is by no means so smooth and regular. the fish can generally stick its head out of one end, and its tail out of the other. when the eggs have been laid in the nest, and the young sticklebacks have been born, the male fish is said to be very strict and particular in the government of his children. for some time--while they are yet very small--(and the father himself is a very little fellow) he makes them stay in the nest, and if any of them come swimming out, he drives them back again, and forces them to stay at home until they are of a proper age to swim about by themselves. we have now seen quite a variety of nests, and i think that we may come to this conclusion about their builders:--the bird or other creature which can carefully select the materials for the home of its young, can decide what is most suitable for the rough outside and what will be soft and nice for the inner lining, and can choose a position for its nest where the peculiar wants and habits of its little ones can be best provided for, must certainly be credited with a degree of intelligence which is something more than what is generally suggested by the term instinct. [illustration] the boomerang. civilized folks are superior in so very many respects to their barbarous brethren that it is well, when we discover anything which a savage can do better than we can, to make a note of it, and give the subject some attention. and it is certain that there are savages who can surpass us in one particular--they can make and throw boomerangs. it is very possible that an american mechanic could imitate an australian boomerang, so that few persons could tell the difference; but i do not believe that boomerang would work properly. either in the quality of the wood, or in the seasoning, or in some particular which we would not be apt to notice, it would, in all probability, differ very much from the weapon carved out by the savage. if the american mechanic was to throw his boomerang away from him, i think it would stay away. there is no reason to believe that it would ever come back. and yet there is nothing at all wonderful in the appearance of the real boomerang. it is simply a bent club, about two feet long, smooth on one side and slightly hollowed out on the other. no one would imagine, merely from looking at it, that it could behave in any way differently from any other piece of stick of its size and weight. but it does behave differently, at least when an australian savage throws it. i have never heard of an american or european who was able to make the boomerang perform the tricks for which it has become famous. throwing this weapon is like piano-playing; you have to be brought up to it in order to do it well. in the hands of the natives of australia, however, the boomerang performs most wonderful feats. sometimes the savage takes hold of it by one end, and gives it a sort of careless jerk, so that it falls on the ground at a short distance from him. as soon as it strikes the earth it bounds up into the air, turns, twists, and pitches about in every direction, knocking with great force against everything in its way. it is said that when it bounds in this way into the midst of a flock of birds, it kills and wounds great numbers of them. at other times the boomerang-thrower will hurl his weapon at an object at a great distance, and when it has struck the mark it will turn and fall at the feet of its owner, turning and twisting on its swift and crooked way. this little engraving shows how the boomerang will go around a tree and return again to the thrower. the twisted line indicates its course. most astonishing stories are told of the skill with which the australians use this weapon. they will aim at birds or small animals that are hidden behind trees and rocks, and the boomerang will go around the trees and rocks and kill the game. they are the only people who can with any certainty shoot around a corner. not only do they throw the boomerang with unerring accuracy, but with tremendous force, and when it hits a man on the head, giving him two or three terrible raps as it twists about him, it is very apt to kill him. to ward off these dangerous blows, the natives generally carry shields when they go out to fight. sometimes an australian throws two boomerangs at once, one with his right hand and one with his left, and then the unfortunate man that he aims at has a hard time of it. many persons have endeavored to explain the peculiar turning and twisting properties of the boomerang, but they have not been entirely successful, for so much depends not only on the form of the weapon, but on the skill of the thrower. but it is known that the form of the boomerang, and the fact that one of its limbs is longer and heavier than the other, gives its centre of gravity a very peculiar situation; and when the weapon is thrown by one end, it has naturally a tendency to rotate, and the manner of this rotation is determined by the peculiar impetus given it by the hand of the man who throws it. it is well that we are able to explain the boomerang a little, for that is all we can do with it. the savage cannot explain it at all; but he can use it. but, after all, i do not know that a boomerang would be of much service to us even if we could use it. there is only one thing that i can now think of that it would be good for. it would be a splendid to knock down chestnuts with! just think of a boomerang going twirling into a chestnut-tree, twisting, turning, banging, and cracking on every side, knocking down the chestnuts in a perfect shower, and then coming gently back into your hand, all ready for another throw! it would be well worth while to go out chestnuting, if we had a boomerang to do the work for us. * * * * * now our ramblings must come to an end. we cannot walk about the world for ever, you know, no matter how pleasant it may be. and i wish i was quite sure that you have all found these wanderings pleasant. as for me, there were some things that i did not like so well as others, and i suppose that that was the case with all of you. but it could not be helped. in this world some things will be better than others, do what we may. one of these days, perhaps, we may ramble about again. until then, good-by! the end. _charles scribner's sons books for young readers._ * * * * * written and illustrated by howard pyle _a new book just published._ the story of sir launcelot and his companions profusely illustrated. royal 8vo, $2.50 _net_. the account of the adventures and deeds of sir launcelot, fully and beautifully illustrated in mr. pyle's characteristic style, and uniform with his other two books, "the story of king arthur and his knights" and "the story of the champions of the round table." this book takes up the adventures of the greatest of the arthurian heroes, from the very beginning, and also that of his son sir galahad. "there is nobody quite like howard pyle, after all, when it comes to stories for children, nobody with his peculiar freshness and enthusiasm, and his power of choosing quaint and lovely settings for the sometimes quiet, sometimes stirring tales that appeal at once to his readers by their truth and naturalness."--the springfield republican. * * * * * _other books by mr. pyle_. the story of the champions of the round table. profusely illustrated. royal 8vo, $2.50 _net_. "he has caught the very spirit of chivalry. it is one of the best of holiday books."--san francisco chronicle. the story of king arthur and his knights. profusely illustrated. royal 8vo, $2.50 _net_. "nothing could be better to give a boy or girl for christmas than mr. pyle's rendition of these stately, ennobling old legends."--chicago record-herald. the merry adventures of robin hood. illustrated. royal 8vo, $3.00. "this superb book is unquestionably the most original and elaborate ever produced by any american author. mr. pyle has told, with pencil and pen, the complete and consecutive story of robin hood and his merry men in their haunts in sherwood forest, gathered from the old ballads and legends."--boston transcript. otto of the silver hand. illustrated. royal 8vo, $2.00. "the scene of the story is mediã¦val germany in the time of the feuds and robber barons and romance. the kidnapping of otto, his adventures among rough soldiers and his daring rescue make up a spirited and thrilling story."--christian union. * * * * * heroes of the olden time. by james baldwin. three volumes, 12mo, each beautifully illustrated. singly, $1.50; the set, $4.00. a story of the golden age. illustrated by howard pyle. "mr. baldwin's book is redolent with the spirit of the odyssey, that glorious primitive epic, fresh with the dew of the morning of time. it is an unalloyed pleasure to read his recital of the adventures of the wily odysseus. howard pyle's illustrations render the spirit of the homeric age with admirable felicity."--prof. h.h. boyesen. the story of siegfried. illustrated by howard pyle. "the story of 'siegfried' is charmingly told. the author makes up the story from the various myths in a fascinating way which cannot fail to interest the reader. it is as enjoyable as any fairy tale."--hartford courant. the story of roland. illustrated by r.b. birch. "mr. baldwin has culled from a wide range of epics, french, italian, and german, and has once more proved his aptitude as a story-teller for the young."--the nation. * * * * * the boy's library of legend and chivalry. edited by <sc>sidney lanier</sc>, and richly illustrated by fredericks, bensell, and kappes. four volumes, cloth, uniform binding, price per set, $7.00. sold separately, price per volume, $2.00. mr. lanier's books present to boy readers the old english classics of history and legend in an attractive form. while they are stories of action and stirring incident, they teach those lessons which manly, honest boys ought to learn. the boy's king arthur. the boy's froissart. the boy's percy. the knightly legends of wales. "amid all the strange and fanciful scenery of these stories, character and ideals of character remain at the simplest and purest. the romantic history transpires in the healthy atmosphere of the open air on the green earth beneath the open sky."--the independent. * * * * * stories for boys. by richard harding davis. with 6 full-page illustrations. 12mo, $1.00 contents: the reporter who made himself king--midsummer pirates--richard carr's baby, a football story--the great tri-club tennis tournament--the jump at corey's slip--the van bibber baseball club--the story of a jockey. "it will be astonishing indeed if youths of all ages are not fascinated with these 'stories for boys.' mr. davis knows infallibly what will interest his young readers."--boston beacon. * * * * * marvels of animal life series. by charles f. holder. three volumes, 8vo, each profusely illustrated. singly, $1.75; the set, $5.00. the ivory king. a popular history of the elephant and its allies. "the author talks in a lively and pleasant way about white elephants, rogue elephants, baby elephants, trick elephants, of the elephant in war, pageantry, sports and games. a charming accession to books for young people."--chicago interior. marvels of animal life. "mr. holder combines his description of these odd creatures with stories of his own adventures in pursuit of them in many parts of the world. these are told with much spirit, and add greatly to the fascination of the book."--worcester spy. living lights. a popular account of phosphorescent animals and vegetables. "a very curious branch of natural history is expounded in most agreeable style by this delightful book. he has revealed a world of new wonders."--philadelphia bulletin. * * * * * white cockades. an incident of the "forty-five." by edward i. stevenson. 12mo, $1.00. "a bright historical tale. the scene is scotland; the time that of prince charles' rebellion. the hero is a certain gallant young nobleman devoted to the last of the stuarts and his cause. the action turns mainly upon the hiding, the hunting, and the narrow escapes of lord geoffrey armitage from the spies and soldiers of the king."--new york mail and express. * * * * * prince peerless. a fairy-folk story book. by margaret collier (madam gelletti di cadilhac). illustrated by john collier. 12mo, $1.25. "more admirable and fascinating a fairy-story book we have not lately set eyes upon. the stories are most airily conceived and gracefully executed."--hartford post. * * * * * by william henry frost. fairies and folk of ireland. illustrated by sidney r. burleigh. 12mo, $1.50. "fresh and delightful materials are incorporated in witty and interesting narratives."--philadelphia press. the knights of the round table. stories of king arthur and the holy grail. illustrated by sidney r. burleigh. 12mo, $1.50. "the book is especially commended to boys, who will delight in the martial spirit breathed through the tales, and cannot fail to be benefited by reading of the courage, honor, and truth of these 'brave knights of old.'"--chicago inter-ocean. the court of king arthur. stories from the land of the round table. illustrated by sidney r. burleigh. 12mo, $1.50. "mr. william henry frost in 'the court of king arthur' has succeeded admirably in his attempt to make the doughty knights and fair ladies of ancient days seem distinct and interesting to boys and girls of our own time."--public opinion. the wagner story book. firelight tales of the great music dramas. illustrated by sidney r. burleigh. 12mo, $1.50. "the story of the knight of the swan, of the ring of the nibelungen, the search for the grail, of lohengrin and of parsifal, are among the richest and deepest of the great mediã¦val stories. they are pre-eminently the natural food for children of imagination, and in this volume these stories are retold in a very effective way."--the outlook. * * * * * robert grant's two books for boys. jack hall; or, the school days of an american boy. illustrated by f. g. attwood. 12mo, $1.25. "a better book for boys has never been written. it is pure, clean and healthy, and has throughout a vigorous action that holds the reader breathless."--boston herald. "a capital story for boys, wholesome and interesting. it reminds one of 'tom brown.'"--boston transcript. jack in the bush; or, a summer on a salmon river. illustrated by f.t. merrill. 12mo, $1.25. "a clever book for boys. it is the story of the camp-life of a lot of boys, and is destined to please every boy reader. it is attractively illustrated."--detroit free press. "an ideal story of out-door life and genuine experiences."--boston traveller. * * * * * books by kirk munroe. a son of satsuma; or, with perry in japan. illustrated by rufus f. zogbaum. 12mo, $1.00 _net_. "if there is a man who understands writing a story for boys better than another, it is kirk munroe."--springfield republican. brethren of the coast: a tale of west indian pirates. illustrated by rufus f. zogbaum. 12mo, $1.25. "there is enough of history and enough of action in this story to make it valuable as well as readable, and this story of adventure and description will be read with interest and profit."--herald and presbyter. midshipman stuart; or, the last cruise of the essex. a tale of 1812. illustrated. 12mo, $1.25. the story tells of the exciting adventures of an unusually plucky and enterprising american boy whose career at sea is marked with hairbreadth escapes. in pirate waters: a tale of the american navy. illustrated by i.w. taber. 12mo, $1.25. the boy hero of this book assists in the extinction of this cowardly system, taking part in some of the sea fights which brought glory to the american navy. * * * * * the white conqueror's series. each 12mo, $1.25. the set in a box, four volumes, $5.00. with crockett and bowie; or, fighting for the lone star state. illustrated by victor s. pã�rard. "one of the most spirited and interesting tales that he has written."--news and courier. through swamp and glade. a tale of the seminole war. illustrated by victor s. pã�rard. "no boy can get hold of this story without being carried away with it." --boston courier. at war with pontiac; or, the totem of the bear. a tale of redcoat and redskin. illustrated by j. fennemore. "the book is admirably written throughout and has not a dull page in it."--boston beacon. the white conquerors. a tale of toltec and aztec. illustrated by w.s. stacey. "the book is filled with incident and permeated with the high color and life of the period and country."--cambridge tribune. * * * * * frank r. stockton's books for the young. "_his books for boys and girls are classics_."--newark advertiser. the clocks of rondaine, and other stories. with 24 illustrations by blashfield, rogers, beard, and others. square 8vo; $1.50. personally conducted. illustrated by pennell, parsons, and others. sq. 8vo, $2.00. the story of viteau. illustrated by r.b. birch. 12mo, $1.50. a jolly fellowship. with 20 illustrations. 12mo, $1.50. the floating prince and other fairy tales. illustrated. square 8vo, $1.50. the ting-a-ling tales. illustrated. 12mo, $1.00. round-about rambles in lands of fact and fiction. illustrated. square 8vo, $1.50. tales out of school. with nearly 200 illustrations. square 8vo, $1.50. "the volumes are profusely illustrated and contain the most entertaining sketches in mr. stockton's most entertaining manner."--christian union. * * * * * edward eggleston's two popular books. the hoosier school-boy. illustrated. 12mo, $1.00. "'the hoosier school-boy' depicts some of the characteristics of boy-life years ago on the ohio; characteristics, however, that were not peculiar to that section. the story presents a vivid and interesting picture of the difficulties which in those days beset the path of the youth aspiring for an education."--chicago inter-ocean. queer stories for boys and girls. 12mo, $1.00. "a very bright and attractive little volume for young readers. the stories are fresh, breezy, and healthy, with a good point to them and a good, sound american view of life and the road to success. the book abounds in good feeling and good sense, and is written in a style of homely art."--independent. * * * * * evening tales. done into english from the french of frederic ortoli, by joel chandler harris. 12mo, $1.00. "it is a veritable french 'uncle remus' that mr. harris has discovered in frederic ortoli. the book has the genuine piquancy of gallic wit, and will be sure to charm american children. mr. harris's version is delightfully written."--boston beacon. * * * * * hans brinker: or, the silver skates. a story of life in holland. by mary mapes dodge. with 60 illustrations. 12mo, $1.50. "the author has shown, in her former works for the young, a very rare ability to meet their wants; but she has produced nothing better than this charming tale--alive with incident and action, adorned rather than freighted with useful facts, and moral without moralization."--the nation. * * * * * the norseland series. _by h.h. boyesen_. norseland tales. illustrated. 12mo, $1.25. boyhood in norway: nine stories of deeds of the sons of the vikings. with 8 illustrations. 12mo, $1.25 against heavy odds, and a fearless trio. with 13 full-page illustrations by w.l. taylor. 12mo, $1.25. the modern vikings: stories of life and sport in the norseland. with many full-page illustrations. 12mo, $1.25. the four above volumes in a box, $5.00. "charmingly told stories of boy-life in the land of the midnight sun, illustrated with pictures giving a capital idea of the incidents and scenes described. the tales have a delight all their own, as they tell of scenes and sports and circumstances so different from those of our american life."--n.y. observer. * * * * * two books by rossiter johnson. the end of a rainbow. an american story. illustrated. 12mo, $1.50. "it will be read with breathless interest. it is interesting and full of boyish experiences."--n.y. independent. phaeton rogers. a novel of boy life. illustrated. 12mo, $1.50. "mr. johnson has shown in this book capabilities of a really high quality, for his story abounds with humor, and there are endless bits of quiet fun in it, which bring out the hearty laugh, even when it is read by older people. it is a capital book for boys."--new york times. * * * * * mrs. burton harrison's tales. bric-a-brac stories. with 24 illustrations by walter crane. 12mo, $1.50. "when the little boy, for whose benefit the various articles of bric-a-brac in his father's drawing-room relate stories appropriate to their several native countries, exclaims at the conclusion of one of them: 'i almost think there can't be a better one than that!' the reader, of whatever age, will probably feel inclined to agree with him. upon the whole, it is to be wished that every boy and girl might become acquainted with the contents of this book."--julian hawthorne. the old fashioned fairy book. illustrated by rosina emmet, 16mo, $1.25. "the little ones, who so willingly go back with us to 'jack the giant killer,' 'bluebeard,' and the kindred stories of our childhood, will gladly welcome mrs. burton harrison's 'old-fashioned fairy tales.' the graceful pencil of miss rosina emmet has given a pictorial interest to the book."--frank r. stockton. * * * * * thomas nelson page's two books. among the camps: or, young people's stories of the war. with 8 full-page illustrations. square, 8vo, $1.50. "they are five in number, each having reference to some incident of the civil war. a vein of mingled pathos and humor runs through them all, and greatly heightens the charm of them. it is the early experience of the author himself, doubtless, which makes his pictures of life in a southern home during the great struggle so vivid and truthful."--the nation. two little confederates. with 8 full-page illustrations by kemble and redwood. square, 8vo, $1.50. "mr. page was 'raised' in virginia, and he knows the 'darkey' of the south better than any one who writes about them. and he knows 'white folks,' too, and his stories, whether for old or young people, have the charm of sincerity and beauty and reality."--harper's young people. * * * * * w.o. stoddard's books for boys. dab kinzer. a story of a growing boy. the quartet. a sequel to dab kinzer saltillo boys. among the lakes. winter fun. _five volumes, 12mo, in a box, $5.00. sold separately, each, $1.00_. "william o. stoddard has written capital books for boys. his 'dab kinzer' and 'the quartet' are among the best specimens of 'juveniles' produced anywhere. in his latest volume, 'winter fun,' mr. stoddard gives free rein to his remarkable gift of story-telling for boys. healthful works of this kind cannot be too freely distributed among the little men of america."--new york journal of commerce. * * * * * little people and their homes in meadows, woods, and waters. by stella louise hook. illustrated by dan beard and harry beard. one volume, square 8vo, $1.50. "a delightful excursion for the little ones into the fairy-land of nature, telling all about the little people and all in such pleasant language and such pretty illustrations that the little readers will be charmed as much as they will be instructed by the book."--new york evangelist. * * * * * two books by robert louis stevenson. the black arrow: a tale of the two roses. by r.l. stevenson. with 12 full-page illustrations by will h. low and alfred brennan. 12mo, $1.25. "the story is one of the strongest pieces of romantic writing ever done by mr. stevenson."--the boston times. kidnapped: being memoirs of the adventures of david balfour in the year 1751. by r.l. stevenson. 12mo, with 16 full-page illustrations, $1.50. "mr. stevenson has never appeared to greater advantage than in 'kidnapped.'"--the nation. * * * * * two books by henry m. stanley. my dark companions and their strange stories. with 64 illustrations. 8vo, $2.00 "the following legends," says mr. stanley in his introduction, "are the choicest and most curious of those that were related to me during seventeen years, and which have not been hitherto published in any of my books of travel." there are in all nineteen stories, new and striking in motive and quaint in language. my kalulu. prince, king, and slave. a story of central africa. by henry m. stanley. one volume, 12mo, new edition, with many illustrations, $1.50. "a fresh, breezy, stirring story for youths, interesting in itself and full of information regarding life in the interior of the continent in which its scenes are laid."--new york times. "if the young reader is fond of strange adventures, he will find enough in this volume to delight him all winter, and he will be hard to please who is not charmed by its graphic pages."--boston journal. * * * * * jules verne's greatest work. "the exploration of the world." "m. verne's scheme in this work is to tell fully how man has made acquaintance with the world in which he lives, to combine into a single work in three volumes the wonderful stories of all the great explorers, navigators, and travelers who have sought out, one after another, the once uttermost parts of the earth."--the new york evening post. the three volumes in a set, $7.50; singly, $2.50. famous travels and travellers. with over 100 full-page illustrations, maps, etc., 8vo, $2.50. the great navigators of the xviiith century. with 96 full-page illustrations and 19 maps, 8vo, $2.50. the great explorers of the xixth century. with over 100 full-page illustrations, facsimiles, etc., 8vo, $2.50. jules verne's stories. uniform illustrated edition. nine volumes, 8vo, extra cloth, with over 750 full-page illustrations. price, per set, in a box, $17.50. sold also in separate volumes. michael strogoff; or, the courier of the czar, $2.00. a floating city and the blockade runners, $2.00. hector servadac, $2.00. a journey to the centre of the earth, $2.00. from the earth to the moon direct in ninety-seven hours, twenty minutes; and a journey around it, $2.00. dick sands, $2.00. the steam house, $2.00. the giant raft, $2.00. the mysterious island, $2.50. * * * * * czar and sultan. the adventures of a british lad in the russo-turkish war of 1877-78. by archibald forbes. illustrated. 12mo, $2.00. "very fascinating and graphic. mr. forbes is a forcible writer, and the present work has the vigor and intensity associated with his name. it is sure to be popular with youthful readers."--boston beacon. "a brilliant and exciting narrative, and the drawings add to its interest and value."--n.y. observer. * * * * * books of adventure by robert leighton. olaf the glorious. a story of olaf triggvison, king of norway, a.d. 995-1000. crown 8vo, with numerous full-page illustrations, $1.50. the wreck of the golden fleece. the story of a north sea fisher boy. illustrated. crown 8vo, $1.50. the thirsty sword. a story of the norse invasion of scotland, 1262-65. with 8 illustrations and a map. crown 8vo, $1.50. the pilots of pomona. a story of the orkney islands. with 8 illustrations and a map. crown 8vo, $1.50. "mr. leighton as a writer for boys needs no praise, as his books place him in the front rank."--new york observer. * * * * * things will take a turn. by beatrice harraden, author of "ships that pass in the night." illustrated. 12mo, $1,00. the charm of this tale is its delicate, wistful sympathy. it is the story of a sunny-hearted child, rosebud, who assists her grandfather in his dusty, second-hand bookshop. one cannot help being fascinated by the sweet little heroine, she is so engaging, so natural; and to love rosebud is to love all her friends and enter sympathetically into the good fortune she brought them. * * * * * among the lawmakers. by edmund alton. illustrated. sq. 8vo, $1.50. "the book is a diverting as well as an instructive one. mr. alton was in his early days a page in the senate, and he relates the doings of congress from the point of view he then obtained. his narrative is easy and piquant, and abounds in personal anecdotes about the great men whom the pages waited on."--christian union. 