The Story-book of Science

ONE evening, at twilight, they were assembled in a group, all six of them. Uncle Paul was reading in a large book. He always reads to rest himself from his labors, finding that...

THE six of them were gathered together. Uncle Paul was reading in a big book, Jacques braiding a wicker basket, Mother Ambroisine plying her distaff, Claire marking linen with r...

“THEY are noble workers” began Uncle Paul, “Many a time, when the morning sun begins to warm up, I have taken pleasure in observing the activity that reigns around their little...

THE next day Emile, when only half awake, began to think of the ants’ cows. “We must beg uncle,” said he to Jules, “to tell us the rest of his story this morning.”

IN the evening Uncle Paul resumed the story of the ants. At that hour Jacques was in the habit of going the round of the stables to see if the oxen were eating their fodder and...

“THERE are ant-hills everywhere, large or small,” observed Jules. “Even in the garden I could have counted a dozen. From some the ants are so numerous they blacken the road when...

“A PLANT-LOUSE, we will suppose,” resumed Uncle Paul, “has just established itself on the tender shoot of a rosebush. It is alone, all alone. A few days after, young plant-lice...

UNCLE PAUL had just cut down a pear-tree in the garden. The tree was old, its trunk ravaged by worms, and for several years it had not borne any fruit. It was to be replaced by...

“THEY used to tell of a chestnut of Sancerre whose trunk was more than four meters round. According to the most moderate estimate its age must have been three or four hundred ye...

JULES and Claire could not get over the astonishment caused by their uncle’s story of the old trees to which centuries are less than years are to us. Emile, with his usual restl...

NOW, that day, Mother Ambroisine was very tired. She had taken down from their shelves kettles, saucepans, lamps, candlesticks, casseroles, pans, and lids. After having rubbed t...

“COPPER and tin are called metals,” continued Uncle Paul. “They are heavy, shining substances, which bear the blows of the hammer without breaking. They flatten, but do not brea...

IN the morning some wandering coppersmiths were passing. Mother Ambroisine had sold them the old kettle. Besides the sale, they were to make over the lamp whose foot had melted...

“SOME metals never rust; such a one is gold. Ancient gold pieces found in the earth after centuries are as bright as the day they were coined. No dross, no rust covers their eff...

AS was agreed upon the day before, Jacques made ready for the performance. To keep the patients from moving, they were obliged to make them lie down, their feet tied, between th...

WHILE listening to what Jacques was saying about wool, Emile examined his handkerchief attentively. He turned it over and over, felt it, then looked through it. Jacques foresaw...

“COTTON, the most important of the materials used for our woven fabrics, is furnished by a semi-tropical plant called the cotton plant. It is an herb or even a shrub from one to...

MOTHER AMBROISINE called Claire. A friend had just come to see her to learn about an embroidery stitch that troubled her. At the request of Jules and Emile, however, Uncle Paul...

“To make a book, my children, there is double work: first the labor of the one who thinks and writes it, then the labor of the one who prints it. To think a book and write it un...

“AFTER a book is written, the author sends his work, his manuscript, to the printer, who is to reproduce it in printed letters and in as many copies as are desired.

OH, how beautiful! Oh, my goodness, how beautiful they are! There are some whose wings are barred with red on a garnet background; some bright blue with black circles; others ar...

“INSECTS propagate themselves by eggs, which they lay, with admirable foresight, where the young will be sure to find nourishment. The little creature that comes from the egg is...

“SOONER or later, according to its species, a day comes when the larva feels itself strong enough to face the perils of metamorphosis. It has valiantly done its duty, since to s...

“ONCE inclosed in its cocoon, the caterpillar withers and shrivels up, as if dying. First, the skin splits on the back; then, by repeated convulsions that pull it this way and t...

ONE morning, Mother Ambroisine was chopping herbs and cooked apples for a brood of little chickens hatched not long before. A large gray spider, letting itself slide the length...

HERE Uncle Paul caught Claire looking at him thoughtfully. It was evident that some change was taking place in her mind: the spider was no longer a repulsive creature, unworthy...

THE next day the little chickens were all hatched and doing well. The hen had led them to the courtyard, and, scratching the soil and clucking, she dug up small seeds which the...

UNCLE PAUL had said: “Let us get up early in the morning.” No one had to be called. One sleeps little when one is going to see an epeira hunt. About seven o’clock, with the sun...

“YOU have heard that certain creatures emit poison, that is to say, shoot from a distance into the face and on to the hands of those who approach a liquid capable of causing dea...

“ALL venomous creatures act in the same way as the bee, wasp, and hornet. With a special weapon—needle, fang, sting, lancet—placed sometimes in one part of the body, sometimes i...

“YOU just said,” interposed Emile, “the _bite_ of the viper, and not the _sting_. Then serpents bite, and do not sting. I thought it was just the other way. I have always heard...

AFTER dinner, while their uncle read under the chestnut tree, the children scattered in the garden. Claire attended to her cuttings, Jules watered his vases, and Emile——Ah, gidd...

“WE frequently see, at the ends of pine branches, voluminous bags of white silk intermixed with leaves. These bags are, generally, puffed out at the top and narrow at the bottom...

AND, in fact, it was very hot when Uncle Paul and Jules started out. With a burning sun, they were sure to find the caterpillars in their silk bag, where they do not fail to tak...

JULES gave a lengthy account of the day to his brother and sister. At the part relating to the thunderbolt Claire trembled like a leaf. “I should have died of fright,” said she,...

THE wind blew cold and dry. The storm of the day before had brought it on. Uncle Paul took this pretext to have the kitchen stove lighted in spite of Mother Ambroisine’s remarks...

“You fold lengthwise a good sheet of ordinary paper; then take hold of the double strip by each end. Next, you heat it just to the scorching point over a stove or in front of a...

THE next day Claire and her two brothers could talk of nothing but the experiments of the evening before. It was their subject of conversation the whole morning. The cat’s beads...

“BY their clever researches, Franklin, de Romas, and many others have revealed to us the nature of lightning; they have taught us, in particular, that when its quantity is small...

“A THUNDERBOLT overthrows, breaks, and rends bodies that do not permit electricity to circulate freely. It shatters rocks and throws the fragments great distances; it unroofs ou...

TO finish his talk on lightning, the next morning Uncle Paul told them about clouds. The occasion, moreover, was very favorable. In one part of the sky great white clouds like m...

“UNDER that big white cloud that you call cumulus,” said Emile, “there is at this very moment a storm. We have just seen the lightning and heard the thunder. Here, on the contra...

UNCLE PAUL had rightly said, the evening before, that clouds are nothing but fog floating high in the air instead of spreading over the earth; but he had not said what fogs are...

“THE explanations of this morning account for the formation of clouds. A continual evaporation takes place on the surface of the damp earth as well as on the surface of the diff...

At the word “volcano,” Emile, who was already asleep, rubbed his eyes and became all attention. He too wanted to hear the great story. As usual, their uncle yielded to their ent...

“YESTERDAY,” Uncle Paul resumed, “Jules asked me if the lava-streams could not reach towns situated near volcanoes. The following story will answer his question. It is about an...

“TO teach you what the cinders thrown up by a volcano can do, I am now going to tell you a very old story, just as it was transmitted to us by a celebrated writer of those old t...

AS their uncle finished speaking, the postman came with a letter. A friend advised Uncle Paul to go to town on pressing business, and he wished to take advantage of the occasion...

“This picture represents a locomotive. The boiler where the steam is generated, the boiling pot, in short, forms the greater part of it. It is the large cylinder that goes from...

“When you made me a sign to be silent,” said he, “it seemed to me as if the trees were walking. Those along the railroad were going very fast; farther away, the big poplars, ran...

“A SMALL boy, of Jules’s age and, like him, desirous to learn, one morning was making his preparations for a journey. Never had a navigator getting ready for a voyage over dista...

“THE earth is round, as proved by the following facts. When, in order to reach the town he is journeying toward, a traveler crosses a level plain where nothing intercepts his vi...

“IF you pass your hand quickly before your face, you feel a breath blow on your cheeks. This breath is air. In repose it makes no impression on us; put in motion by the hand, it...

EARLY in the morning Uncle Paul and his nephews climbed the neighboring hill to see the sunrise. It was still quite dark. The only persons they met in passing through the villag...

“On the contrary, we are closer to it than ever. If the sun, which is thirty-eight millions of leagues from us, were to go around the earth every day, do you know how far it wou...

“Yes. It takes three hundred and sixty-five days for that journey; it makes three hundred and sixty-five pirouettes on its axis in accomplishing a journey round the sun. The tim...

That day they had put little Louis into his first trousers. They had pockets and shiny buttons. In his new costume Louis was a little awkward, but much pleased. He admired the b...

THE death of poor Joseph had spread consternation through the village. If children left the house and went off into the fields, there was constant anxiety until they returned. T...

YES, they had listened very attentively the day before when Uncle Paul told them all about poisonous plants. Who would not listen to a talk on flowers? Jules and Claire, however...

“IT would be knowing a person very little only to be aware of his wearing a garment of a certain material, a coat of such and such a cloth. One does not know a flower any better...

“Now, in order to outlive the other parts of the flower and remain on its stem when all the rest dries up and falls, the ovary, at the moment when blossoming is at its greatest...

THE flowers with pollen were cut off, those with ovaries wrapped each in a separate gauze-bag. Every morning they went and watched the blossoming. With pollen taken from the cut...

WHILE they were talking about insects and flowers, time had slipped by until the Sunday arrived when Uncle Paul was to tell about mushrooms. The gathering was larger than the fi...

THE history of mushrooms reduced to a rule for cooking which will save us from grave dangers was enough for Simon, Mathieu, Jean, and the others, who lacked time to hear more; b...

“MUSHROOM seeds, or spores, form on these gills, these points, and on the walls of the tubes of which these holes are the orifices. I recommend to Jules the following experiment...

EARLY in the morning all the neighbors were talking, from door to door, on the same subject. It seemed they had had a narrow escape during the night. Jacques said that about two...

“What I am going to read to you is from a mounted artilleryman, more expert in the art of the pen than in that of the cannon. At the beginning of this century a French army occu...

“THE story of the gunner,” Jules remarked, “ended very differently from what one expected at the beginning. Just when one thinks the two travelers are done for, it turns out not...

“LET us get back to our subject. At the bottom of mines, I told you, a high temperature prevails, which keeps up during the whole year. There is always the same heat, winter and...

IN Uncle Paul’s room was a drawer full of shells of all sorts. One of his friends had collected them in his travels. Pleasant hours could be passed in looking at them. Their bea...

“Stop that cruel play, my child. The snail does not sing; it is complaining, in its own way, of the fiery tortures. Its slime, coagulated by the heat, first swells and then shri...

“SOME of the shells you have just shown us,” said Jules, “shine inside like the handle of that pretty penknife you bought me the day of the fair—you know?—that four-bladed penkn...

“So large that in certain parts it takes ships whole months to go from shore to shore. They are fast vessels, too, especially the steamships. They go almost as fast as a locomot...

“Yes, my dear Jules, very terrible. I shall never forget those great moving ridges, capped with foam, that toss a heavy ship like a nutshell, carry it one moment on their monstr...

“You are out in your reckoning, my dear child. The Rhone is not the only river that goes to the sea. In France alone there are the Garonne, Loire, Seine, and many less important...

UNCLE PAUL was still talking when they heard a persistent noise in the garden: _pom! pom! pom! pom!_ as if some smith had set up his anvil under the big elder-tree. They ran to...

“A well-peopled hive contains from twenty to thirty thousand bees. That is about the population of our secondary towns. In a town all cannot follow the same trade. Bakers make b...

“IN order to store the supply of honey and lodge the larvæ, the bees build with their wax little rooms called cells, open at one end and closed at the other. They are six-sided...

“THE bee is diligent: at sunrise it is at work, far from the hive, visiting the flowers one by one. You already know what it is in flowers that attracts insects: I have told you...

“THE eggs destined to give birth to queens are laid in special cells, much more spacious and solid than those where the working-bees hatch. Their shape is, in a general way, tha...