.dt The Story-Book Of Science, by Jean-Henri Fabre-A Project\
Gutenberg eBook
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The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed\
in the public domain.“Author of Social Life in the Insect World,” etc,
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TRANSLATED FROM THE NINETEENTH
FRENCH EDITION BY
FLORENCE CONSTABLE BICKNELL
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[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
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NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
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Copyright, 1917, by
The Century Co.
––––––––
Published, August, 1917
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CONTENTS
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CHAPTER | | PAGE
I | The Six | #3:ch01#
II | The Fairy Tale and the True Story | #7:ch02#
III | The Building of the City | #11:ch03#
IV | The Cows | #16:ch04#
V | The Sheepfold | #20:ch05#
VI | The Wily Dervish | #25:ch06#
VII | The Numerous Family | #30:ch07#
VIII | The Old Pear-Tree | #37:ch08#
IX | The Age of Trees | #40:ch09#
X | The Length of Animal Life | #45:ch10#
XI | The Kettle | #49:ch11#
XII | The Metals | #52:ch12#
XIII | Metal Plating | #55:ch13#
XIV | Gold and Iron | #59:ch14#
XV | The Fleece | #64:ch15#
XVI | Flax and Hemp | #67:ch16#
XVII | Cotton | #71:ch17#
XVIII | Paper | #77:ch18#
XIX | The Book | #80:ch19#
XX | Printing | #84:ch20#
XXI | Butterflies | #88:ch21#
XXII | The Big Eaters | #93:ch22#
XXIII | Silk | #99:ch23#
XXIV | The Metamorphosis | #104:ch24#
XXV | Spiders | #108:ch25#
XXVI | The Epeira’s Bridge | #112:ch26#
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XXVII | The Spider’s Web | #116:ch27#
XXVIII | The Chase | #120:ch28#
XXIX | Venomous Insects | #126:ch29#
XXX | Venom | #132:ch30#
XXXI | The Viper and the Scorpion | #136:ch31#
XXXII | The Nettle | #140:ch32#
XXXIII | Processionary Caterpillars | #144:ch33#
XXXIV | The Storm | #150:ch34#
XXXV | Electricity | #155:ch35#
XXXVI | The Experiment with the Cat | #160:ch36#
XXXVII | The Experiment with Paper | #163:ch37#
XXXVIII | Franklin and De Romas | #165:ch38#
XXXIX | Thunder and the Lightning-Rod | #172:ch39#
XL | Effects of the Thunderbolt | #179:ch40#
XLI | Clouds | #181:ch41#
XLII | The Velocity of Sound | #187:ch42#
XLIII | The Experiment with the Bottle of Cold Water | #192:ch43#
XLIV | Rain | #197:ch44#
XLV | Volcanoes | #201:ch45#
XLVI | Catania | #205:ch46#
XLVII | The Story of Pliny | #210:ch47#
XLVIII | The Boiling Pot | #216:ch48#
XLIX | The Locomotive | #221:ch49#
L | Emile’s Observation | #227:ch50#
LI | A Journey to the End of the World | #232:ch51#
LII | The Earth | #238:ch52#
LIII | The Atmosphere | #244:ch53#
LIV | The Sun | #250:ch54#
LV | Day and Night | #257:ch55#
LVI | The Year and Its Seasons | #264:ch56#
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LVII | Belladonna Berries | #271:ch57#
LVIII | Poisonous Plants | #275:ch58#
LIX | The Blossom | #284:ch59#
LX | Fruit | #290:ch60#
LXI | Pollen | #295:ch61#
LXII | The Bumble-Bee | #301:ch62#
LXIII | Mushrooms | #307:ch63#
LXIV | In the Woods | #313:ch64#
LXV | The Orange-Agaric | #317:ch65#
LXVI | Earthquakes | #322:ch66#
LXVII | Shall We Kill Them Both? | #329:ch67#
LXVIII | The Thermometer | #334:ch68#
LXIX | The Subterranean Furnace | #337:ch69#
LXX | Shells | #344:ch70#
LXXI | The Spiral Snail | #349:ch71#
LXXII | Mother-of-Pearl and Pearls | #353:ch72#
LXXIII | The Sea | #358:ch73#
LXXIV | Waves Salt Seaweeds | #363:ch74#
LXXV | Running Water | #369:ch75#
LXXVI | The Swarm | #373:ch76#
LXXVII | Wax | #378:ch77#
LXXVIII | The Cells | #382:ch78#
LXXIX | Honey | #389:ch79#
LXXX | The Queen Bee | #395:ch80#
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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
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Of the increasing success and widening popularity
of the elementary science series written chiefly
in the seclusion of Sérignan by the gifted French
naturalist who was destined to give that obscure
hamlet a distinction hardly inferior to the renown
enjoyed by Maillane since the days of Mistral, it is
unnecessary at this late date to say more than a word
in passing. The extraordinary vividness and animation
of his style amply justified his early belief in
the possibility of making the truths of science more
fascinating to young readers, and to all readers, than
the fabrications of fiction. As Dr. Legros has said
in his biography[#] of Fabre, “He was indeed convinced
that even in early childhood it was possible
for both boys and girls to learn and to love many
subjects which had hitherto never been proposed;
and in particular that Natural History which to him
was a book in which all the world might read, but
that university methods had reduced to a tedious and
useless study in which the letter ‘killed the life.’”
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“Fabre, Poet of Science.” By Dr. C. V. Legros. New York:
The Century Co.
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The young in heart and the pure in heart of whatever
age will find themselves drawn to this incomparable
story-teller, this reverent revealer of the
awe-inspiring secrets of nature, this “Homer of the
insects.” The identity of the “Uncle Paul,” who in
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this book and others of the series plays the story-teller’s
part, is not hard to guess; and the young
people who gather about him to listen to his true
stories from wood and field, from brook and hilltop,
from distant ocean and adjacent millpond, are, without
doubt, the author’s own children, in whose companionship
he delighted and whose education he
conducted with wise solicitude.
In his unselfish eagerness to see the truths of natural
science brought within the comprehension and
the enjoyment of all, Fabre would have been the first
to wish for a wide circulation for his own books in
many countries and many languages; and thus,
though it is now too late to obtain his authorization
of these translations, one cannot regard it as a wrong
to his memory to do what may lie in one’s power to
spread the knowledge he has so wisely and wittily,
with such insight and ingenuity, imparted to those
of his own country and tongue.
It remains to add that in the following pages the
somewhat stiff dialogue form of the original has
given place to the more attractive and flexible narrative
style, with as little violence as possible to the
author’s text.
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THE
STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE
Sursum corda
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THE
STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE
Sursum corda
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CHAPTER I||THE SIX
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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 after work nothing
refreshes so much as communion with a book that
teaches us the best that others have done, said, and
thought. He has in his room, well arranged on pine
shelves, books of all kinds. There are large and
small ones, with and without pictures, bound and
unbound, and even gilt-edged ones. When he shuts
himself up in his room it takes something very serious
to divert him from his reading. And so they
say that Uncle Paul knows any number of stories.
He investigates, he observes for himself. When he
walks in his garden he is seen now and then to stop
before the hive, around which the bees are humming,
or under the elder bush, from which the little flowers
fall softly, like flakes of snow; sometimes he stoops
to the ground for a better view of a little crawling
insect, or a blade of grass just pushing into view.
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What does he see? What does he observe? Who
knows? They say, however, that there comes to his
beaming face a holy joy, as if he had just found
himself face to face with some secret of the wonders
of God. It makes us feel better when we hear stories
that he tells at these moments; we feel better, and
furthermore we learn a number of things that some
day may be very useful to us.
Uncle Paul is an excellent, God-fearing man, obliging
to every one, and “as good as bread.” The
village has the greatest esteem for him, so much so
that they call him Maître Paul, on account of his
learning, which is at the service of all.
To help him in his field work—for I must tell you
that Uncle Paul knows how to handle a plow as well
as a book, and cultivates his little estate with success—he
has Jacques, the old husband of old Ambroisine.
Mother Ambroisine has the care of the house,
Jacques looks after the animals and fields. They
are better than two servants; they are two friends
in whom Uncle Paul has every confidence. They
saw Paul born and have been in the house a long,
long time. How often has Jacques made whistles
from the bark of a willow to console little Paul when
he was unhappy! How many times Ambroisine, to
encourage him to go to school without crying, has
put a hard-boiled new-laid egg in his lunch basket!
So Paul has a great veneration for his father’s two
old servants. His house is their house. You should
see, too, how Jacques and Mother Ambroisine love
their master! For him, if it were necessary, they
would let themselves be quartered.
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Uncle Paul has no family, he is alone; yet he is
never happier than when with children, children who
chatter, who ask this, that, and the other, with the
adorable ingenuousness of an awakening mind. He
has prevailed upon his brother to let his children
spend a part of the year with their uncle. There
are three: Emile, Jules, and Claire.
Claire is the oldest. When the first cherries come
she will be twelve years old. Little Claire is industrious,
obedient, gentle, a little timid, but not in the
least vain. She knits stockings, hems handkerchiefs,
studies her lessons, without thinking of what dress
she shall wear Sunday. When her uncle, or Mother
Ambroisine, who is almost a mother to her, tells her
to do a certain thing, she does it at once, even with
pleasure, happy in being able to render some little
service. It is a very good quality.
Jules is two years younger. He is a rather thin
little body, lively, all fire and flame. When he is
preoccupied about something, he does not sleep. He
has an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Everything
interests and takes possession of him. An ant
drawing a straw, a sparrow chirping on the roof, are
sufficient to engross his attention. He then turns to
his uncle with his interminable questions: Why is
this? Why is that? His uncle has great faith in
this curiosity, which, properly guided, may lead to
good results. But there is one thing about Jules
that his uncle does not like. As we must be honest,
we will own that Jules has a little fault which would
become a grave one if not guarded against: he has
a temper. If he is opposed he cries, gets angry,
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makes big eyes, and spitefully throws away his cap.
But it is like the boiling over of milk soup: a trifle
will calm him. Uncle Paul hopes to be able to bring
him round by gentle reprimands, for Jules has a
good heart.
Emile, the youngest of the three, is a complete
madcap; his age permits it. If any one gets a face
smeared with berries, a bump on the forehead, or a
thorn in the finger, it is sure to be he. As much as
Jules and Claire enjoy a new book, he enjoys a visit
to his box of playthings. And what has he not in the
way of playthings? Now it is a spinning-top that
makes a loud hum, then blue and red lead soldiers, a
Noah’s Ark with all sorts of animals, a trumpet
which his uncle has forbidden him to blow because it
makes too much noise, then—But he is the only one
that knows what there is in that famous box. Let us
say at once, before we forget it, Emile is already asking
questions of his uncle. His attention is awakening.
He begins to understand that in this world a
good top is not everything. If one of these days he
should forget his box of playthings for a story, no
one would be surprised.
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CHAPTER II||THE FAIRY TALE AND THE TRUE STORY
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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 red thread,
Emile and Jules playing with the Noah’s Ark. And
when they had lined up the horse after the camel, the
dog after the horse, then the sheep, donkey, ox, lion,
elephant, bear, gazelle, and a great many others,—when
they had them all arranged in a long procession
leading to the ark, Emile and Jules, tired of playing,
said to Mother Ambroisine: “Tell us a story,
Mother Ambroisine—one that will amuse us.”
And with the simplicity of old age Mother Ambroisine
spoke as follows, at the same time twirling
her spindle:
“Once upon a time a grasshopper went to the fair
with an ant. The river was all frozen. Then the
grasshopper gave a jump and landed on the other
side of the ice, but the ant could not do this; and it
said to the grasshopper: ‘Take me on your shoulders;
I weigh so little.’ But the grasshopper said:
‘Do as I do; give a spring, and jump.’ The ant gave
a spring, but slipped and broke its leg.
“Ice, ice, the strong should be kind; but you are
wicked, to have broken the ant’s leg—poor little leg.
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“Then the ice said: ‘The sun is stronger than I,
and it melts me.’
“Sun, sun, the strong should be kind; but you are
wicked, to melt the ice; and you, ice, to have broken
the ant’s leg—poor little leg.
“Then the sun said: ‘The clouds are stronger
than I; they hide me.’
“Clouds, clouds, the strong should be kind; but
you are wicked, to hide the sun; you, sun, to melt the
ice; and you, ice, to have broken the ant’s leg—poor
little leg.
“Then the clouds said: ‘The wind is stronger
than we; it drives us away.’
“Wind, wind, the strong should be kind; but you
are wicked, to drive away the clouds; you, clouds, to
hide the sun; you, sun, to melt the ice; and you, ice,
to have broken the ant’s leg—poor little leg.
“Then the wind said: ‘The walls are stronger
than I; they stop me.’
“Walls, walls, the strong should be kind; but you
are wicked, to stop the wind; you, wind, to drive away
the clouds; you, clouds, to hide the sun; you, sun, to
melt the ice; and you, ice, to have broken the ant’s
leg—poor little leg.
“Then the walls said: ‘The rat is stronger than
we; it bores holes through us.’
“Rat, rat, the strong—”
“But it is all the same thing, over and over
again, Mother Ambroisine,” exclaimed Jules impatiently.
“Not quite, my child. After the rat comes the cat
that eats the rat, then the broom that strikes the cat,
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then the fire that burns the broom, then the water
that puts out the fire, then the ox that quenches his
thirst with the water, then the fly that stings the ox,
then the swallow that snaps up the fly, then the snare
that catches the swallow, then—”
“And does it go on very long like that?” asked
Emile.
“As long as you please,” replied Mother Ambroisine,
“for however strong one may be, there are always
others stronger still.”
“Really, Mother Ambroisine,” said Emile, “that
story tires me.”
“Then listen to this one: Once upon a time there
lived a woodchopper and his wife, and they were
very poor. They had seven children, the youngest
so very, very small that a wooden shoe answered for
its bed.”
“I know that story,” again interposed Emile.
“The seven children are going to get lost in the
woods. Little Hop-o’-my-Thumb marks the way at
first with white pebbles, then with bread crumbs.
Birds eat the crumbs. The children get lost, Hop-o’-my-Thumb,
from the top of a tree, sees a light in
the distance. They run to it: rat-tat-tat! It is the
dwelling of an ogre!”
“There is no truth in that,” declared Jules, “nor
in Puss-in-Boots, nor Cinderella, nor Bluebeard.
They are fairy tales, not true stories. For my part,
I want stories that are really and truly so.”
At the words, true stories, Uncle Paul raised his
head and closed his big book. A fine opportunity
offered for turning the conversation to more useful
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and interesting subjects than Mother Ambroisine’s
old tales.
“I approve of your wanting true stories,” said
he. “You will find in them at the same time the
marvelous, which pleases so much at your age, and
also the useful, with which even at your age you must
concern yourselves, in preparation for after life.
Believe me, a true story is much more interesting
than a tale in which ogres smell fresh blood and
fairies change pumpkins into carriages and lizards
into lackeys. And could it be otherwise? Compared
with truth, fiction is but a pitiful trifle; for
the former is the work of God, the latter the dream
of man. Mother Ambroisine could not interest you
with the ant that broke its leg in trying to cross
the ice. Shall I be more fortunate? Who wants to
hear a true story of real ants?”
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White Ant
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[Illustration: White Ant]
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“I! I!” cried Emile, Jules, and Claire all together.
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CHAPTER III||THE BUILDING OF THE CITY
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“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 mounds
of earth, each with its summit pierced by a hole for
exit and entrance.
“There are some that come from the bottom of
this hole. Others follow them, and still more, on and
on. They carry between their teeth a tiny grain of
earth, an enormous weight for them. Arrived at
the top of the mound, they let their burden fall, and
it rolls over the slope, and they immediately descend
again into their well. They do not play on the way,
or stop with their companions to rest a while. Oh!
no: the work is urgent, and they have so much to do!
Each one arrives, serious, with its grain of earth, deposits
it, and descends in search of another. What
are they so busy about?
“They are building a subterranean town, with
streets, squares, dormitories, storehouses; they are
hollowing out a dwelling-place for themselves and
their family. At a depth where rain cannot penetrate
they dig the earth and pierce it with galleries,
which lengthen into long communicating streets, sub-divided
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into short ones, crossing one another here
and there, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending,
and opening into large halls. These immense
works are executed grain by grain, drawn by
strength of the jaws. If any one could see that black
army of miners at work under the ground, he would
be filled with astonishment.
“They are there by the thousands, scratching, biting,
drawing, pulling, in the deepest darkness.
What patience! What efforts! And when the grain
of sand has at last given way, how they go off, head
held high and proud, carrying it triumphantly above!
I have seen ants, whose heads tottered under the tremendous
load, exhaust themselves in getting to the
top of the mound. In jostling their companions,
they seemed to say: See how I work! And nobody
could blame them, for the pride of work is a noble
pride. Little by little, at the gate of the town, that
is to say at the edge of the hole, this little mound
of earth is piled up, formed by excavated material
from the city that is being built. The larger the
mound, the larger the subterranean dwelling, it is
plain.
“Hollowing out these galleries in the ground is not
all; they must also prevent landslides, fortify weak
places, uphold the vaults with pillars, make partitions.
These miners are then seconded by carpenters.
The first carry the earth out of the ant-hill,
the second bring the building materials. What are
these materials! They are pieces of timber-work,
beams, and small joists, suitable for the edifice. A
tiny little bit of straw is a solid beam for a ceiling,
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the stem of a dry leaf can become a strong column.
The carpenters explore the neighboring forests, that
is to say the tufts of grass, to choose their pieces.
“Good! see this covering of an oat-grain. It is
very thin, dry, and solid. It will make an excellent
plank for the partition they are constructing below.
But it is heavy, enormously heavy. The ant that
has made the discovery draws backward and makes
itself rigid on its six feet. No success: the heavy
mass does not move. It tries again, all its little body
trembling with energy. The oat-husk just moves a
tiny bit. The ant recognizes its powerlessness. It
goes off. Will it abandon the piece? Oh! no.
When one is an ant, one has the perseverance that
commands success. Here it is coming back with two
helpers. One seizes the oat in front, the others hitch
themselves to the side, and behold! it rolls, it advances;
it will get there. There are difficult steps,
but the ants they meet along the route will give them
a shoulder.
“They have succeeded, not without trouble. The
oat is at the entrance to the under-ground city. Now
things become complicated; the piece gets awry;
leaning against the edge of the hole, it cannot enter.
Helpers hasten up. Ten, twenty unite their efforts
without success. Two or three of them, engineers
perhaps, detach themselves from the band, and seek
the cause of this insurmountable resistance. The
difficulty is soon solved: they must put the piece with
the point at the bottom. The oat is drawn back a
little, so that one end overhangs the hole. One ant
seizes this end while the others lift the end that is on
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the ground, and the piece, turning a somersault, falls
into the well, but is prudently held on to by the carpenters
clinging to the sides. You may perhaps
think, my children, that the miners mounting with
their grain of earth would stop from curiosity before
this mechanical prodigy? Not at all, they have not
time. They pass with their loads of excavated material,
without a glance at the carpenters’ work. In
their ardor they are even bold enough to slide under
the moving beams, at the risk of being crippled. Let
them look out! That is their affair.
“One must eat when one works so hard. Nothing
creates an appetite like violent exercise. Milkmaid
ants go through the ranks; they have just milked the
cows and are now distributing the milk to the workers.”
Here Emile burst out laughing. “But that is not
really and truly so?” said he to his uncle. “Milkmaid
ants, cows, milk! It is a fairy tale like Mother
Ambroisine’s.”
Emile was not the only one to be surprised at the
peculiar expressions Uncle Paul had used. Mother
Ambroisine no longer turned her spindle, Jacques
did not plait his wickers, Jules and Claire stared with
wide-open eyes. All thought it a jest.
“No, my dears,” said Uncle Paul. “I am not jesting;
no. I have not exchanged the truth for a fairy
tale. It is true there are milkmaid ants and cows.
But as that demands some explanation, we will put
off the continuation of the story until to-morrow.”
Emile drew Jules off into a corner, and said to him
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in confidence: “Uncle’s true stories are very amusing,
much more so than Mother Ambroisine’s tales.
To hear the rest about those wonderful cows I would
willingly leave my Noah’s Ark.”
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CHAPTER IV||THE COWS
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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.”
No sooner said than done: they went to look for
their uncle.
“Aha!” cried he upon hearing their request, “the
ants’ cows are interesting you. I will do better than
tell you about them, I will show them to you. First
of all call Claire.”
Claire came in haste. Their uncle took them under
the elder bush in the garden, and this is what
they saw:
The bush is white with flowers. Bees, flies, beetles,
butterflies, fly from one flower to another with a
drowsy murmur. On the trunk of the elder, amongst
the ridges of the bark, numbers of ants are crawling,
some ascending, some descending. Those ascending
are the more eager. They sometimes stop the others
on the way and appear to consult them as to what is
going on above. Being informed, they begin climbing
again with even more ardor, proof that the news
is good. Those descending go in a leisurely manner,
with short steps. Willingly they halt to rest or to
give advice to those who consult them. One can
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easily guess the cause of the difference in eagerness
of those ascending and those descending. The descending
ants have their stomachs swollen, heavy,
deformed, so full are they; those ascending have
their stomachs thin, folded up, crying hunger. You
cannot mistake them: the descending ants are coming
back from a feast and, well fed, are returning home
with the slowness that a heavy paunch demands; the
ascending ants are running to the same feast and
put into the assault of the bush the eagerness of an
empty stomach.
“What do they find on the elder to fill their stomachs?”
asked Jules. “Here are some that can
hardly drag along. Oh, the gluttons!”
“Gluttons! no,” Uncle Paul corrected him; “for
they have a worthy motive for gorging themselves.
There is above, on the elder, an immense number
of the cows. The descending ants have just milked
them, and it is in their paunch that they carry the
milk for the common nourishment of the ant-hill colony.
Let us look at the cows and the way of milking
them. Don’t expect, I warn you, herds like ours.
One leaf serves them for pasturage.”
Uncle Paul drew down to the children’s level the
top of a branch, and all looked at it attentively. Innumerable
black velvety lice, immobile and so close
together as to touch one another, cover the under
side of the leaves and the still tender wood. With
a sucker more delicate than a hair plunged into the
bark, they fill themselves peacefully with the sap of
the elder without changing their position. At the
end of their back, they have two short and hollow
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
hairs, two tubes from which, if you look attentively,
you can see a little drop of sugary liquid escape from
time to time. These black lice are called plant-lice.
They are the ants’ cows. The two tubes are the udders,
and the liquor
which drips from
their extremity is the
milk. In the midst
of the herd, on the
herd, even, when the
cattle are too close together,
the famished
ants come and go from one louse to another, watching
for the delicious little drop. The one who sees it
runs, drinks, enjoys it, and seems to say on raising
its little head: Oh, how good, oh, how good it
is! Then it goes on its way looking for another
mouthful of milk. But plant-lice are stingy with
their milk; they are not always disposed to let it run
through their tubes. Then the ant, like a milkmaid
ready to milk her cow, lavishes the most endearing
caresses on the plant-louse. With its antennæ, that
is to say, with its little delicate flexible horns, it gently
pats the stomach and tickles the milk-tubes. The
ant nearly always succeeds. What cannot gentleness
accomplish! The plant-louse lets itself be conquered;
a drop appears which is immediately licked
up. Oh, how good, how good! As the little paunch
is not full, the ant goes to other plant-lice trying the
same caresses.
.if h
.il fn=i018.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Plant-louse
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[Illustration: Plant-louse]
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Uncle Paul let go the branch, which sprang back
into its natural position. Milkmaids, cattle, and
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
pasture were at once at the top of the elder bush.
“That is wonderful, Uncle,” cried Claire.
“Wonderful, my dear child. The elder is not
the only bush that nourishes milk herds for the ants.
Plant-lice can be found on many other forms of vegetation.
Those on the rosebush and cabbage are
green; on the elder, bean, poppy, nettle, willow, poplar,
black; on the oak and thistle, bronze color; on the
oleander and nut, yellow. All have the two tubes
from which oozes the sugary liquor; all vie with one
another in feasting the ants.”
Claire and her uncle went in-doors. Emile and
Jules, enraptured by what they had just seen, began
to look for lice on other plants. In less than an hour
they had found four different kinds, all receiving
visits of no disinterested sort from the ants.
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V||THE SHEEPFOLD
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 if the well-fed lambs
were sleeping peacefully beside their mothers. Under
the pretense of giving the finishing touches to
his wicker basket, Jacques stayed where he was.
The real reason was that the ants’ cows were on his
mind. Uncle Paul related in detail what they had
seen in the morning on the elder: how the plant-lice
let the sugary drops ooze from their tubes, how the
ants drank this delicious liquid and knew how, if
necessary, to obtain it by caresses.
“What you are telling us, Master,” said Jacques,
“puts warmth into my old veins. I see once more
how God takes care of His creatures, He who gives
the plant-louse to the ant as He gives the cow to
man.”
“Yes, my good Jacques,” returned Uncle Paul,
“these things are done to increase our faith in
Providence, whose all-seeing eye nothing can escape.
To a thoughtful person, the beetle that drinks from
the depths of a flower, the tuft of moss that receives
the rain-drop on the burning tile, bear witness to
the divine goodness.
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
“To return to my story. If our cows wandered
at will in the country, if we were obliged to take
troublesome journeys to go and milk them in distant
pastures, uncertain whether we should find them or
not, it would be hard work for us, and very often
impossible. How do we manage then? We keep
them close at hand, in inclosures and in stables.
This also is sometimes done by the ants with the
plant-lice. To avoid tiresome journeys, sometimes
useless, they put their herds in a park. Not all have
this admirable foresight, however. Besides, if they
had, it would be impossible to construct a park large
enough for such innumerable cattle and their pasturage.
How, for example, could they inclose in walls
the willow that we saw this morning with its population
of black lice? It is necessary to have conditions
that are not beyond the forces available. Given
a tuft of grass whose base is covered with a few
plant-lice, the park is practicable.
“Ants that have found a little herd plan how to
build a sheepfold, a summer châlet, where the plant-lice
can be inclosed, sheltered from the too bright
rays of the sun. They too will stay at the châlet for
some time, so as to have the cows within reach and to
milk them at leisure. To this end, they begin by
removing a little of the earth at the base of the tuft
so as to uncover the upper part of the root. This
exposed part forms a sort of natural frame on which
the building can rest. Now grains of damp earth are
piled up one by one and shaped into a large vault,
which rests on the frame of the roots and surrounds
the stem above the point occupied by the plant-lice.
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
Openings are made for the service of the sheepfold.
The châlet is finished. Its inmates enjoy cool and
quiet, with an assured supply of provisions. What
more is needed for happiness? The cows are there,
very peaceful, at their rack, that is to say, fixed by
their suckers to the bark. Without leaving home the
ants can drink to satiety that sweet milk from the
tubes.
“Let us say, then, that the sheepfold made of clay
is a building of not much importance, raised with
little expense and hastily. One could overturn it by
blowing hard. Why lavish such pains on so temporary
a shelter? Does the shepherd in the high mountains
take more care of his hut of pine branches,
which must serve him for one or two months?
“It is said that ants are not satisfied with inclosing
small herds of plant-lice found at the base of a
tuft of grass, but that they also bring into the sheepfold
plant-lice encountered at a distance. They thus
make a herd for themselves when they do not find one
already made. This mark of great foresight would
not surprise me; but I dare not certify it, never having
had the chance to prove it myself. What I have
seen with my own eyes is the sheepfold of the plant-lice.
If Jules looks carefully he will find some this
summer, when the days are warmest, at the base of
various potted plants.”
“You may be sure, Uncle,” said Jules, “I shall
look for them. I want to see those strange ants’
châlets. You have not yet told us why ants gorge
themselves so, when they have the good luck to find
a herd of plant-lice. You said those descending the
.bn 033.png
.pn +1
elder with their big stomachs were going to distribute
the food in the ant-hill.”
“A foraging ant does not fail to regale itself on its
own account if the occasion offers; and it is only fair.
Before working for others must one not take care of
one’s own strength? But as soon as it has fed itself,
it thinks of the other hungry ones. Among men, my
child, it does not always happen so. There are people
who, well fed themselves, think everybody else
has dined. They are called egoists. God forbid
your ever bearing that sorry name, of which the ant,
paltry little creature, would be ashamed! As soon
as it is satisfied, then, the ant remembers the hungry
ones, and consequently fills the only vessel it has
for carrying liquid food home; that is to say, its
paunch.
“Now see it returning, with its swollen stomach.
Oh! how it has stuffed so that others may eat! Miners,
carpenters, and all the workers occupied in building
the city await it so as to resume their work heartily,
for pressing occupations do not permit them to
go and seek the plant-lice themselves. It meets a
carpenter, who for an instant drops his straw. The
two ants meet mouth to mouth, as if to kiss. The
milk-carrying ant disgorges a tiny little bit of the
contents of its paunch, and the other one drinks the
drop with avidity. Delicious! Oh! now how courageously
it will work! The carpenter goes back to
his straw again, the milk-carrier continues his delivery
route. Another hungry one is met. Another
kiss, another drop disgorged and passed from mouth
to mouth. And so on with all the ants that present
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
themselves, until the paunch is emptied. The milk-ant
then departs to fill up its can again.
“Now, you can imagine that, to feed by the beakful
a crowd of workers who cannot go themselves for
victuals, one milk-ant is not enough; there must be a
host of them. And then, under the ground, in the
warm dormitories, there is another population of
hungry ones. They are the young ants, the family,
the hope of the city. I must tell you that ants, as
well as other insects, hatch from an egg, like birds.”
“One day,” interposed Emile, “I lifted up a stone
and saw a lot of little white grains that the ants hastened
to carry away under the ground.”
“Those white grains were eggs,” said Uncle Paul,
“which the ants had brought up from the bottom of
their dwelling to expose them under the stone to the
heat of the sun and facilitate their hatching. They
hurried to descend again, when the stone was raised,
so as to put them in a safe place, sheltered from
danger.
“On coming out from the egg, the ant has not the
form that you know. It is a little white worm, without
feet, and quite powerless, not even able to move.
There are in an ant-hill thousands of those little
worms. Without stop or rest, the ants go from one
to another, distributing a beakful, so that they begin
to grow and change in one day into ants. I leave you
to think how much they must work and how many
plant-lice must be milked, merely to nurse the little
ones that fill the dormitories.”
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI||THE WILY DERVISH
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
“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
they come out. It
must take a great
many plant-lice to
nourish all that little
colony.”
.if h
.il fn=i025.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Chess-board with pieces in position
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Chess-board with pieces in position]
.sp 2
.if-
“Numerous though
they be,” his uncle
assured him, “they
will never lack cows,
as plant-lice are still
more numerous.
There are so many
that they often seriously menace our harvests. The
miserable louse declares war against us. To understand
it, listen to this story:
“There was once a king of India who was much
bored. To entertain him, a dervish invented the
game of chess. You do not know this game. Well,
on a board something like a checkerboard two adversaries
range, in battle array, one white, the other
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
black, pieces of different values: pawns, knights,
bishops, castles, queen and king. The action begins.
The pawns, simple foot-soldiers, are destined as always
to receive the first of the glory on the battlefield.
The king looks on at their extermination,
guarded by his grandeur far from the fray. Now
the cavalry charge, slashing with their swords right
and left; even the bishops fight with hot-headed enthusiasm,
and the ambulating castles go here and
there, protecting the flanks of the army. Victory is
decided. Of the blacks, the queen is a prisoner; the
king has lost his castles; one knight and one bishop
do wonderful deeds to procure his flight. They succumb.
The king is checkmated. The game is lost.
“This clever game, image of war, pleased the bored
king very much, and he asked the dervish what reward
he desired for his invention.
“‘Light of the faithful,’ answered the inventor, ‘a
poor dervish is easily satisfied. You shall give me
one grain of wheat for the first square of the chessboard,
two for the second, four for the third, eight
for the fourth, and you will double thus the number
of grains, to the last square, which is the sixty-fourth.
I shall be satisfied with that. My blue pigeons will
have enough grain for some days.’
“‘This man is a fool,’ said the king to himself;
‘he might have had great riches and he asks me for
a few handfuls of wheat.’ Then, turning to his minister:—‘Count
out ten purses of a thousand sequins
for this man, and have a sack of wheat given him.
He will have a hundred times the amount of grain
he asks of me.’
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
“‘Commander of the faithful,’ answered the dervish,
‘keep the purses of sequins, useless to my blue
pigeons, and give me the wheat as I wish.’
“‘Very well. Instead of one sack, you shall have
a hundred.’
“‘It is not enough, Sun of Justice.’
“‘You shall have a thousand.’
“‘Not enough, Terror of the unfaithful. The
squares of my chessboard would not have their
proper amount.’
“In the meantime the courtiers whispered among
themselves, astonished at the singular pretensions of
the dervish, who, in the contents of a thousand sacks,
would not find his grain of wheat doubled sixty-four
times. Out of patience, the king convoked the
learned men to hold a meeting and calculate the
grains of wheat demanded. The dervish smiled maliciously
in his beard, and modestly moved aside
while awaiting the end of the calculation.
“And behold, under the pen of the calculators, the
figure grew larger and larger. The work finished,
the head one rose.
“‘Sublime Commander,’ said he, ‘arithmetic has
decided. To satisfy the dervish’s demand, there is
not enough wheat in your granaries. There is not
enough in the town, in the kingdom, or in the whole
world. For the quantity of grain demanded, the
whole earth, sea and continents together, would be
covered with a continuous bed to the depth of a
finger.’
“The king angrily bit his mustache and, unable
to count out to him his grains of wheat, named the
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
inventor of chess prime vizier. That is what the
wily dervish wanted.”
“Like the king, I should have fallen into the dervish’s
snare,” said Jules. “I should have thought
that doubling a grain sixty-four times would only
give a few handfuls of wheat.”
“Henceforth,” returned Uncle Paul, “you will
know that a number, even very small, when multiplied
a number of times by the same figure, is like a
snow-ball which grows in rolling, and soon becomes
an enormous ball which all our efforts cannot move.”
“Your dervish was very crafty,” remarked Emile.
“He modestly contented himself with one grain of
wheat for his blue pigeons, on condition that they
doubled the number on each square. Apparently, he
asked next to nothing; in reality, he asked more than
the king possessed. What is a dervish, Uncle?”
“In the religions of the East they call by that name
those who renounce the world to give themselves up
to prayer and contemplation.”
“You say the king made him prime vizier. Is that
a high office?”
“Prime vizier means prime minister. The dervish
then became the greatest dignitary of the State,
after the king.”
“I am no longer surprised that he refused the
ten purses of a thousand sequins. He was waiting
for something better. The ten purses, however,
would make a good sum?”
“A sequin is a gold piece worth about twelve
francs. At that rate, the king offered the dervish a
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
sum of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, besides
the sacks of wheat.”
“And the dervish preferred the grain sixty-four
times doubled.”
“In comparison what was offered him was nothing.”
“And the plant-lice?” asked Jules.
“The story of the dervish is bringing us to that
directly,” his uncle assured him.
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII||A NUMEROUS FAMILY
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 surround it: they
are its sons. How many are there? Ten, twenty,
a hundred? Let us say ten. Is that enough to assure
the preservation of the species? Don’t laugh
at my question. I know well that if the plant-lice
were missing from the rosebushes, the order of
things would not be sensibly changed.”
“The ants would be the most to be pitied,” said
Emile.
“The round earth would continue to turn just the
same, even when the last plant-louse was dying on
its leaf; but it is not, in truth, an idle question to
ask if ten plant-lice suffice to preserve the race; for
science has no higher object than the quest of providential
means for maintaining everything in a just
measure of prosperity.
“Well, ten plant-lice coming from one would be
far too many if we did not have to take account of
destructive agencies. One replacing one, the population
remains the same; ten replacing one, in a short
time the number increases beyond all possible limits.
Think of the dervish’s grain of wheat doubled
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
sixty-four times, so that it becomes a bed of wheat
of a finger’s depth over the whole earth. What
would it be if it had been multiplied ten times instead
of doubled! In like manner, after a few years,
the descendants of a first plant-louse, continually
multiplied tenfold, would be in straitened circumstances
in this world. But there is the great reaper,
death, which puts an invincible obstacle to overcrowding,
counterbalances life in its overgrowing
fecundity, and, in partnership with it, keeps all
things in a perpetual youth. On a rosebush apparently
most peaceful there is death every minute.
But the small, the humble, and weak, are the habitual
pasture, the daily bread, of the large eaters. To how
many dangers is not the plant-louse exposed, so tiny,
so weak, and without any means of defense! No
sooner does a little bird, hardly out of the shell, discover
with its piercing eyes a spot haunted by the
plant-lice, than, merely as an appetizer, it will swallow
hundreds. And if a worm, far more rapacious,
a horrible worm expressly created and put into the
world to eat you alive, joins in, ah! my poor plant-lice,
may God, the good God of little creatures, protect
you; for your race is indeed in peril.
“This devourer is of a delicate green with a white
stripe on its back. It is tapering in front, swollen
at the back. When it doubles itself up it takes the
shape of a tear-drop. They call it the ants’ lion because
of the ravages it makes in the stupid herd. It
establishes itself among them. With its pointed
mouth, it seizes one, the biggest, the plumpest; it
sucks it and throws away the skin, which is too hard
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
for it. Its pointed head is lowered again, a second
plant-louse seized, raised from the leaf, and sucked.
Then another and another, a twentieth, a hundredth.
The foolish herd, whose ranks are thinning, do not
even seem to perceive what is going on. The trapped
plant-louse kicks between the lion’s fangs; the others,
as if nothing were happening, continue to feed
peacefully. It would take a good deal more than
that to spoil their appetite! They eat while they
are waiting to be eaten. The lion has had enough.
He squats amidst the herd to digest at his ease. But
digestion is soon over and already the greedy worm
has its eye on those that he will soon crunch. After
two weeks of continual feasting, after having
browsed as it were on whole herds of plant-lice, the
worm turns into an elegant little dragon-fly with
eyes as bright as gold, and known as the hemerobius.
.if h
.il fn=i032.jpg w=500px
.ca
Ladybug
(a) larva (b) pupa (c) first joint of larvaWhite Oak
.ca-
.if-
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.sp 2
[Illustration: White Oak]
.sp 2
.if-
“There was in
France, at the beginning
of this
century, an older
tree than the veteran
of Neustadt. In 1804 could be seen at the
castle of Chaillé, in the Deux-Sèvres, a linden 15
meters round. It had six main branches propped
with numerous pillars. If it still exists it cannot be
less than eleven centuries old.
“The cemetery of Allouville, in Normandy, is
shaded by one of the oldest oaks in France. The
dust of the dead, into which it has thrust its roots,
seems to have given it an exceptional vigor. Its
trunk measures ten meters in circumference at the
base. A hermit’s chamber surmounted by a little
steeple rises in the midst of its enormous branches.
The base of the trunk, partly hollow, is fitted up as
a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Peace. The
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
greatest personages have esteemed it an honor to go
and pray in this rustic sanctuary and meditate a
moment under the shade of the old tree which has
seen so many graves open and shut. According to
its size, they consider this oak to be about nine hundred
years old. The acorn that produced it must,
then, have germinated about the year 1000. To-day
the old oak carries its monstrous branches without
effort. Glorified by men and ravaged by lightning,
it peacefully follows the course of ages, perhaps having
before it a future equal to its past.
“Much older oaks are known. In 1824 a wood-cutter
of Ardennes felled a gigantic oak in whose
trunk were found sacrificial vases and antique coins.
The old oak had had fifteen or sixteen centuries of
existence.
“After the Allouville oak I will tell you of some
more companions of the dead; for it is above all in
these fields of repose, where the sanctity of the
place protects them against the injuries of man, that
the trees attain such an advanced age. Two yews
in the cemetery of Haie-de-Routot, department of
Eure, merit attention above all. In 1832 they shaded
with their foliage the whole of the field of the dead
and a part of the church, without having experienced
serious damage, when an extremely violent
windstorm threw a part of their branches to the
ground. In spite of this mutilation these two yews
are still majestic old trees. Their trunks, entirely
hollow, measure each of them nine meters in
circumference. Their age is estimated at fourteen
hundred years.
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
“That, however, is not more than half the age that
some other trees of the same kind have attained.
A yew in a Scotch cemetery measured twenty-nine
meters around. Its probable age was two thousand
five hundred years. Another yew, also in a cemetery
in the same country, was, in 1660, so prodigious
that the whole country was talking about it. They
reckoned its age then at two thousand eight hundred
and twenty-four years. If it is still standing, this
patriarch of European trees bears the weight of
more than thirty centuries.
“Enough for the present. Now it is your turn
to talk.”
“I like better to be silent, Uncle Paul,” said Jules.
“You have upset my mind with your trees that will
not die.”
“I am thinking of the old yew in the Scotch cemetery.
Did you say three thousand years?” asked
Claire.
“Three thousand years, my dear child; and we
might go still further back, if I were to tell you of
certain trees in foreign countries. Some are known
to be almost as old as the world.”
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X||THE LENGTH OF ANIMAL LIFE
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 restlessness, led the
conversation to another subject:
“And animals, Uncle,” asked he, “how long do
they live?”
“Domestic animals,” was the reply, “seldom attain
the age that nature allows them. We grudge
them their nourishment, overtire them, and do not
give them proper shelter. And then, we take from
them their milk, fleece, hide, flesh, in fact everything.
How can you ever grow old when the butcher is waiting
for you at the stable door with his knife? Useless
to speak of these poor victims of our need: to
give us long life, they do not live out their time.
Supposing that an animal is well treated, that it suffers
neither hunger nor cold, that it lives in peace
without excessive fatigue, without fear of knacker or
butcher; under these good conditions, how many
years will it live?
“Let us begin with the ox. Here is a robust one,
I hope. What chest and shoulders! And then that
big square forehead, with its vigorous horns around
which the strap of the yoke goes; those eyes shining
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
with the serene majesty of strength. If old age is
the portion of the strong, the ox ought to live for
centuries.”
“I should think so too,” assented Jules.
“Quite wrong, my dear children; the ox, so
big, strong, massive, is old, very old, at twenty or
thirty years. What to us would be verdant youth
is for it decrepit old age.
“Let us pass on to the horse. You see I do not
take my examples from among the weak; I choose
the most vigorous. Well, the horse, as well as its
modest companion, the ass, scarcely reaches more
than thirty or thirty-five years.”
“How mistaken I was!” Jules exclaimed. “I
thought the horse and ox strong enough to live at
least a century. They are so big, they take up so
much room!”
“I do not know, my little friend, whether you can
understand me, but I want to inform you that to take
up a great deal of room in this world is not the way
to live in peace and to enjoy a long life. There are
people who take up a lot of space, not in the body—they
are no bigger than we—but in their pretensions
and their ambitious manœuvers. Do they live in
peace, are they preparing for themselves a venerable
old age? It is very doubtful. Let us remain small;
that is to say, let us content ourselves with the little
that God has given us; let us beware of the temptations
of envy, the foolish counsels of pride; let us be
full of activity, of work, and not of ambition. That
is the only way we are permitted to hope for length
of days.
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
“Let us return without delay to our animals.
Our other domestic animals live a still shorter time.
A dog, at twenty or twenty-five years, can no longer
drag himself along; a pig is a tottering veteran at
twenty; at fifteen at the most, a cat no longer chases
mice, it says good-by to the joys of the roof and retires
to some corner of a granary to die in peace;
the goat and sheep, at ten or fifteen, touch extreme
old age, the rabbit is at the end of its skein at eight
or ten; and the miserable rat, if it lives four years,
is looked upon among its own kind as a prodigy of
longevity.
“Would you like me to tell you about birds?
Very well. The pigeon may live from six to ten
years; the guinea fowl, hen, and turkey, twelve. A
goose lives longer; it is true that in its quality of
goose it does not worry. The goose attains twenty-five
years, and even a good deal more.
“But here is something better. The goldfinch,
sparrow, birds free from care, always singing, always
frisking, happy as possible with a ray of sunlight
in the foliage and a grain of hemp-seed, live
as long as the gluttonous goose, and longer than the
stupid turkey. These very happy little birds live
from twenty to twenty-five years, the age of an ox.
As I told you, taking up a lot of room in this world
is not the way to prepare oneself for a long life.
“As to man, if he leads a regular life, he often
lives to eighty or ninety. Sometimes he reaches a
hundred or even more. But should he attain only
the ordinary age, the average age, as they say, that
is about forty, then he is to be considered a privileged
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
creature as to length of life; the foregoing
facts show it. And besides, for man, my dear children,
length of life is not measured exactly according
to the number of years. He lives most who works
most. When God calls us to Him, let us take with
us the sincere esteem of others and the consciousness
of having done our duty to the end; and, whatever
our age, we shall have lived long enough.”
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI||THE KETTLE
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 them with fine
sand and ashes, then washed them well, she had put
the utensils in the sun to dry them thoroughly. They
all shone like a mirror. The kettles particularly
were superb with their rosy reflections; one might
have said that tongues of fire were shining inside
them. The candlesticks were a dazzling yellow.
Emile and Jules were lost in admiration.
“I should like to know what they make kettles of,
they shine so,” remarked Emile. “They are very
ugly outside, all black, daubed with soot; but inside,
how beautiful they are!”
“You must ask Uncle,” replied his brother.
“Yes,” assented Emile.
No sooner said than done: they went in search of
their uncle. He did not have to be entreated; he
was happy whenever there was an opportunity to
teach them something.
“Kettles are made of copper,” he began.
“And copper?” asked Jules.
“Copper is not made. In certain countries, it is
found already made, mixed with stone. It is one of
the substances that it is not in the power of man to
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
make. We use these substances as God has deposited
them in the bosom of the earth for purposes of
human industry; but all our knowledge and all our
skill could not produce them.
“In the bosom of mountains where copper is found,
they hollow out galleries which go down deep into
the earth. There workmen called miners, with
lamps to light them, attack the rock with great blows
of the pick, while others carry the detached blocks
outside. These blocks of stone in which copper is
found are called ore. In furnaces made for the purpose
they heat the ore to a very high temperature.
The heat of our stove, when it is red-hot, is nothing
in comparison. The copper melts, runs, and is separated
from the rest. Then, with hammers of enormous
weight, set in motion by a wheel turned by
water, they strike the mass of copper which, little by
little, becomes thin and is hollowed into a large basin.
“The coppersmith continues the work. He takes
the shapeless basin and, with little strokes of the
hammer, fashions it on the anvil to give it a regular
shape.”
“That is why coppersmiths tap all day with their
hammers,” commented Jules. “I had often wondered,
when passing their shops, why they made so
much noise, always tapping, without any stop. They
were thinning the copper; shaping it into saucepans
and kettles.”
Here Emile asked: “When a kettle is old, has
holes in it and can’t be used, what do they do with it?
I heard Mother Ambroisine speak of selling a worn-out
kettle.”
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
“It is melted, and another new kettle made out of
the copper,” replied Uncle Paul.
“Then the copper does not wear away?”
“It wears away too much, my friend: some of it is
lost when they rub it with sand to make it shine;
some is lost, too, by the continual action of the fire;
but what is left is still good.”
“Mother Ambroisine also spoke of recasting a
lamp which had lost a foot. What are lamps made
of?”
“They are of tin, another substance that we find
ready-made in the bosom of the earth, without the
power of producing it ourselves.”
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII||METALS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 break.
There are still other substances which possess the
considerable weight of copper and tin, as well as their
brilliancy and resistance to blows. All these substances
are called metals.”
“Then lead, which is so heavy, is a metal too?”
asked Emile.
“Iron also, silver and gold?” queried his brother.
“Yes, these substances and still others are metals.
All have a peculiar brilliancy called metallic luster,
but the color varies. Copper is red; gold, yellow;
silver, iron, lead, tin, white, with a very slightly different
shade one from another.”
“The candlesticks Mother Ambroisine is drying in
the sun,” said Emile, “are a magnificent yellow and
so shiny they dazzle. Are they gold?”
“No, my dear child; your uncle does not possess
such riches. They are brass. To vary the colors
and other properties of the metals, instead of always
using them separately, they often mix two or
three together, or even more. They melt them together,
and the whole constitutes a sort of new metal,
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
different from those which enter into its composition.
Thus, in melting together copper and a kind
of white metal called zinc, the same as the garden
watering-pots are made of, they obtain brass, which
has not the red of copper, nor the white of zinc, but
the yellow of gold. The material of the candlesticks
is, then, made of copper and zinc together; in a word,
it is brass, and not gold, in spite of its luster and
yellow color. Gold is yellow and glitters; but all
that is yellow and glitters is not gold. At the last
village fair they sold magnificent rings whose brilliancy
deceived you. In gold, they would have cost
a fine sum. The merchant sold them for a sou.
They were brass.”
“How can they tell gold from brass, since the
color and luster are almost the same?” asked Jules.
“By the weight, chiefly. Gold is much heavier
than brass; it is indeed the heaviest metal in frequent
use. After it comes lead, then silver, copper,
iron, tin, and finally zinc, the lightest of all.”
“You told us that to melt copper,” put in Emile,
“they needed a fire so intense, that the heat of a red-hot
stove would be nothing in comparison. All
metals do not resist like that, for I remember very
well in what a sorry way the first leaden soldiers you
gave me came to their end. Last winter, I had lined
them up on the luke-warm stove. Just when I was
not watching, the troop tottered, sank down, and ran
in little streams of melted lead. I had only time to
save half a dozen grenadiers, and their feet were
missing.”
“And when Mother Ambroisine thoughtlessly put
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
the lamp on the stove,” added Jules, “oh! it was soon
done for: a finger’s breadth of tin had disappeared.”
“Tin and lead melt very easily,” explained Uncle
Paul. “The heat of our hearth is enough to make
them run. Zinc also melts without much trouble;
but silver, then copper, then gold, and finally iron,
need fires of an intensity unknown in our houses.
Iron, above all, has excessive resistance, very valuable
to us.
“Shovels, tongs, grates, stoves, are iron. These
various objects, always in contact with the fire, do
not melt, however; do not even soften. To soften
iron, so as to shape it easily on the anvil by blows
from the hammer, the smith needs all the heat of his
forge. In vain would he blow and put on coal; he
would never succeed in melting it. Iron, however,
can be melted, but you must use the most intense
heat that human skill can produce.”
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII||METAL PLATING
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 on the stove,
and replate two saucepans. So the smiths lighted
a fire in the open air, set up their bellows on the
ground, and in a large round iron spoon melted the
old lamp, adding a little tin to replace what had
been lost. The melted metal was run into a mold,
from which it came out in the shape of a lamp. This
lamp, still pretty large, was fixed on a lathe which
a little boy set in motion; and while it turned, the
master touched it with the edge of a steel tool. The
tin thus planed off fell in thin shavings, rolled up
like curl-papers. The lamp was visibly becoming
perfect; it took the proper polish and shape.
Afterward they busied themselves plating the
copper saucepans. They cleaned them thoroughly
inside with sand, put them on the fire, and, when
they were very hot, went over the whole of their
surface with a tow pad and a little melted tin.
Wherever the pad rubbed, the tin stuck to the copper.
In a few moments the inside of the saucepan,
red before, was now shiny white.
Emile and Jules, while eating their little lunch of
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
apples and bread, looked on at this curious work
without saying a word. They promised themselves
to ask their uncle the reason for whitening the inside
of the copper saucepans with tin. In the evening,
accordingly, they spoke of the tinning and
plating.
“Highly cleaned and polished iron is very brilliant,”
explained their uncle. “The blade of a new
knife, Claire’s scissors, carefully kept in their case,
are examples. But, if exposed to damp air, iron
tarnishes quickly and covers itself with an earthy
and red crust called—”
“Rust,” interposed Claire.
“Yes, it is called rust.”
“The big nails that hold the iron wires where
the bell-flowers climb up the garden wall are covered
with that red crust,” remarked Jules; and Emile
added:
“The old knife I found in the ground is covered
with it too.”
“Those large nails and the old knife are encrusted
with rust because they have remained for a long
time exposed to the air and dampness. Damp air
corrodes iron; it becomes incorporated with the
metal and makes it unrecognizable. When rusty,
iron no longer has the properties that make it so useful
to us; it is a kind of red or yellow earth, in which,
without looking attentively, it would be impossible to
suspect a metal.”
“I can well believe it,” said Jules. “For my
part, I should never have taken rust for iron with
which air and moisture had become incorporated.”
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
“Many other metals rust like iron; that is to say,
they are converted into earthy matter by contact
with damp air. The color of rust varies according
to the metal. Iron rust is yellow or red, that of
copper is green, lead and zinc white.”
“Then the green rust of old pennies is copper
rust,” said Jules.
“The white matter that covers the nozzle of the
pump must be lead rust?” queried Claire.
“Exactly. The prime difficulty with rust is that
it makes metals ugly: they lose their brilliance and
polish; but it works still greater injury. There are
harmless rusts which might get mixed with our food
without danger: such is iron rust. On the contrary,
copper and lead rusts are deadly poisons. If, by
mischance, these rusts should get into our food, we
might die, or at least we should experience cruel
suffering. We will speak only of copper, for lead,
on account of its quick melting, cannot go on the
fire and is not used for kitchen utensils. Copper
rust, I say, is a mortal poison; and yet they prepare
food in copper vessels. Ask Mother Ambroisine.”
“Very true,” said she, “but I always have my eye
on my saucepans: I keep them very clean and from
time to time have them replated.”
“I don’t understand,” put in Jules, “how the
work that the tinsmith did this morning could prevent
the copper rust being a poison.”
“The smith’s work will not make the copper rust
cease to be a poison,” replied Uncle Paul, “but it
will prevent the rust’s forming. Of the common
metals tin rusts the least. Exposed to the air a long
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
time, it scarcely tarnishes. And then the rust, which
forms in small quantities, is innocuous, like iron rust.
To prevent copper from covering itself with poisonous
green spots, to preserve it from rust, it must be
kept from contact with damp air and also with certain
alimentary substances such as vinegar, oil,
grease—substances that provoke the rapid formation
of rust. For this reason the copper saucepan
is coated over with tin inside. Under the thin bed
of tin which covers it, the copper cannot rust, because
it is no longer in contact with the air. The
tin remains; but this metal changes with difficulty,
and, besides, its rust, if it forms any, is harmless.
So they plate copper, that is to say they cover it
with a thin bed of tin, to prevent its rusting, and
thus to prevent the formation of the dangerous
poison that might, some day or other, be mixed with
our food.
“They also tin iron, not to prevent the formation
of poison, for the rust of this metal is harmless, but
simply to preserve it from changing and covering
itself with ugly red spots. This tinned iron is called
tin-plate. Lids, coffee-pots, dripping-pans, graters,
lanterns, and innumerable other things, are of tin-plate;
that is to say, thin sheets of iron covered on
both sides with a coating of tin.”
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV||GOLD AND IRON
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 effigy and inscription.
Time, fire, humidity, air, cannot harm this admirable
metal. Therefore gold, on account of its unchangeable
luster and its rarity, is preëminently the material
for ornaments and coins.
“Furthermore, gold is the first metal that man
became acquainted with, long before iron, lead, tin,
and the others. The reason why man’s attention
was called to gold, long centuries before iron, is not
hard to understand. Gold never rusts; iron rusts
with such grievous facility that in a short time, if
we are not careful, it is converted into a red earth.
I have just told you that gold objects, however old
they may be, have come to us intact, even after
having been in the dampest ground. As for objects
of iron, not one has reached us that was not in an
unrecognizable state. Corroded with rust, they have
become a shapeless earthy crust. Now I will ask
Jules if the iron ore that is extracted from the bowels
of the earth can be real, pure iron, such as we use.”
“It seems to me not, Uncle; for if iron at any
given moment is pure, it must rust with time and
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
change to earthy matter, as does the blade of a
knife buried in the ground.”
“My brother seems to reason correctly; I agree
with him,” said Claire.
“And gold?” Uncle Paul asked her.
“It is different with gold,” she replied. “As that
metal never rusts, is not changed by time, air, and
dampness, it must be pure.”
“Exactly so. In the rocks where it is disseminated
in small scales, gold is as brilliant as in jewelers’
boxes. Claire’s earrings have not more luster
than the particles set by nature in the rock. On the
contrary, what a pitiful appearance iron makes
when it is found! It is an earthy crust, a reddish
stone, in which only after long research can one suspect
the presence of a metal; it is, in fact, rust,
mixed more or less with other substances. And
then, it is not enough to perceive that this rusty
stone contains a metal; a way must still be found
to decompose the ore and bring the iron back to
its metallic state. How many efforts were necessary
to attain this result, one of the most difficult
to achieve! How many fruitless attempts, how
many painful trials! Iron, then, was the last to become
of use to us, long after gold and other metals,
like copper and silver, which are sometimes, but
not always, found pure. That most useful of
metals was the last; but with it an immense advance
was made in human industry. From the moment
man was in possession of iron, he found himself
master of the earth.
“At the head of substances that resist shock, iron
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
must be placed; and it is precisely its enormous resistance
to rupture that makes this metal so precious
to us. Never would a gold, copper, marble, or
stone anvil resist the blows of the smith’s hammer
as an iron one does. The hammer itself, of what
substance other than iron could it be made? If of
copper, silver, or gold, it would flatten, crush, and
become useless in a short time; for these metals
lack hardness. If of stone, it would break at the
first rather hard blow. For these implements nothing
can take the place of iron. Nor can it for axes,
saws, knives, the mason’s chisel, the quarry-man’s
pick, the plowshare, and a number of other implements
which cut, hew, pierce, plane, file, give or receive
violent blows. Iron alone has the hardness
that can cut most other substances, and the resistance
that sets blows at defiance. In this respect iron
is, of all mineral substances, the handsomest present
that Providence has given to man. It is preëminently
the material for tools, indispensable in every
art and industry.”
.if h
.il fn=i061.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
Hatchet of the Stone Age
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Hatchet of the Stone Age]
.sp 2
.if-
“Claire and I read one
day,” said Jules, “that
when the Spaniards discovered
America, the savages
of that new country had gold axes, which they very
willingly exchanged for iron ones. I laughed at
their innocence, which made them give such a costly
price for a piece of very common metal. I think I
see now that the exchange was to their advantage.”
“Yes, decidedly to their advantage; for with an
iron ax they could fell trees to make their dug-out
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
canoes and their huts; they could better defend
themselves against wild animals and attack the game
in their hunts. This piece of iron gave them an
assurance of food, a substantial boat, a warm dwelling,
a redoubtable weapon. In comparison, a gold
ax was only a useless plaything.”
“If iron came last, what did men do before they
knew of it?” asked Jules.
“They made their weapons and tools of copper;
for, like gold, this metal is sometimes in a pure state
so that it can be utilized just as nature gives it to
us. But a copper implement, having little hardness,
is of much less value than an iron one. Thus,
in those far-off days of copper axes, man was indeed
a wretched creature.
“He was still more so before knowing copper. He
cut a flint into a point, or split it, and fastened it to
the end of a stick; and that was his only weapon.
“With this stone he had to procure food, clothing,
a hut, and to defend himself from wild beasts. His
clothing was a skin thrown over his back, his dwelling
a hut made of twisted branches and mud; his
food a piece of flesh, produce of the chase. Domestic
animals were unknown, the earth uncultivated,
all industry lacking.”
“And where was that?” asked Claire.
“Everywhere, my dear child; here, even in places
where to-day are our most flourishing towns. Oh!
how forlorn man was before attaining, by the help
of iron, the well-being that we enjoy to-day; how
forlorn was man and what a great present Providence
made him in giving him this metal!”
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
Just as Uncle Paul finished, Jacques knocked discreetly
at the door; Jules ran to open it. They
whispered a few words to each other. It was about
an important affair for the next day.
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV||THE FLEECE
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
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 the two inclined
planks of a rack. Steel knives shone on the
ground. As for them, innocent victims of the needs
of man, they were already bound and lying on their
sides. With gentle resignation they awaited their
sad fate. Were they going to be slain? Oh, no:
they were to be shorn. Jacques took a sheep by its
feet, placed it between the two planks of the rack,
and, with large scissors, began, cra-cra-cra, to cut
off the wool. Little by little, the fleece fell all in
one piece. When the sheep had been despoiled, it
ran free to one side, ashamed and chilly. It had
just given its covering to clothe man. Jacques put
another one on the rack, and the scissors began to
move.
“Tell me, Jacques,” said Jules, “are not the sheep
very cold when they have had their wool cut off?
See how that one trembles that you have just shorn.”
“Never mind that: I have chosen a fine day for it.
The sun is warm. By to-morrow they won’t feel
the need of their wool. And besides, ought not the
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
sheep to suffer a little cold so that we may be
warm?”
“We warm? How?”
.if h
.il fn=i065.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Spinning-wheel
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Spinning-wheel]
.sp 2
.if-
“You astonish me.
You do not know
that, you who read so
many books? Well,
with this wool they
will make you stockings
and knitted
things for this winter;
they will even
make cloth, fine cloth for clothes.”
“Peuh!” exclaimed Emile. “This wool is too
dirty and ugly to make stockings, knitted things,
and cloth.”
“Dirty at present,” Jacques agreed, “but it will
be washed in the river, and when it has become very
white Mother Ambroisine will work it on her spinning-wheel
and make yarn of it. This yarn knitted
with needles will become stockings that one is very
glad to have on one’s feet when obliged to run in the
snow.”
“I have never seen red, green, blue sheep; and
yet there are red, green, blue, and other colored
wools,” said Emile.
“They dye the white wool that the sheep gives us;
they put it into boiling water with drugs and coloring
matter, and it comes out of that water with a
color that stays.”
“And cloth?”
“And cloth is made with threads of wool like
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
those of stockings; but in order to weave these
threads, make them cross each other regularly, and
convert them into fabric, you must have complicated
machines, weaving looms that cannot be had in our
houses. These are only found in large factories
used for manufacturing woolen goods.”
“Then these trousers that I have on come from
the sheep; this vest; my cravat, stockings too. I
am dressed in the spoils of the sheep?” This from
Jules.
“Yes, to defend ourselves from the cold, we take
the sheep’s wool. The poor beast furnishes its
fleece for our clothes, its milk and flesh for our
nourishment, its skin for our gloves. We live on
the life of our domestic animals. The ox gives us his
strength, flesh, hide; the cow, besides, gives us milk.
The donkey, mule, horse, work for us. As soon as
they are dead they leave us their skin, of which we
make leather for our shoes. The hen gives us eggs,
the dog puts his intelligence at our service. And
yet there are people who, without any motive, maltreat
these animals without which we should be so
poor; who let them suffer hunger and beat them unmercifully!
Never imitate those heartless ones; it
would be an insult to God, who has given us the
donkey, ox, sheep, and other animals. When I think
that these valuable creatures give us all, even to their
very life, I would share my last crust with them.”
And the shears meanwhile continued their cra-cra-cra;
and the fleece fell.
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI||FLAX AND HEMP
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 the question
Emile was getting ready to ask him, and he
said:
“Handkerchiefs and linens are not woolen. Certain
plants, cotton, hemp, flax, and not sheep, furnish
them; for, you see, I don’t know much about
those things myself. I have heard tell of the cotton
plant, but have never seen it. And, besides, I am
afraid talking to you will make me cut the sheep’s
skin.”
In the evening, at Jules’s request, they took up the
history of the materials with which we clothe ourselves,
and Uncle Paul explained their nature.
“The outside of hemp and flax is composed of long
threads, very fine, supple, and tenacious, from which
we manufacture our fabrics. We clothe ourselves
with the spoils of the sheep, we make ourselves fine
with the bark of the plant. The fabrics of luxury,
cambric, tulle, gauze, point-lace, Mechlin lace, are
made from flax; the stronger ones, even to coarse
sacking, are of hemp. The cotton plant gives us the
fabrics made of cotton.
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
“Flax is a slender plant with little delicate blue
flowers, and is sown and harvested every year. It
is much cultivated in Northern France, Belgium, and
Holland. It is the first plant used by man for woven
fabrics. Mummies of Egypt, the old
land of Moses and the patriarchs, mummies
which have lain buried four thousand
years and more, are swathed in
bands of linen.”
.if h
.il fn=i068.jpg w=150px align=l
.ca
Flax
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Flax]
.sp 2
.if-
“Mummies, did you say?” interposed
Jules. “I don’t know what they are.”
“I will tell you, my dear child. Respect
for the dead is found among
all people and in all ages. Man regards as
sacred what was the seat of a soul made in the
image of God; he honors the dead, but the honors
rendered differ according to time, place, customs.
We inter the dead and put over the burial
place a tombstone with an inscription, or at least a
humble cross, divine emblem of life eternal. The
ancients burned them on a funeral pile; they piously
gathered the bones bleached by the fire and inclosed
them in priceless vases. In Egypt, to preserve the
cherished remains for the family, they embalmed the
dead; that is to say, they impregnated them with
aromatics and swathed them in linen to prevent decomposition.
These pious duties were so delicately
performed that, after centuries and centuries, we
find intact in their chests of sweet-smelling wood, but
dried and blackened by years, contemporaries of the
ancient kings of Egypt, or the Pharaohs. These
are what are called mummies.
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
“Hemp has been cultivated all over Europe for
many centuries. It is an annual, of a strong, nauseous
odor, with little, green, dull-looking flowers,
whose stem, of the thickness of a quill pen, rises to
about two meters. It is cultivated, like flax, both for
its bark and for its grain, called hemp-seed.”
“That is the grain, I think,” said Emile, “we give
the goldfinch, which it cracks with its beak when it
breaks the shell to get out the little kernel.”
“Yes, hemp-seed is the feast of little birds.
“The bark of the hemp has not the fineness of flax.
The fibers of this latter plant are so fine that twenty-five
grams of tow spun on the spinning-wheel furnishes
a thread almost a league long. The spider’s
web alone can rival in delicacy certain linen fabrics.
“When hemp and flax reach maturity, they are
harvested, and the seeds are separated by thrashing.
The next operation, retting, then takes place, its
purpose being to render the filaments of the bark, or
the fibers, as they are called, easily separable from
the wood. These fibers, in fact, are pasted to the
stem and stuck together by a gummy substance that
is very resistant and prevents separation until it
is destroyed by rot. They sometimes do this retting
by spreading the plants in the fields for a couple of
weeks and turning them over now and then, until the
tow detaches itself from the woody part or hemp-stalk.
“But the quickest way is to tie the flax and hemp in
bundles and keep them submerged in a pond. There
soon follows a rot which gives out intolerable smells;
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
the bark decays, and the fiber, endowed with exceptional
resistance, is freed.
“Then the bundles are dried; after that they crush
them between the jaws of an instrument called a
brake, to crush the stems into small pieces and separate
the tow. Finally, to purge the tow of all woody
refuse and to divide it into the finest threads, they
pass it between the iron teeth of a sort of big comb
called a heckle. In this state, the fiber is spun either
by hand or by machine. The thread obtained is
ready for weaving.
“On a loom they place in order, side by side, numerous
threads composing what they call the warp.
By turns, impelled by a pedal on which the operator’s
foot presses, one half of these threads descends
while the other half ascends. At the same time the
operator passes a transverse thread in a shuttle
through the two halves of the warp, from left to
right, then from right to left. From this inter-crossing
comes the woven fabric. And it is finished; the
garb of the plant has changed masters; the bark of
the hemp has become cloth, that of flax a princely
lace worth some hundreds of francs by the piece.”
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII||COTTON
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 two meters high,
and its large yellow flowers are followed by an abundant
fruitage of
bolls, each as large
as an egg, filled
with a silky flock,
sometimes brilliantly
white, sometimes
a pale yellowish
shade, according
to the kind
of cotton. In the
middle of this flock
are the seeds.”
.if h
.il fn=i071.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Cotton Plant
(a) Cotton Boll
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Cotton Plant
(a) Cotton Boll]
.sp 2
.if-
“It seems to me I have seen flock of that kind fall
in flakes in the spring from the top of poplars and
willows,” said Claire.
“The comparison is very good. Willows and
poplars have for their fruit tiny little long and
pointed bolls three or four times as large as a pin’s
head. In the month of May these bolls are ripe.
They open and set free a very fine white down, in the
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
middle of which are the seeds. If the air is calm,
this down piles up at the foot of the tree in a bed of
cotton wool, as white as snow; but at the least breath
of wind the flakes are borne long distances, carrying
with them the seeds, which thus find unoccupied
places where they can germinate and become trees.
Many other seeds are provided with soft aigrettes,
silky plumes, which keep them up in the air a long
time and permit them distant journeys in order to
disseminate the plant. For example, who is not
familiar with the seeds of thistles and dandelions,
those beautiful silky plumed seeds that you take
pleasure in blowing into the air?”
“Can the flock of poplar bolls be put to the same
use as cotton?” Jules asked.
“By no means. There is too little of it, and it
would be too difficult to gather. Besides, it is so
short it might not be possible to spin it. But if we
ourselves cannot make use of it, others find it very
useful. This flock is the little birds’ cotton; many
gather it to line their nests. The goldfinch, among
others, is one of the cleverest of the clever. Its
house of cotton is a masterpiece of elegance and
solidity. In the fork of several little branches, with
the cottony flock of the willow and poplar, with bits
of wool that hedge thorns pull out from sheep as
they pass, with the plumy aigrettes of thistle seeds,
it makes for its young a cup-shaped mattress, so soft
and warm and wadded that no little prince in his
swaddling-clothes ever had the like.
“To build their nests, birds find materials near
at hand; they only have to set to work. When
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
spring comes, the goldfinch does not have to think
of the materials for its nest; it is sure that the osier-beds,
thistles, and roadside hedges will furnish in
abundance all that it needs. And it ought to be
thus, for a bird has not
the intelligence to prepare
a long time in advance, by
careful and wise industry,
the things that it will need.
Man, whose noble prerogative
it is to acquire everything
by work and reflection,
procures cotton from distant countries; a bird
finds its cotton on the poplars of its grove.
.if h
.il fn=i073.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
Picking cotton by hand
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Picking cotton by hand]
.sp 2
.if-
“At maturity the cotton bolls open wide, and their
flock bursts out in soft flakes that are gathered by
hand, boll by boll. The flock, well dried in the sun
on screens, is beaten with flails or, better, submitted
to the action of certain machines. It is thus freed
from all seeds and husks. Without any other preparation,
cotton comes to us in large bales to be converted
into fabrics in our manufactories. The
countries that furnish the most of it are India,
Egypt, Brazil, and, above all, the United States of
North America.
“In a single year the European manufactories
work up nearly eight hundred million kilograms of
cotton. This enormous weight is not too much,
for the whole world clothes itself with the precious
flock, turned into print, percale, calico. Thus human
activity has no greater field than the cotton trade.
How many workmen, how many delicate operations,
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
what long voyages, all for a simple piece of print
costing a few centimes! A handful of cotton is
gathered, we will suppose, two or three thousand
leagues from here. This cotton crosses the ocean,
goes a quarter round the globe, and comes to France
or England to be manufactured. Then it is spun,
woven, ornamented with colored designs, and, converted
into print, crosses the seas again, to go perhaps
to the other end of the world to serve as head-dress
for some woolly-haired negro. What a multiplicity
of interests are brought into play! It was
necessary to sow the plant; then, for a good half of
the year, to cultivate it. Out of a handful of flock,
then, provision must be made for the remuneration
of those who have cultivated and harvested. Next
come the dealer who buys and the mariner who transports
it. To each of them is due a part of the handful
of flock. Then follow the spinner, weaver, dyer,
all of whom the cotton must indemnify for their
work. It is far from being finished. Now come
other dealers who buy the fabrics, other mariners
who carry them to all parts of the world, and finally
merchants who sell them at retail. How can the
handful of flock pay all these interested ones without
itself acquiring an exorbitant price?
“To accomplish this wonder two industrial powers
intervene: work on a large scale and the aid of machinery.
You have seen how Ambroisine spins wool
on the wheel. The carded wool is first divided into
long locks. One of these locks is applied to a hook
which turns rapidly. The hook seizes the wool and
in its rotation twists the fibers into one thread, which
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
lengthens little by little at the expense of the lock
held and regulated by the fingers. When the thread
attains a certain length, Mother Ambroisine rolls
it on the spindle by a suitable movement of the
wheel; then she continues twisting the wool again.
“Strictly speaking, cotton could be spun in the
same way; but, however clever Mother Ambroisine
may be, the fabrics made from the thread of her
wheel would cost an enormous price on account of
the time spent. What, then, is to be done? A machine
is made to spin the cotton. In rooms larger
than the biggest church are placed, by hundreds of
thousands, the nicely adjusted machines proper for
spinning, with hooks, spindles, and bobbins. And all
turn at the same time with a precision and rapidity
that defy watching. The work goes on with noise
enough to deafen you. The flock of cotton is seized
by thousands and thousands of hooks; the endless
threads come and go from one bobbin to another,
and roll themselves on the spindles. In a few hours
a mountain of cotton is converted into thread, the
length of which would go several times around the
whole earth. What have they spent for work which
would have exhausted the strength of an army of
spinners as clever as Mother Ambroisine? Some
shovelfuls of coal to heat the water, the steam of
which starts the machine that sets everything going.
Weaving, the printing of the colored designs,—in
short, the various operations that the flock undergoes
to become cloth are executed by means quite as
expeditious, quite as economical. And it is thus
that the planter, broker, mariner, spinner, weaver,
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
dyer, and merchant can all have their share in the
handful of cotton flock which has become a piece of
calico and is sold for four sous.”
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch18
CHAPTER XVIII||PAPER
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 continued.
He knew Jules would take pleasure in repeating
the conversation to his sister.
“Flax, hemp, and cotton, especially the last-named,
have still another use of great importance. First
they clothe us; then, when too ragged to use any
more, they serve to make paper.”
“Paper!” exclaimed Emile.
“Paper, real paper, that on which we write, of
which we make books. The beautiful white sheets
of your copybooks, the leaves of a book, even the
costliest, gilt-edged and enriched with magnificent
pictures, come to us from miserable rags.
“Despicable tatters are collected: some of them
are picked up from the filth of the street, some are
unspeakably filthy. They are sorted over, these for
fine paper, those for coarse. They are thoroughly
washed, for they need it. Now machines take them
in hand. Scissors cut them, steel claws tear them,
wheels make pulp of them and reduce them to shreds.
Mill-stones take them and grind them still more, then
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
triturate them in water, and convert them into a sort
of soup. The pulp is gray, it must be whitened.
Then recourse is had to powerful drugs, which attack
everything they touch, and in less than no time
make it white as snow. Behold the pulpy mass thoroughly
purified. Other machines spread it in thin
layers on sieves. Water drips through, and the rag
soup forms into felt. Cylinders press this felt, others
dry it, others give it a polish. The paper is
finished.
“Before it became paper, the first material was
rags, or cloth too tattered to use. How many uses
has not this cloth served, and what energetic treatments
has it not undergone before being cast out as
rubbish! Washing with corrosive ashes, contact
with acrid soap, pounding with a beetle, exposure to
the sun, air, and rain. What is then this material
which, in spite of its delicacy, resists the brutalities
of washing, soap, sun, and air; which remains intact
in the bosom of rottenness; which braves the machines
and drugs of paper-making, and always comes
out of these ordeals more supple and whiter, to become
at last a sheet of paper, beautiful satiny paper,
the confidant of our thoughts? You know now, my
little friends, this admirable material, source of so
much intellectual progress, comes to us from the
flock of the cotton plant and the bark of hemp and
flax.”
“I am certainly going to surprise Claire,” said
Jules, “when I tell her that her beautiful prayer-book
with the silver clasp was made from horrid
rags, perhaps from ragged handkerchiefs thrown
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
away for rubbish, or from tatters picked up from
the mud of the street.”
“Claire will be interested to learn the nature of
paper; but, I am sure, the lowly origin of her prayer-book
will not lessen the value of it in her mind.
Skill performs a marvel in transforming despicable
rags into a book, depository of noble thoughts. God,
my dear child, does incomparably more in the miracle
of vegetation. The filth of the dung-hill, when
buried in the soil, becomes transformed into the most
pleasing things in the world; for it becomes the rose,
the lily, and other flowers. As for us, let us be like
Claire’s book and the flowers of the good God: let
us try to have real value in ourselves, and let us
never blush at our humble extraction. There is only
one true greatness, only one true nobility: greatness
and nobility of the soul. If we possess them, the
merit is all the greater by reason of our lowly
origin.”
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch19
CHAPTER XIX||THE BOOK
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“NOW that I know what paper is made of,” said
Jules, “I should like to know how they make
books.”
“I could listen all day without getting tired,”
Emile asserted. “For a story I would leave my top
and my soldiers.”
“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 under the sole dictation
of one’s mind is a difficult and serious business.
Brain-work exhausts our strength much more quickly
than manual labor, for we must put the best of ourselves
into it, our soul. I tell you these things that
you may see what gratitude you owe those who,
solicitous for your future, think and write in order
to teach you to think for yourselves and to free you
from the miseries of ignorance.”
“I am quite convinced,” returned Jules, “of the
difficulties to be overcome in order to compose a book
under the sole dictation of one’s mind; for when I
want to write a letter of half a page to wish you
a Happy New Year, I come to a full stop at the first
word. How hard it is to find the first word! My
head is heavy, my face flushes, and I can’t see
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
straight. I shall do better when I know my grammar
well.”
“I am sorry, my dear child, but I must undeceive
you. Grammar cannot teach one to write. It
teaches us to make a verb agree with its subject, an
adjective with a substantive, and other things of
that kind. It is very useful, I admit, for nothing is
more displeasing than to violate the rules of language;
but that does not impart the gift of writing.
There are people whose memories are crammed with
rules of grammar, who, like you, stop short at the
first word.
“Language is in some sort the clothing of thought.
We cannot clothe what does not exist; we cannot
speak or write what we do not find in our minds.
Thought dictates and the pen writes. When the
head is furnished with ideas, and usage, still more
than grammar, has taught us the rules of language,
we have all that is necessary to write excellent things
correctly. But, again, if ideas are wanting, if there
is nothing in the head, what can you write? How
are these ideas to be acquired? By study, reading,
and conversation with people better instructed than
we.”
“Then, in listening to all these fine things you tell
us, I am no doubt learning to write,” said Jules.
“Why, certainly, my little friend. Is it not true,
for example, that if it had been proposed to you, a
few days ago, to write only two lines about the origin
of paper, you would not have been able to do it?
What was wanting? Ideas and not grammar, although
you know very little of that yet.”
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
“It is true, I was entirely ignorant what paper
comes from. To-day I know that cotton is a flock
found in the bolls of a shrub called the cotton plant:
I know that with this flock they make thread; then,
after the thread, cloth; I know that when the cloth
gets old with use, it is reduced to pulp by machines,
and that this pulp, stretched in very thin layers and
pressed, finally becomes a sheet of paper. I know
these things well, and yet I should find it very hard
to write them.”
“You are mistaken, for all you need do is to put
in writing exactly what you have just told me.”
“You write then just as you talk?” asked the boy,
incredulously.
“Yes, provided that speech is corrected, if necessary,
on reflection, since writing gives time for it,
whereas talking does not.”
“In that case, I should soon have my five lines
on paper. I should write: ‘Cotton is a flock that
is found in the bolls of a shrub called the cotton
plant. With this flock they make thread; and with
this thread, cloth. When the cloth is worn out, machines
tear it into little pieces, and mill-stones grind
it with water to make it into a pulp. This pulp is
stretched in thin layers which are pressed and dried.
Then it is paper.’ There! Is that right, Uncle?”
“As well as one could wish from one of your age,”
his uncle assured him.
“But that could not be put into a book.”
“And why not? I promise you that shall be in
a book some day. It has been said to me that our
talks might be useful to many other little boys as
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
desirous to learn as you, and I propose to collect
them in all their simplicity and make a book of
them.”
“A book where I could read at leisure the stories
that you tell us? Oh, how pleased I am, Uncle, and
how I love you! You won’t put my ignorant questions
in that book?”
“I shall put them all in. You know next to nothing
now, my dear child, but you ardently desire to
learn. That is a fine quality, and a very becoming
one.”
“Are you at least sure that the little boys who
read this book will not laugh at me?”
“I am sure.”
“Tell them then that I love them well and embrace
them all.”
“Tell them I wish them as good a top and as fine
lead soldiers as those you gave me,” put in Emile.
“Take care, Emile,” cautioned his brother.
“Uncle may put your lead soldiers in the book.”
“They will be there, they are there.”
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch20
CHAPTER XX||PRINTING
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
“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.
“Picture to yourself fine and short metal sticks,
on the end of each of which is carved in relief a
letter of the alphabet. One of these sticks has an a
on the end, another a b, another a c, etc. There are
others which have a full-stop, a comma, a semi-colon;
in fact, there are as many distinct kinds of these
little metal pieces as there are letters and orthographic
signs in our written language. Besides,
each letter and each sign are represented a great
many times. Let us take note, too, that all these
characters are carved wrong side before; you will
soon see the reason.
“A workman called a compositor has before him
a stand of cases, of which each compartment is occupied
by a single letter of the alphabet, or by an
orthographic sign. The a’s are in such a compartment,
the b’s in a second, the c’s in a third, and so
on. The letters, furthermore, are not arranged in
the case alphabetically. To shorten the work, they
put in the compartments near to hand the letters
that occur most frequently, such as the e’s, r’s, i’s,
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
a’s; and they place in the more distant compartments
the letters less often used, such as x’s and y’s.
.if h
.il fn=i085.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
An old fashioned Hand Press
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: An old fashioned Hand Press]
.sp 2
.if-
“The compositor has before him a manuscript,
and at his left hand a little flanged iron ruler called
a composing-stick.
As he
reads, his right
hand, guided by
long habit,
searches in the
case the desired
letter and places
it in the composing-stick,
upright
and in a
row with the others. He separates the words by
means of a metal stick like those of the letters, but
the end of which remains depressed and does not
bear any carving. The first line finished, the compositor
begins another by setting a new row of little
metal pieces next to the row already finished.
Finally, when the composing-stick is full, the workman
cautiously places the contents in an iron frame,
which keeps the delicate combination from going to
pieces; and he continues thus until the frame is
quite full and we have what is called the printing-bed.
This plate is composed of a multitude of little
metal sticks, simply placed side by side. There are
as many of these as there are letters, orthographic
signs, and spaces separating the words. The arrangement
of these numerous bits of metal is a
masterpiece that a false movement might ruin. It
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
is held firm in its iron frame by means of wedges,
so that the whole thing seems made of a single block
of metal. The bed is then ready for printing.
“A roller impregnated with a thick ink made of
oil and lampblack is passed over the plate. The
letters and orthographic signs, which alone stand
out in relief, become covered with ink; the rest does
not take it because its surface is lower. A sheet of
paper is placed on the inked plate; it is covered with
a pad to protect it, then pressed hard. The ink of
the characters is deposited on the paper, and the
sheet is found printed on one side. To print the
other, the operation is repeated with a second plate.
The metal letters are, as I said, carved wrong side
before, as the letters of a book appear when you look
at them in a mirror. The inky imprint left by them
on the paper reproduces them in a reversed position,
and consequently in the right way.
“The first sheet is followed immediately by a second.
With the roller the plate is inked again, a
sheet of paper is applied, pressure is exerted, and it
is done. Then comes a third sheet, a hundredth, a
thousandth, indefinitely. All that is needed each
time is to ink the plate, cover it with paper, then
press. All this is done with such rapidity that in a
short time we have a great pile of printed sheets,
each of which it would take a whole day to write by
hand.
“Before the invention of this marvelous art,
which enables us to reproduce the works of the mind
very rapidly and in as great numbers as may be
desired, we were restricted to hand-made copies.
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
These manuscript books required years of work, and
hence were very rare and high-priced. Large fortunes
were necessary to acquire a library of several
volumes. To-day books find their way everywhere,
spreading in profusion, even among the lowest
classes, the sacred bread of intelligence. Printing
has been known for four hundred years: its invention
is due to Gutenberg.”
“That is a name I shall never forget,” said Jules.
“It deserves, above all, to be remembered, for with
the printed book Gutenberg rendered impossible
henceforth the ignorant times through which man
has miserably passed. Our intellectual treasures,
resources for the future, are better than engraved
on stone or metal; they are inscribed on sheets of
paper, in copies too numerous to be all destroyed.”
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch21
CHAPTER XXI||BUTTERFLIES
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 are sulphur-yellow
with orange spots; again others are white
fringed with gold-color. They have on the forehead
two fine horns, two antennæ, sometimes fringed
like an aigrette, sometimes cut off like a tuft of
feathers. Under the head they have a proboscis, a
sucker as fine as a hair and twisted into a spiral.
When they approach a flower, they untwist the proboscis
and plunge it to the bottom of the corolla to
drink a drop of honeyed liquor. Oh, how beautiful
they are! Oh, my goodness, how beautiful they are!
But if one manages to touch them, their wings tarnish
and leave between the fingers a fine dust like
that of precious metals.
Now their uncle told the children the names of
the butterflies that flew on the flowers in the garden.
“This one,” said he, “whose wings are white with a
black border and three black spots, is called the
cabbage butterfly. This larger one, whose yellow
wings barred with black terminate in a long tail, at
the base of which are found a large rust colored
eye and blue spots, is called the swallow-tail. This
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
tiny one, sky-blue above, silver-gray underneath,
sprinkled with black eyes in white circles, with a line
of reddish spots bordering the wings, is called the
Argus.”
And Uncle Paul continued thus, naming the butterflies
that a bright sun had drawn to the flowers.
“The Argus ought to be difficult to catch,” observed
Emile. “He sees everywhere; his wings are
covered with eyes.”
.if h
.il fn=i089.jpg w=500px
.ca
Female\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_Male
Cabbage Butterfly
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Female and Male Cabbage Butterfly]
.sp 2
.if-
“The pretty round spots that a great many butterflies
have on their wings are not really eyes, although
they are called by that name; they are ornaments,
nothing more. Real eyes, eyes for seeing,
are in the head. The Argus has two, neither more
nor fewer than the other butterflies.”
“Claire tells me,” said Jules, “that butterflies
come from caterpillars. Is it true, Uncle?”
“Yes, my child. Every butterfly, before becoming
the graceful creature which flies from flower to
flower with magnificent wings, is an ugly caterpillar
that creeps with effort. Thus the cabbage butterfly,
which I have just shown you, is first a green
caterpillar, which stays on the cabbages and gnaws
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
the leaves. Jacques will tell you how much pains
he takes to protect his cabbage patch from the voracious
insect; for, you see, caterpillars have a terrible
appetite. You will soon learn the reason.
“Most insects behave like caterpillars. On coming
out of the egg, they have a provisional form that
they must replace later by another. They are, as it
were, born twice: first imperfect, dull, voracious,
ugly; then perfect, agile, abstemious, and often of
an admirable richness and elegance. Under its first
form, the insect is a worm called by the general name
of larva.
“You remember the lion of the plant-lice, the
grub that eats the lice of the rosebush and, for weeks,
without being able to satisfy itself, continues night
and day its ferocious feasting. Well, this grub is a
larva, that will change itself into a little lace-winged
fly, the hemerobius, whose wings are of gauze and
eyes of gold. Before becoming the pretty red ladybird
with black spots, this pretty insect, which, in
spite of its innocent air, crunches the plant-lice, is
a very ugly worm, a slate-colored larva, covered with
little points, and itself very fond of plant-lice. The
June bug, the silly June bug, which, if its leg is held
by a thread, awkwardly puffs out its wings, makes all
preparations, and starts out to the tune of ‘Fly, fly,
fly!’ is at first a white worm, a plump larva, fat as
bacon, which lives under-ground, attacks the roots of
plants, and destroys our crops. The big stag-beetle,
whose head is armed with menacing mandibles
shaped like the stag’s horns, is at first a large worm
that lives in old tree-trunks. It is the same with
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
the capricorn, so peculiar for its long antennæ. And
the worm found in our ripe cherries, which is so
repugnant to us, what does it become? It becomes
a beautiful fly, its wings adorned with four bands of
black velvet. And so on with others.
.if h
.il fn=i091.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
Red-humped Apple Tree “Caterpillar”
(a) moth; (b) caterpillar natural size
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Red-humped Apple Tree “Caterpillar”
(a) moth; (b) caterpillar natural size]
.sp 2
.if-
“Well, this initial state
of the insect, this worm,
first form of youth, is called
the larva. The wonderful
change which transforms the
larva into a perfect insect is
called metamorphosis. Caterpillars
are larvæ. By
metamorphosis they turn
into those beautiful butterflies
whose wings, decorated with the richest colors,
fill us with admiration. The Argus, now so beautiful
with its celestial blue wings, was first a poor
hairy caterpillar; the splendid swallow-tail began by
being a green caterpillar with black stripes across
it and red spots on its sides. Out of these despicable
vermin metamorphosis has made those delightful
creatures which only the flowers can rival in elegance.
“You all know the tale of Cinderella. The sisters
have left for the ball, very proud, very smart. Cinderella,
her heart full, is watching the kettle. The
godmother arrives. ‘Go,’ says she, ‘to the garden
and get a pumpkin.’ And behold, the scooped-out
pumpkin changes under the godmother’s wand, into
a gilded carriage. ‘Cinderella,’ says she again,
‘open the mouse-trap.’ Six mice run out of it, and
are no sooner touched by the magic wand than they
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
turn into six beautiful dappled-gray horses. A
bearded rat becomes a big coachman with a commanding
mustache. Six lizards sleeping behind the
watering-pot become green bedizened footmen, who
immediately jump up behind the carriage. Finally
the poor girl’s shabby clothes are changed to gold
and silver ones sprinkled with precious stones.
Cinderella starts for the ball, in glass slippers.
You, apparently, know the rest of it better than I.
“These powerful godmothers for whom it is play
to change mice into horses, lizards into footmen,
ugly clothes into sumptuous ones, these gracious
fairies who astonish you with their fabulous prodigies,
what are they, my dear children, in comparison
with reality, the great fairy of the good God, who,
out of a dirty worm, object of disgust, knows how
to make a creature of ravishing beauty! He touches
with his divine wand a miserable hairy caterpillar,
an abject worm that slobbers in rotten wood, and
the miracle is accomplished: the disgusting larva
has turned into a beetle all shining with gold, a butterfly
whose azure wings would have outshone Cinderella’s
fine toilette.”
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch22
CHAPTER XXII||THE BIG EATERS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 a larva, a feeble
grub, which, most often, has to shift for itself, procure
at its own risk food and shelter—the most difficult
thing in this world. In these painful beginnings
it cannot expect any help from its mother,
dead some time before; for in insect life the parents
generally die before the hatching of the eggs that
produce the young. Without delay the little larva
sets to work. It eats. It is its sole business, and
a serious one, on which its future depends. It eats,
not only to keep up its strength from day to day, but
above all to acquire the plumpness necessary for its
future metamorphosis. I must tell you—and this
perhaps will surprise you—that an insect ceases to
grow after attaining its final perfect form. It is
known, too, that there are insects—among others,
the butterfly of the silkworm—that do not take any
nourishment at all.
“A cat is at first a tiny little pink-nosed creature,
so small that it could rest in the hollow of the
hand. In one or two months it is a pretty kitten
that amuses itself at a mere nothing, and with its
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
nimble paw whips the wisp of paper that one throws
before it. Another year, and it is a tom-cat that
patiently watches for mice or joins battle with its
rivals on the roof. But, whether a tiny creature
hardly able to open its little blue eyes, or a pretty
playful kitten, or a big quarrelsome tom-cat, it has
always the form of a cat.
“It is otherwise with insects. The swallow-tail,
under its form of butterfly, is not first small, then
medium, then large. When, for the first time, it
opens its wings and takes flight, it is as large as it
ever will be. When it comes out from under ground,
where it lived as a grub, when for the first time it
appears in the daylight, the June bug is such as
you know it. There are little cats, but no little swallow-tails
nor little June bugs. After the metamorphosis,
an insect is what it will be to the end.”
“But I have seen small June bugs flying round the
willows in the evening,” objected Jules.
“Those little June bugs are of a different kind.
They will always remain the same. Never will they
grow and become common June bugs, any more than
a cat would grow into a tiger, which it resembles so
much.
“The grub alone grows. At first very small on
coming out of the egg, little by little it acquires a
size in conformity with the future insect. It gathers
the materials that the metamorphosis will use,—materials
for the wings, antennæ, legs, and all those
things that the larva does not have, but that the insect
must have. Out of what will the big green
worm that lives in dead wood, and must some day
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
become a stag-beetle, make the enormous branched
mandibles and the robust horny covering of the perfect
insect? Of what will the larva make the long
antennæ of the capricorn? Of what will the caterpillar
make the large wings of the swallow-tail? Of
that which the caterpillar, larva, and worm amass
now, with thrifty hoarding of life-supporting matter.
“If the little pink-nosed cat were born without
ears, paws, tail, fur, mustaches, if it were simply a
little ball of flesh, and should some day have to acquire
all at once, while asleep, ears, paws, tail, fur,
mustaches, and many other things, is it not true
that this work of life would necessitate materials
gathered together beforehand and held in reserve
in the fatty tissues of the animal? No thing can be
made from nothing; the smallest hair of the cat’s
mustache shoots forth at the expense of the substance
of the animal, substance which it acquires
by eating.
.if h
.il fn=i095.jpg w=250px align=l
.ca
Goat Moth
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Goat Moth]
.sp 2
.if-
“The larva is
in precisely this
case: it has nothing,
or next to
nothing, that the
perfect insects
must have. It
must therefore
amass, in view of future changes, materials for the
change; it must eat for two: for itself first, and
then for the insect that will come from its substance,
transformed and, in a sense, recast. So the larvæ
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
are endowed with an incomparable appetite. As I
have said, to eat is their sole business. They eat
night and day, often without stopping, without taking
breath. To lose a mouthful, what imprudence!
The future butterfly would perhaps have one scale
less to its wings. So they eat gluttonously, take on
a stomach, become big, fat, plump. It is the duty of
larvæ.
“Some attack plants; they browse on the leaves,
chew the flowers, bite the flesh of fruit. Others have
a stomach strong enough to digest wood; they hollow
out galleries in the tree-trunks, file off, grate,
pulverize the hardest oak, as well as the tender willow.
Others, again, prefer decomposed animal matter;
they haunt infected corpses, fill their stomachs
with rottenness. Still others seek excrement and
feast on filth. They are all scavengers on whom
has developed the high mission of cleansing the earth
of its pollution. You would sicken at the mere
thought of these worms that swarm in pus; yet one
of the most important services, a providential service,
is rendered by these disgusting eaters which
clear away infection and give back its constituent
elements to life. As if to make amends for its filthy
needs, one of these larvæ will later be a magnificent
fly, rivaling polished bronze in its brilliancy; another,
a beetle perfumed with musk, its rich coat
vying with gold and precious stones in splendor.
.if h
.il fn=i097.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Phylloxera
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Phylloxera]
.sp 2
.if-
“But these larvæ devoted to the work of general
sanitation cannot make us forget other eaters, of
whom we are victims. The grubs of the June bug
alone sometimes multiply so rapidly in the ground
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
that immense tracts are denuded of vegetation,
which is gnawed at the roots. The forester’s
shrubs, the farmer’s harvests, the gardener’s plants,
just when everything
seems prosperous,
some fine
morning, hang
withered, smitten
to death. The
worm has passed
that way, and all
is lost. Fire
could not have
committed more
frightful ravages.
A miserable yellow
louse, hardly
visible, lives under
ground, where it attacks the roots of the grape
vine. It is called phylloxera. Its calamitous breed
threatens to destroy all our vineyards. Some grubs,
small enough to lodge in a grain of wheat, ravage the
wheat in our granaries and leave only the bran.
Others browse the lucerne so that the mower finds
nothing left. Others, for years, gnaw at the heart
of the wood of the oak, poplar, pine, and divers, other
large trees. Others, which turn into those little
white butterflies flying around the lamp in the evening
and called moths, eat our cloth stuffs bit by bit,
and finish by reducing them to rags. Others attack
wainscoting, old furniture, and reduce them to powder.
Others—But I should never get through if
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
I were to tell you all. This little people to which we
often disdain to pay the slightest attention, this little
race of insects, is so powerful on account of the
robust appetite of its larvæ, that man ought seriously
to reckon with it. If a certain grub succeeds
in multiplying beyond measure, whole provinces are
threatened with the tragic fate of starvation. And
we are left in perfect ignorance on the subject of
these devourers! How can you defend yourself if
the enemy is unknown to you? Ah, if I only had
the management of these things! As for you, my
dear children, while waiting for our talks to be resumed
with more detail concerning these ravagers,
remember this: the larvæ of insects are the great
eaters of this world, the providential demolishers
that finish the work of death and thus prepare for
the work of life, since everything, or nearly everything
passes through their stomach.”
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch23
CHAPTER XXIII||SILK
.sp 2
.dc 0.4 0.7
“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 stuff its paunch is
the duty of a worm; it has eaten for two, itself and
the matured insect. Now it is advisable to renounce
feasting, retire from the world, and prepare itself
a quiet shelter for the death-like sleep during which
its second birth takes place. A thousand methods
are employed for the preparation of this lodging.
“Certain larvæ simply bury themselves in the
ground, others hollow out round niches with polished
sides. There are some that make themselves
a case out of dry leaves; there are others that know
how to glue together a hollow ball out of grains of
sand or rotten wood or loam. Those that live in
tree-trunks stop up with plugs of sawdust both ends
of the galleries they have hollowed out; those that
live in wheat gnaw all the farinaceous part of the
grain, scrupulously leaving untouched the outside,
or bran, which is to serve them as cradle. Others,
with less precaution, shelter themselves in some
crack of the bark or of a wall, and fasten themselves
there by a string which goes round their body. To
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
this number belong the caterpillars of the cabbage
butterfly and the swallow-tail. But especially in the
making of the silk cell called cocoon is the highest
skill of the larvæ shown.
.if h
.il fn=i100.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Silk Worm
Eggs, worm, cocoon, and butterfly
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Silk Worm Eggs, worm, cocoon, and butterfly]
.sp 2
.if-
“An ashy white
caterpillar, the
size of the little
finger, is raised in
large numbers for
its cocoon, with
which silk stuffs
are made. It is
called the silkworm.
In very
clean rooms are
placed reed
screens, on which
they put mulberry
leaves, and the young caterpillars come from eggs
hatched in the house. The mulberry is a large
tree cultivated on purpose to nourish these caterpillars;
it has no value except for its leaves,
the sole food of silkworms. Large tracts are devoted
to its cultivation, so precious is the handiwork
of the worm. The caterpillars eat the ration
of leaves that is frequently renewed on the
screens, and from time to time change their skin, according
to their rate of growth. Their appetite
is such that the clicking of their jaws is like the
noise of a shower falling during a calm on the foliage
of the trees. It is true that the room contains
thousands and thousands of worms. The caterpillar
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
gets its growth in four or five weeks. Then the
screens are set with sprigs of heather, on which the
worms climb when the time comes for them to spin
their cocoons. They settle themselves one by one
amid the sprigs and fasten here and there a multitude
of very fine threads, so as to make a kind of network
which will hold them suspended and serve them
as scaffolding for the great work of the cocoon.
“The silk thread comes out of the under lip,
through a hole called the spinneret. In the body of
the caterpillar the silk material is a very thick,
sticky liquid, resembling gum. In coming through
the opening of the lip, this liquid is drawn out into
a thread, which glues itself to the preceding threads
and immediately hardens. The silk matter is not
entirely contained in the mulberry leaf that the
worm eats, any more than is milk in the grass that
the cow browses. The caterpillar makes it out of
the materials of its food, just as the cow makes milk
of the constituents of her forage. Without the caterpillar’s
help man could never extract from the
mulberry leaves the material for his costliest fabrics.
Our most beautiful silk stuffs really take birth in
the worm that drivels them into a thread.
“Let us return to the caterpillar suspended in the
midst of its net. Now it is working at the cocoon.
Its head is in continual motion. It advances, retires,
ascends, descends, goes to right and left, while
letting escape from its lip a tiny thread, which rolls
itself loosely around the animal, sticks itself to the
thread already in place, and finishes by forming a
continuous envelope the size of a pigeon’s egg. The
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
silken structure is at first transparent enough to permit
one to see the caterpillar at work; but as it grows
thicker what passes within is soon hidden from view.
What follows can easily be guessed. For three or
four days the caterpillar continues to thicken the
walls of the cocoon until it has exhausted its store
of liquid silk. Here it is at last, retired from the
world, isolated, tranquil, ready for the transfiguration
so soon to take place. Its whole life, its long
life of a month, it has worked in anticipation of the
metamorphosis; it has crammed itself with mulberry
leaves, has extenuated itself to make the silk for its
cocoon, but thus it is going to become a butterfly.
What a solemn moment for the caterpillar!
“Ah! my children, I had almost forgotten man’s
part in all this. Hardly is the work of the cocoon
finished when he runs to the heather sprig, lays violent
hands on the cocoons and sells them to the manufacturer.
The latter, without delay, puts them into
an oven and subjects them to the action of burning
vapor to kill the future butterfly, whose tender flesh
is beginning to form. If he delayed, the butterfly
would pierce the cocoon, which, no longer capable of
being unwound on account of its broken threads,
would lose its value. This precaution taken, the
rest is done at leisure. The cocoons are unwound
in factories called spinning mills. They are put
into a pan of boiling water to dissolve the gum which
holds the successive windings together. A workwoman
armed with a little heather broom stirs them
in the water, in order to find and seize the end of
the thread, which she puts on a revolving reel. Under
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
the action of the machine the thread of silk unwinds
while the cocoon jumps about in the hot water
like a ball of wool when one pulls the yarn.
“In the center of the threadbare cocoon is the
chrysalis, scorched and killed by the fire. Later the
silk undergoes divers operations which give it more
suppleness and luster; it passes into the dyer’s vats
where it takes any color desired; finally it is woven
and converted into fabric.”
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch24
CHAPTER XXIV||THE METAMORPHOSIS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 that, the worm
with much difficulty tears off its skin. With the
skin comes everything: the case of the skull, jaws,
eyes, legs, stomach and the rest. It is a general
tearing-off. The ragged covering of the old body
is finally pushed into a corner of the cocoon.
“What do they find then in the cells of silk? Another
caterpillar, a butterfly? Neither. They find
an almond shaped body, rounded at one end, pointed
at the other, of a leathery appearance, and called a
chrysalis. It is an intermediate state between the
caterpillar and the butterfly. There can be seen
certain projections which already indicate the shape
of the future insect: at the large end can be distinguished
the antennæ and the wings tightly folded
crosswise on the chrysalis.
“The larvæ of the June bug, capricorn, stag-beetle,
and other beetles pass through a similar state,
but with more accentuated forms. The different
parts of the head, wings, legs delicately folded at
their sides, are very recognizable. But all is immobile,
soft, white, or even transparent as crystal.
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
This insect in outline is called a nymph. The name
of chrysalis used for butterflies and that of nymph
used for the other insects signify the same thing
under somewhat different appearances. Both the
chrysalis and the nymph are insects in process of
formation—insects closely wrapped in swaddling-clothes,
under which is finished the mysterious operation
that will change their first structure from top
to bottom.
“In a couple of weeks, if the temperature is favorable,
the chrysalis of the silkworm opens like a ripe
fruit, and from its burst shell the butterfly escapes,
all ragged, moist, scarcely able to stand on its trembling
legs. Open air is necessary for it to gain
strength, to spread and dry its wings. It must get
out of the cocoon. But how? The caterpillar has
made the cocoon so solid and the butterfly is so
weak! Will it perish in its prison, the poor little
thing? It would not be worth the trouble of going
through so much to stifle miserably in the close cell,
just as the end is attained!”
“Could it not tear the cocoon open with its teeth?”
asked Emile.
“But, my innocent child, it has none, nor anything
like them. It has only a proboscis, incapable of the
slightest effort.”
“With its claws then?” suggested Jules.
“Yes, if it had any strong enough. The trouble
is, it is not provided with any.”
“But it must be able to get out,” persisted Jules.
“Doubtless it will get out. Has not every creature
resources in the difficult moments of life! To
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
break the hen’s egg that imprisons it, the tiny little
chicken has at the end of its beak a little hard point
made on purpose; and the butterfly is to have nothing
to open its cocoon? Oh, yes! But you would
never guess the singular tool that it will use. It
will use its eyes—”
“Its eyes?” interrupted Claire in amazement.
“Yes. Insects’ eyes are covered with a cap of
transparent horn, hard and cut in facets. A magnifying
glass is needed in order to distinguish these
facets, they are so fine; but, fine as they are, they
have sharp bones which all together can, in time of
need, be used as a grater. The butterfly begins then
by moistening with a drop of saliva the point of the
cocoon it wishes to attack, and then, applying an eye
to the spot thus softened, it writhes, knocks,
scratches, files. One by one the threads of silk succumb
to the rasping. The hole is made, the butterfly
comes out. What do you think about it? Do not
animals sometimes have intelligence enough for
four? Which of us would have thought of forcing
the prison walls by striking them with the eye?”
“The butterfly must have studied a long time to
think of that ingenious way?” queried Emile.
“The butterfly does not study, does not reflect;
it knows at once what to do and how to do well whatever
concerns it. Another has reflected for it.”
“Who?”
“God himself! God, the great wise one. The
silkworm butterfly is not pretty. It is whitish, tun-bellied,
heavy. It does not fly like the others from
flower to flower, for it takes no nourishment. As
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
soon as it is out of the cocoon, it sets to work laying
eggs; then it dies. Silkworm eggs are commonly
called seed, a very good term, for the egg is the seed
of the animal as the seed is the egg of the plant.
Egg and seed correspond. They do not stifle all
the cocoons in the vapor to wind them afterwards;
they keep out a certain number so as to obtain butterflies
and consequently eggs or seeds. These are
the seeds which, the following year, produce the
fresh brood of worms.
“All insects that are metamorphosed pass through
the four states that I have just told you about: egg,
larva, chrysalis or nymph, perfect insect. The perfect
insect lays its eggs, and the series of transformations
begins again.”
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch25
CHAPTER XXV||SPIDERS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 of its thread,
descended from the ceiling to the
good woman’s shoulders. At sight
of the creature with long velvety
legs, Mother Ambroisine could not
suppress a cry of fear, and, shaking
her shoulder, made the insect
fall, and crushed it under her foot.
“Spider in the morning stands for
mourning,” said she to herself.
At this instant Uncle Paul and
Claire entered.
.if h
.il fn=i108.jpg w=200px align=l
.ca
Spider
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Spider]
.sp 2
.if-
“No, sir, it is not right,” said
Mother Ambroisine, “that we poor mortals should
have so much useless trouble. Twelve little chickens
are hatched out for us, bright as gold; and just as I
am preparing them something to eat, a villainous
spider falls on my shoulder.”
And Mother Ambroisine pointed with her finger
at the crushed insect with its legs still trembling.
“I do not see that those little chickens have anything
to fear from the spider,” remarked Uncle
Paul.
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
“Oh! nothing, sir: the horrid creature is dead.
But you know the proverb: ‘Spider in the morning,
mourning; spider at night, delight.’ Everybody
knows that a spider seen in the morning is a sign of
bad luck. Our little chickens are in danger; the
cats will claw them. You’ll see, sir, you’ll see.”
Tears of emotion came to Mother Ambroisine’s
eyes.
“Put the little chickens in a safe place, watch the
cats, and I will answer for the rest. The proverb
of the spider is only a foolish prejudice,” said Uncle
Paul.
Mother Ambroisine did not utter another word.
She knew that Maître Paul found a reason for everything,
and on occasion was capable of pronouncing
a eulogy on the spider. Claire, who saw this eulogy
coming, ventured a question.
“I know: in your eyes all animals, however hideous
they may be, have excellent excuses to plead:
all merit consideration; all play a part ordained by
Providence; all are interesting to observe and to
study. You are the advocate of the good God’s
creatures; you would plead for the toad. But permit
your niece to see there only an impulse of your
kind heart, and not the real truth. What could you
say in praise of the spider, horrid beast, which is
poisonous and disfigures the ceiling with its webs?”
“What could I say? Much, my dear child, much.
In the meantime, feed your little chickens and beware
of cats if you want to prove the spider proverb
false.”
In the evening Mother Ambroisine, her large
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
round spectacles on her nose, was knitting stockings.
On her knees the cat slept and mingled its purring
with the tick-tack of the needles. The children were
waiting for the story of the spider. Their uncle
began.
“Which of you three can tell me what spiders do
with their webs, those fine webs stretched in the
corners of the granary or between two shrubs in the
garden!”
Emile spoke first. “It is their nest, Uncle, their
house, their hiding-place.”
“Hiding-place!” exclaimed Jules; “yes, I think it
is more than that. One day I heard, between the
lilac branches, a little shrill noise-he-e-e-e! A
blue fly was entangled in a cobweb and trying to
escape. It was the fly that was making the noise
with its fluttering. A spider ran from the bottom
of the silken funnel, seized the fly, and carried it
off to its hole, doubtless to eat it. Since then I have
thought spiders’ webs were hunting nets.”
“That is even so,” said his uncle. “All spiders
live on live prey; they make continual war on flies,
gnats, and other insects. If you fear mosquitoes,
those insufferable little insects that sting us at night
until they bring blood, you must bless the spider,
for it does its best to rid us of them. To catch game,
a net is necessary. Now, the net to catch flies in
their flight is a cloth woven with silk, which the
spider itself produces.
“In the body of the insect the silky matter is, as
with caterpillars, a sticky liquid resembling glue or
gum. As soon as it comes in contact with the air,
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
this matter congeals, hardens, and becomes a thread
on which water has no effect. When the spider
wants to spin, the silk liquid flows from four nipples,
called spinnerets, placed at the end of the
stomach. These nipples are pierced at their extremity
by a number of holes, like the sprinkler of
a watering-pot. The number of these holes for all
the nipples is roughly reckoned as a thousand.
Each one lets its tiny little jet of liquid flow, which
hardens and becomes thread; and from a thousand
threads stuck together into one results the final
thread employed by the spider. To designate something
very fine there is no better term of comparison
than the spider’s thread. It is so delicate, in fact,
that it can only just be seen. Our silk threads,
those of the finest textures, are cables in comparison,
cables of two, three, four strands, while this
one, in its unequaled tenuity, contains a thousand.
How many spiders’ threads are required to make a
strand of the thickness of a hair! Not far from
ten. And how many elementary threads, such as
issue from the separate holes of the spinneret!
Ten thousand. To what a degree of tenuity then
this silky matter can be reduced that stretches out in
threads of which it takes ten thousand to equal the
size of one hair! What marvels, my children, and
only to catch a fly that is to serve for the spider’s
dinner!”
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CHAPTER XXVI||THE EPEIRA’S BRIDGE
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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 of our regard.
Uncle Paul continued:
“With its legs, armed with sharp-toothed little
claws like combs, the spider draws the thread from
its spinnerets as it has need. If it wishes to descend,
like the one this morning that came down
from the ceiling on to Mother Ambroisine’s shoulder,
it glues the end of the thread to the point of
departure and lets itself fall perpendicularly. The
thread is drawn from the spinnerets by the weight
of the spider, and the latter, softly suspended, descends
to any depth it wishes, and as slowly as it
pleases. In order to ascend again, it climbs up the
thread by folding it gradually into a skein between
its legs. For a second descent, the spider has only
to let its skein of silk unwind little by little.
“To weave its web, each kind of spider has its
own method of procedure, according to the kind of
game it is going to hunt, the places it frequents,
and according to its particular inclinations, tastes,
and instincts. I will merely tell you a few words
about the epeiræ, large spiders magnificently speckled
with yellow, black, and silvery white. They are
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hunters of big game,—of green or blue damsel-flies
that frequent the water-courses, of butterflies, and
large flies. They stretch their web vertically between
two trees and even from one bank of a stream
to the other. Let us examine this last case.
“An epeira has found a good place for hunting:
the dragon-flies, or blue and green damsel-flies,
come and go from one tuft of reeds to another, sometimes
going up, sometimes down the stream. Along
its course are butterflies also, and horse-flies, or
large flies that suck blood from cattle. The site is
a good one. Now, then, to work! The epeira
climbs to the top of a willow at the water’s edge.
There it matures its plan, an audacious one, the execution
of which seems impossible. A suspension
bridge, a cable which serves as support for the future
web, must be stretched from one bank to the
other. And observe, children, that the spider cannot
cross the stream by swimming; it would perish
by drowning if it ventured into the water. It must
stretch its cable, its bridge, from the top of its
branch without changing place. Never has an engineer
found himself in such difficulties. What will
the little creature do? Put your heads together,
children; I am waiting for your ideas.”
“Build a bridge from one side to the other,
without crossing the water or moving away from its
place? If the spider can do that it is cleverer than
I am.” Thus spoke Jules.
“Than I, too,” chimed in his brother.
“If I did not already know,” said Claire, “since
you have just told us, that the spider does accomplish
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it, I should say that its bridge is impossible.”
Mother Ambroisine said nothing, but by the
slackening of the tick-tack of her needles, every one
could see that she was much interested in the spider’s
bridge.
“Animals often have more intelligence than we,”
continued Uncle Paul; “the epeira will prove it to
us. With its hind legs it draws a thread from its
spinnerets. The thread lengthens and lengthens; it
floats from the top of the branch. The spider
draws out more and more; finally, it stops. Is the
thread long enough? Is it too short? That is what
must be looked after. If too long, it would be wasting
the precious silky liquid; if too short, it would
not fulfil the given conditions. A glance is thrown
at the distance to be crossed, an exact glance, you
may be sure. The thread is found too short. The
spider lengthens it by drawing out a little more.
Now all goes well: the thread has the wished-for
length, and the work is done. The epeira waits at
the top of its branch: the rest will be accomplished
without help. From time to time it bears with its
legs on the thread to see if it resists. Ah! it resists;
the bridge is fixed! The spider crosses the stream
on its suspension bridge! What has happened,
then? This: The thread floated from the top of
the willow. A breath of air blew the free end of
the thread into the branches on the opposite bank.
This end got entangled there; behold the mystery.
The epeira has only to draw the thread to itself, to
stretch it properly and make a suspension bridge
of it.”
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“Oh, how simple!” cried Jules. “And yet not
one of us would have thought of it.”
“Yes, my friend, it is very simple, but at the same
time very ingenious. It is thus with all work: simplicity
in the means employed is a sign of excellence.
To simplify is to have knowledge; to complicate is
to be ignorant. The epeira, in its kind of construction,
is science perfected.”
“Where does it get that science, Uncle?” asked
Claire. “Animals have not reason. Then who
teaches the epeira to build its suspension bridges?”
“No one, my dear child; it is born with this knowledge.
It has it by instinct, the infallible inspiration
of the Father of all things, who creates in the least
of His creatures, for their preservation, ways of
acting before which our reason is often confounded.
When the epeira, from the top of the willow, gets
ready to spin its web, what inspires it with the audacious
project of the bridge; what gives it patience
to wait for the floating end of the thread to entwine
in the branches of the other bank; what assures it
of the success of a labor that it is performing perhaps
for the first time, and has never seen done!
It is the universal Reason that watches over creation,
and takes among men the thrice-holy name of
Providence.”
Uncle Paul had won his case: in the eyes of all,
even of Mother Ambroisine, spiders were no longer
frightful creatures.
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CHAPTER XXVII||THE SPIDER’S WEB
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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 little ones
came and took from their mother’s beak. At the
slightest approach of danger, the hen called the
brood, and all ran to snuggle under her outspread
wings. The boldest soon put their heads out, their
pretty little yellow heads framed in their mother’s
black feathers. The alarm over, the hen began
clucking and scratching again, and the little ones
went trotting around her once more. Completely
reassured, Mother Ambroisine forever renounced
her proverb of the spider. In the evening Uncle
Paul continued the story of the epeira.
“Since it must serve as a support to the silken
network, the first thread stretched from one bank to
the other must be of exceptional firmness. The
epeira begins, therefore, by fixing both ends well;
then, going and coming on the thread from one extremity
to the other, always spinning, it doubles and
trebles the strands and sticks them together in a
common cable. A second similar cable is necessary,
placed beneath the first in an almost parallel direction.
It is between the two that the web must be
spun.
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“For this purpose, from one of the ends of the
cable already constructed the epeira lets itself fall
perpendicularly, hanging by the thread that escapes
from its spinnerets. It reaches a lower branch,
fastens the thread firmly to it, and ascends to the
communicating bridge by the vertical thread it used
for descending. The spider then reaches the other
bank, still spinning, but without gluing this new
strand of silk to the cable. Arrived at the other
side, it lets itself slide on to a branch conveniently
placed, and there fastens the end of the thread that
it has spun on its way from one bank to the other.
This second chief piece of the framework becomes
a cable by the addition of new threads. Finally
the two parallel cables are made firm at each end
by divers threads starting from it in every direction
and attaching themselves to the branches. Other
threads go out from this point and that, from one
cable to the other, leaving between them, in the
middle of the construction, a large open space, almost
circular, destined for the net.
“Thus far the epeira has only constructed the
framework of its building, a rough but solid framework;
now begins the work of fine precision. The
net must he spun. Across the open circular space
that the divers threads of the framework leave between
them, a first thread is stretched. The epeira
stations itself right in the middle of this thread,
central point of the web to be constructed. From
this center numerous threads must start at equal
distances from one another and be fastened to the
circumference by the other end. They are called
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radiating lines. Accordingly the epeira glues a
thread to the center and, ascending by the transverse
thread already stretched, fixes the end of the
line to the circumference. That done, it returns to
the center by the line that it has just stretched; there
it glues a second thread and immediately regains
the circumference, where it fastens the end of the
second line a short distance from the first one. Going
thus alternately from the center to the circumference
and from the circumference to the center
by way of the last thread just stretched, the spider
fills the circular space with radiating lines so regularly
spaced that you would say they were traced
with rule and compass by an expert hand.
“When the radiating lines are finished, the most
delicate work of all is still left for the spider. Each
of these lines must be bound by a thread that, starting
at the circumference, twists and turns in a
spiral line around the center, where it terminates.
The epeira starts from the top of the web and, unwinding
its thread, stretches it from one radiating
line to another, keeping always at an equal distance
from the outside thread. By thus circling
about, always at the same distance from the preceding
thread, the spider ends at the center of the radiating
lines. The network is then finished.
“Now there must be arranged a little ambuscade
from which the epeira can survey its web, a resting-room
where it finds shelter from the coolness of the
night and the heat of the day. In a little bunch of
leaves close together the spider builds itself a silk
den, a sort of funnel of close texture. That is its
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usual abiding place. If the weather is favorable
and the passage of game abundant, morning and
evening especially, the epeira leaves its den and
posts itself, motionless, in the center of the web, to
watch events more closely and run to the game
quickly enough to prevent its escape. The spider
is at its post, in the middle of the network, its eight
legs spread out wide. It does not move, pretends
to be dead. No hunter on the watch would have
such patience. Let us copy its example and await
the coming of the game.”
The children were disappointed: at the moment
when the story became the most interesting, Uncle
Paul broke off his narrative.
“The epeira has interested me very much, Uncle,”
said Jules. “The bridge over the stream, the cobweb
with its regular radiating lines, and the thread
that twists and turns, getting nearer and nearer to
the center, the room for ambush and rest-all that
is very astonishing in a creature that does these
wonderful things without having to learn how.
Catching the game ought to be still more curious.”
“Very curious indeed. Therefore, instead of
telling you about the hunt, I prefer to show it to
you. Yesterday, in crossing the field, I saw an
epeira constructing its web between two trees on
the little stream where such fine crayfish are caught.
Let us get up early in the morning and go and see
the chase.”
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CHAPTER XXVIII||THE CHASE
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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 shining
bright, they were at the border of the stream. The
cobweb was finished. Some dewdrops hanging to
the threads shone like pearls. Hence the spider was
not yet in the center of the net; no doubt it was
waiting, before descending from its room, for the
sun to dissipate the morning dampness. The party
sat down on the grass for breakfast, at the very
foot of the alder-tree to which were fastened the
cables of the net. Blue damsel-flies flew from one
tuft of rushes to another and chased each other playfully.
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Beware, you giddy ones, who will not know
how to avoid the web by passing over and under it!
Ah! it has happened; so much the worse for the victim.
When one plays foolishly with one’s companions,
one must at least look where one is going. A
dragon-fly is caught in the meshes of the web. With
one wing free it struggles to escape. It shakes the
web, but the cables hold in spite of the shaking.
Threads in communication with the resting-room
warn the epeira, by their agitation, of the important
things taking place in the net. The spider hastily
descends, but it does not get there in time. With
a desperate stroke of its wing the dragon-fly frees
itself and escapes, tearing a large hole in the web.
“Oh! how well it got out!” cried Jules. “A little
more and the poor thing would have been eaten
alive. Did you see, Emile, how quickly the spider
ran down from its hiding place when it felt the web
move? The hunt begins badly; the game escapes
and the net is torn.”
“Yes, but the spider is going to mend it,” his
uncle reassured him.
And, in fact, as soon as it had recovered from its
misadventure, the epeira renewed the broken
threads with delicate dexterity. The darning finished,
the damage could hardly be detected. The
spider now takes its place in the center of the network:
the right moment for the chase has come,
apparently, and it is advisable for it to pounce upon
the game as quickly as possible, to avoid other misadventures.
It spreads its eight feet in a circle, to
receive the slightest movement that may come at
.bn 132.png
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any point of the web, and it waits, completely motionless.
The dragon-flies continue their evolutions. Not
one is caught: the recent alarm has rendered them
circumspect; they fly around the web to pass beyond
it. Oh! oh! what is that coming so giddily
and striking its head against the network? It is a
little bumble-bee, all velvety and black, with a red
stomach. It is caught. The epeira runs. But the
captive is vigorous and formidable; perhaps it has
a sting. The spider mistrusts it. It draws a
thread from its spinneret and passes it quickly over
the bee. A second silk string, a third, a fourth, soon
subdue the captive’s desperate efforts. Here is the
bee strangled but still full of life, and menacing. To
seize it in that state would be great imprudence: the
epeira’s life would be at stake. What must be done
so as to leave nothing to fear from this dangerous
prey? The spider possesses, folded under its head,
two sharp-pointed fangs, which let flow a little drop
of poison through a hole in their extremities. That
is its hunting weapon. The epeira approaches cautiously,
opens its fangs, stings the bee, and immediately
moves aside. In the twinkling of an eye
it is all over. The poison acts instantly: the bee
trembles, its legs stiffen, it is dead. The spider
carries it off to its silken chamber to suck it at leisure.
When nothing but the skin is left, the spider
will throw the remains of the bee far from its domicile,
so as not to soil its web with a corpse that might
frighten other game.
“It was done so quickly,” complained Jules, “I
.bn 133.png
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did not see the spider’s poisonous fangs. If we
were to wait a little longer, another bumble-bee
might perhaps come and then I should see it better.”
“It is not necessary to wait,” replied Uncle Paul.
“If we proceed skilfully we can make the spider
recommence its hunting manœuvers. All of you
look attentively.”
Uncle Paul searched among the field flowers for a
moment and caught a large fly; then, holding it by
one wing, put it near the web. The insect, beating
about, gets entangled in the threads. The web
shakes, the spider leaves its bee and runs, delighted
with the fortunate chance that brings him prey again
so quickly. The same manœuvers begin again.
The fly is first strangled; the epeira opens its
pointed fangs, stings the fly a little, and all is over.
The victim trembles, stretches itself out, and ceases
to move.
“Ah! that time I saw it,” said Jules, satisfied at
last.
“Claire, did you notice the fineness of the spider’s
fangs?” asked Emile. “I am sure that in your
needle-case you haven’t any such fine-pointed needles.”
“I dare say not. As for me, what surprises me the
most is not the fineness of the spider’s fangs, but the
quickness of the victim’s death. It seems to me that
a fly as large as this one ought not to die so quickly
even from the coarser pricks of our needles.”
“Very true,” assented her uncle. “An insect
transfixed by a pin still lives a long time; but if it
is only pricked by the fine point of the spider’s
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
fangs, it dies almost instantly. But then, the spider
takes care to poison its weapon. Its fangs are venomous;
they are perforated by a minute canal
through which the spider lets flow at will a scarcely
visible little drop of liquid called venom, which the
creature makes as it makes the silk liquid. The
venom is held in reserve in a slender pocket placed
in the interior of the fangs. When the spider pricks
its prey, it makes a little of this liquid pass into the
wound, and that suffices to bring speedy death to the
wounded insect. The victim dies, not from the
prick itself, but from the dreadful ravages wrought
by the venom discharged into the wound.”
Here Uncle Paul, in order to give his hearers a
better view of the poisonous fangs, took the epeira
with the tips of his fingers. Claire uttered a cry of
fear, but her uncle soon calmed her.
“Don’t be uneasy, my dear child: the poison that
kills a fly will have no effect on Uncle Paul’s hard
skin.”
And with the aid of a pin he opened the creature’s
fangs to show them in detail to the children, who
were quite reassured.
“You must not be too frightened,” he continued,
“at the quick death of the fly and of the bumble-bee,
and so look on spiders as creatures to be feared by
us. The fangs of most of them would have great
difficulty in piercing our skin. Courageous observers
have let themselves be bitten by the various
spiders of our country. The sting has never produced
any serious results; nothing more than a redness
less painful than that produced by the sting
.bn 135.png
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of a mosquito. At the same time, persons with a
delicate skin ought to beware of the large kinds,
were it only to spare themselves a passing pain.
Without any excessive alarm we avoid the wasp’s
sting, which is very painful; let us avoid the spider’s
fangs in the same way without uttering loud cries
at the sight of one of these creatures. We will resume
the subject of the venomous insects. But it is
late; let us go.”
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CHAPTER XXIX||VENOMOUS INSECTS
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“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 death, or at least
of blinding or otherwise injuring them. Last week
Jules found on the leaves of the potato-vines a large
caterpillar armed with a curved horn.”
“I know, I know,” put in Jules. “It is the caterpillar,
you told me, that turns into a magnificent
butterfly called the sphinx Atropos. This butterfly,
large as my hand, has on its back a white spot that
frightens many people, for it has a vague resemblance
to a death’s-head. And besides, its eyes
shine in the dark. You added that it was a harmless
creature of which it would be unreasonable to
be afraid.”
“Jacques, who was weeding the potatoes,” continued
Uncle Paul, “knocked the sphinx caterpillar
out of Jules’s hands, and hastened to crush it with
his big wooden shoe. ‘What you are doing is very
dangerous,’ said the good Jacques. ‘Handling
poisonous creatures—of all things! Do you see
that green venom? Don’t get too close; the silly
thing is not quite dead; it might yet throw some
poison on you.’ The worthy man took the green
.bn 137.png
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entrails of the crushed caterpillar for poison.
Those entrails did not contain anything dangerous;
they were green because they were swollen with the
juice of the leaves that the poor thing had just eaten.
“Many persons are of the same opinion as
Jacques: they are afraid of a caterpillar and the
green of its entrails. They think that certain creatures
poison everything they touch and throw out
venom. Well, my dear children, you must bear this
in mind, for it is a very important thing and frees
us from foolish fears, while it puts us on guard
against real danger: no animal of any kind, absolutely
none, shoots venom and can harm us from a
distance. To be convinced of this it suffices to know
what venom really is. Divers creatures, large or
small, are endowed with a poisoned weapon that
serves them either as defense or to attack their prey.
The bee is our best known venomous creature.”
“What!” exclaimed Emile, “a bee is poisonous,
the bee that makes honey for us?”
“Yes, the bee; the bee without which we could not
have those honey cakes that Mother Ambroisine
hands round when you are good. You don’t think
then of the stings that made you cry so?”
Emile blushed: his uncle had just revived unpleasant
memories. From pure heedlessness he tried
one day to see what the bees were doing. They say
he even thrust a stick through the little door of the
hive. The bees became incensed at this indiscretion.
Three or four stung the poor boy on the cheeks and
hands. He cried out most piteously, and thought
himself done for. His uncle had much difficulty in
.bn 138.png
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consoling him. Compresses of cold water finally
soothed his smarting pains.
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“The bee is venomous,” repeated Uncle Paul;
“Emile could tell you that.”
“The wasp too, then?” asked Jules. “One stung
me once when I tried to drive it
from a bunch of grapes. I did not
say anything, but all the same I
was not very comfortable. To
think that such a tiny thing can
hurt one so! It seemed as if my
hands were on fire.”
“Certainly, the wasp is venomous; more so than
the bee, in the sense that its sting causes greater
pain. Bumble-bees are, too, as well as hornets,
those large reddish wasps, an inch long, which sometimes
come and gnaw the pears in the orchard. You
must beware especially of hornets, my little friends.
One sting from them, one only, would give you hours
of horrible pain.
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American Hornet
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[Illustration: American Hornet]
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“All these insects have,
for their defense, a poisoned
weapon constructed in the
same way. It is called the
sting. It is a small, hard,
and very pointed blade, a
kind of dagger finer than the
finest needle. The sting is
placed at the end of the creature’s stomach. When
in repose, it is not seen; it is hidden in a scabbard
that goes into its stomach. To defend itself, the
insect draws it out of its sheath and plunges the
.bn 139.png
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point into the imprudent finger found within reach.
“Now it is not exactly the wound made by the
sting that causes the smarting pain that you are familiar
with. This wound is so slight, so minute, we
cannot see it. We should hardly feel it were it made
with a needle or a thorn as fine as the sting. But
the sting communicates with a pocket of venom
lodged in the creature’s body, and, by means of a
hollowed-out canal, it carries to the bottom of the
wound a little drop of the formidable liquid. The
sting is then drawn back. As to the venom, it stays
in the wound and it is that, that alone, which causes
those shooting pains that Emile could, if necessary,
tell us about.”
At this second attack from Uncle Paul, who dwelt
on this misadventure in order to blame him for his
heedless treatment of the bees, Emile blew his nose,
although he did not need to. It was a way of hiding
his confusion. His uncle did not appear to notice it,
and continued:
“Scholars who have made a study of this curious
question tell us of the following experiment, to make
clear that it is really the venomous liquid introduced
into the wound, and not the wound itself, that causes
the pain. When one pricks oneself with a very fine
needle, the hurt is very slight and soon passes off. I
am sure Claire is not much frightened when she
pricks her finger in sewing.”
“Oh! no,” said she. “That is so soon over, even
if blood comes.”
“Well, the prick of a needle, insignificant in itself,
can cause sharp pains if the little wound is poisoned
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
with the venom of the bee or wasp. The scholars
I am telling you of dip the point of the needle into
the bee’s pocket of venom, and with this point thus
wet with the venomous liquid give themselves a
slight sting. The pain is now sharp and of long
duration, more so than if the insect itself had stung
the experimenter. This increase of pain is due to
the fact that the comparatively large needle introduces
into the wound more venom than could the
bee’s slender sting. You understand it now, I hope:
it is the introduction of the venom into the wound
that causes all the trouble.”
“That is plain,” said Jules. “But tell me, Uncle,
why these scholars amuse themselves by pricking
themselves with needles dipped in the bee’s venom?
It is a queer amusement, to hurt oneself for nothing.”
“For nothing, Mr. Harum-scarum? Do you
count as nothing what I have just told you? If I
know it, must not others have taught me? Who are
these others? They are the valiant investigators
who learn about everything, observe and study
everything, in order to alleviate our suffering.
When they voluntarily prick themselves with poison,
they propose to study in themselves, at their
own risk and peril, the action of the venom, to teach
us to combat its effects, which are sometimes so
formidable. Let a viper or a scorpion sting us, and
our life is in peril. Ah, then it is important to know
exactly how the venom acts and what must be done
to arrest its ravages; it is then that the scholars’
researches are appreciated, researches that Jules
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
looks upon as merely a queer amusement. Science,
my little friend, has sacred enthusiasms that do not
shrink from any test that may enlarge the sphere
of our knowledge and diminish human suffering.”
Jules, confused by his unfortunate remark, lowered
his head and said not a word. Uncle Paul was
on the point of getting vexed, but peace was soon
restored and he continued the account of venomous
creatures.
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CHAPTER XXX||VENOM
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“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 in
another, according to the species, they make a slight
wound into which is instilled a drop of venom. The
weapon has no other effect than that of opening a
route for the venomous liquid, and this is what
causes the injury. For the poison to act on us, it
must come in contact with our blood by a wound
which opens the way for it. But it has positively no
effect on our skin, unless there is already a gash, a
simple scratch, that permits it to penetrate into the
flesh and mingle with the blood. The most terrible
venom can be handled without any danger if the skin
is not broken. Moreover, it can be put on the lips,
on the tongue, even swallowed without any bad results.
Placed on the lips, the hornet’s venom produces
no more effect than clear water; but if there
is the slightest scratch the pain is atrocious. The
viper’s venom is equally harmless as long as it does
not mingle with the blood. Courageous experimenters
have tasted, swallowed it, and yet afterward
were no worse off than before.”
“Is that true, Uncle? People have had the courage
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
to swallow a viper’s venom? Ah! I should
not have been so brave.” This from Claire.
.if h
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Copper Head
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[Illustration: Copper Head]
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“It is fortunate, my girl, that others have been
so for us; and we ought to be very grateful to them,
for by so doing they
have taught us, as
you will see, the most
prompt and one of
the most efficacious
means to employ in
case of accident.”
“This viper’s venom,
which has no effect
on the hand, lips, and tongue, is it much to be
feared if it mingles with the blood?”
“It is terrible, my young lady, and I was just going
to tell you about it. Let us suppose that some
imprudent person disturbs the formidable reptile
sleeping in the sun. Suddenly the creature uncoils
itself in circles one above another, unwinds with the
suddenness of a spring, and, with its jaws wide open,
strikes you on the hand. It is done in the twinkling
of an eye. With the same rapidity the viper refolds
its spiral and draws back, continuing to menace you
with its head in the center of the coil. You do not
wait for a second attack, you flee; but, alas! the
damage is done. On the wounded hand are seen
two little red points, almost insignificant, mere
needle pricks. It is not very alarming; you reassure
yourself if you are in ignorance of what I so
earnestly desire to teach you. Delusive innocuousness!
See the red spots becoming encircled with a
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
livid ring. With dull pains the hand swells, and the
swelling extends gradually to the arm. Soon come
cold sweats and nausea; respiration becomes painful,
sight troubled, mind torpid, a general yellowness
shows itself, accompanied by convulsions. If help
does not arrive in time, death may come.”
“You give us goose-flesh, Uncle,” said Jules, with
a shudder. “What should we poor things do if
such a misfortune happened to us away from you,
away from home? They say there are vipers in
the underbrush of the neighboring hills.”
“May God guard you from such a mischance, my
poor children! But, if it befalls you, you must bind
tight the finger, hand, arm, above the wounded part
to prevent the diffusion of the venom in the blood;
you must make the wound bleed by pressing round
it; you must suck it hard to extract the venomous
liquid. I told you venom has no effect on the skin.
To suck it, therefore, is harmless if the mouth has
no scratch. You can see that if, by hard suction
and by pressure that makes the blood flow, you succeed
in extracting all the venom from the wound,
the wound itself is thenceforth of no importance.
For greater surety, the wound should be cauterized
as soon as possible with a corrosive liquid, aqua fortis
or ammonia, or even with a red-hot iron. The
effect of the cauterization is to destroy the venomous
matter. It is painful, I acknowledge, but one
must submit to it in order to avoid a worse evil.
Cauterization is the doctor’s business. The initial
precautions, binding to prevent the diffusion of the
venom, pressure to make the poisoned blood flow,
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
hard suction to extract the venomous liquid, concern
us personally, and all that must be done instantly.
The longer it is put off, the more aggravated the evil.
When these precautions are taken soon enough, it
is seldom that the viper’s bite has injurious consequences.”
“You reassure me, Uncle. Those precautions are
not difficult to take, if one does not lose one’s presence
of mind.”
“Therefore it is important that we should all
acquire the habit of using our reason in time of
danger, and not let ourselves be overcome by ill-regulated
fears. Man master of himself is half-master
of danger.”
.bn 146.png
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.h2 id=ch31
CHAPTER XXXI||THE VIPER AND THE SCORPION
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 they had a sting.
Last Thursday lame Louis,
who is not afraid of anything,
caught a serpent in a hole of
the old wall. He had two comrades
with him. They bound
the creature round the neck with a rush. I was passing,
and they called me. The serpent was darting
from its mouth something black, pointed, flexible,
which came and went rapidly. I thought it was the
sting and was much afraid of it. Louis laughed.
He said what I took for a sting was the serpent’s
tongue; and to prove it to me, he put his hand
near it.”
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Head of Snake showing Forked Tongue
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[Illustration: Head of Snake showing Forked Tongue]
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“Louis was right,” replied Uncle Paul. “All
serpents dart a very flexible, forked, black filament
between their lips with great swiftness. For
many purposes it is the reptile’s weapon, or dart; but
in reality this filament is nothing but the tongue, a
quite inoffensive tongue, which the creature uses to
catch insects and to express in its peculiar manner
the passions that agitate it by darting it quickly
from between the lips. All serpents, without any
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
exception, have one; but in our countries the viper
alone possesses the terrible venomous apparatus.
“This apparatus is composed, first, of two hooks,
or teeth, long and pointed, placed in the upper jaw.
At the will of the creature they stand up erect for
the attack or lie down in a groove of the gum, and
hold themselves there as inoffensive as a stiletto in
its sheath. In that way the reptile runs no danger
of wounding itself. These fangs are hollow and
pierced toward the point by a small opening through
which the venom is injected into the wound.
Finally, at the base of each fang is a little pocket
full of venomous liquid. It is an innocent-looking
humor, odorless, tasteless; one would almost think
it was water. When the viper strikes with its fangs,
the venomous pocket drives a drop of its contents
into the canal of the tooth, and the terrible liquid
is instilled into the wound.
“By preference the viper inhabits warm and
rocky hills; it keeps under stones and thickets of
brush. It is brown or reddish in color. On the
back it has a somber zigzag band, and on each side
a row of spots. Its stomach is slate-gray. Its
head is a little triangular, larger than the neck, obtuse
and as if cut off in front. The viper is timid
and fearful; it attacks man only in self-defense.
Its movements are brusk, irregular, and sluggish.
“The other serpents of our countries, serpents
designated by the general name of snakes, have not
the venomous fangs of the viper. Their bite therefore
is not of importance, and the repugnance they
inspire in us is really groundless.
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
“Next to the viper there is in France no venomous
creature more to be feared than the scorpion.
It is very ugly and walks on eight feet. In front
it has two pincers like those of the crayfish, and behind
a knotty, curled tail ending in
a sting. The pincers are inoffensive,
despite their menacing aspect;
it is the sting with which the end of
the tail is armed that is venomous.
The scorpion makes use of it in self-defense
and to kill the insects on
which it feeds. In the southern departments
of France are found two
different kinds of scorpions. One,
of a greenish black, frequents dark
and cool places and even establishes
itself in houses. It leaves its retreat
only at night. It can be seen
then running on the damp and cracked walls, seeking
wood-lice and spiders, its customary prey. The
other, much larger, is pale yellow. It keeps under
warm and sandy stones. The black scorpion’s sting
does not cause serious injury; that of the yellow may
be mortal. When one of these creatures is irritated,
a little drop of liquid can be seen forming into a pearl
at the extremity of the sting, which is all ready to
strike. It is the drop of venom that the scorpion injects
into the wound.
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Scorpion seen from above
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[Illustration: Scorpion seen from above]
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“There are many other important things I could
tell you about the venomous creatures of foreign
countries, about divers serpents whose bite causes
a dreadful death; but I hear Mother Ambroisine
.bn 149.png
.pn +1
calling us to dinner. Let us go over rapidly what
I have just told you. No creature, however ugly it
may be, shoots venom or can do us any harm from a
distance. All venomous species act in the same way:
with a special weapon a slight wound is made; and
into this wound a drop of venom is introduced.
The wound, by itself, is nothing; it is the injected
liquid that makes it painful and sometimes mortal.
The venomous weapon serves the creature for hunting
and for defense. It is placed in a part of the
body that varies according to the species. Spiders
have a double fang folded at the entrance of the
mouth; bees, wasps, hornets, bumble-bees, have a
sting at the end of the stomach and kept invisible in
its sheath when in repose; the viper and all venomous
serpents have two long hollowed-out teeth on
the upper jaw; the scorpion carries a sting at the
end of its tail.”
“I am very sorry,” said Jules, “that Jacques did
not hear your account of venomous creatures; he
would have understood that caterpillars’ green entrails
are not venom. I will tell him all these things;
and if I find another beautiful sphinx caterpillar I
will not crush it.”
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
.pb
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.h2 id=ch32
CHAPTER XXXII||THE NETTLE
.sp 2
.dc 0.4 0.7
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, giddy-pate,
what should happen to him but another misfortune!
A large butterfly was flying over the weeds that
grow at the foot of the wall. Oh, what a magnificent
butterfly! On the upper side its wings are red,
fringed with black, with big blue eyes; underneath
they are brown with wavy lines. It alights. Good.
Emile makes himself small, approaches softly on
tip-toe, puts out his hand, and, all at once, the butterfly
is gone. But mark what follows. Emile
draws his hand back quickly; it smarts, is red. The
pain increases and becomes so bad that the poor boy
runs to his uncle, his eyes swollen with tears.
“A venomous creature has stung me!” he cries.
“See my hand, Uncle! It smarts—oh, how it
smarts! Some viper has bitten me!”
At this word viper, Uncle Paul started. He rose
and looked at the injured hand. A smile came to
his lips.
“Impossible, my little friend; there is no viper
in the garden. What foolishness have you been
committing? Where have you been?”
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
“I ran after a butterfly, and when I put out my
hand to catch it on the weeds at the foot of the wall,
something stung me. See!”
“It is nothing, my poor Emile; go and dip your
hand into the cool water of
the fountain, and the pain
will go away.”
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Nettle
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[Illustration: Nettle]
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Quarter of an hour later
they were talking of
Emile’s accident, he being
quite recovered from his
misadventure.
“Now that the pain is
gone, does not Emile want
to know what stung him?”
asked his uncle.
“I certainly ought to
know, so as not to be
caught another time.”
“Well, it is a plant called nettle. Its leaves,
stems, slightest branches are covered with a multitude
of bristles, stiff, hollow, and filled with a
venomous liquid. When one of these bristles penetrates
the skin, the point breaks, the little vial of
venom opens and spills its contents into the wound.
From that comes a smarting but not dangerous pain.
You see, the nettle’s bristles act like the weapons of
venomous creatures. It is always a hollow point
that makes a fine wound in the skin, and passes a
drop of liquid into it, the cause of all the ill. The
nettle is thus a venomous plant.
“I will also tell Emile that the beautiful butterfly
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
for which he thoughtlessly thrust his hand into
the tuft of nettles is called the Vanessa Io. Its
caterpillar is velvety black with white spots. It
also bristles with thorns. It does not make a cocoon.
Its chrysalis, ornamented with bands that
shine like gold, is suspended in the air by the end
of its tail. The caterpillar lives on the nettle, of
which it eats the leaves, notwithstanding their
venomous bristles.”
“In browsing on the venomous plant, how does
the caterpillar manage so as not to poison itself?”
Claire inquired.
“My dear child, you confound venomous with
poisonous. Venomous is said of a substance that,
introduced into the blood by any kind of a wound,
causes injury in the manner of the viper’s venom.
Poisonous is said of a substance that, swallowed
or introduced into the stomach, may cause death.
Fatal drugs are poisonous: they kill if eaten or
drunk. The liquid that flows from the viper’s fangs
and the scorpion’s sting is venomous: it kills when
it mixes with the blood; but it is not poisonous, for
it can be swallowed with impunity. It is the same
with the nettle’s venom. So Mother Ambroisine
gives the poultry chopped nettles, and the caterpillar
of the Vanessa feeds without danger on the plant
which, a little while ago, made Emile cry with pain.
Of venomous plants we have in our country only
nettles; but we have many poisonous plants that,
when eaten, cause illness and even death. I must
certainly tell you about them some day, so as to
teach you to avoid them.
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
“The nettle’s bristles remind me of the caterpillar’s
hairs. Many caterpillars have the skin
quite bare. They are then perfectly inoffensive.
They can be handled without any danger, however
large they may be, even those that have a horn at
the end of the back. They are no more to be feared
than the silkworm. Others have bodies all bristly
with hairs, sometimes very sharp and barbed, which
can lodge in the skin, leave their points there, and
thus produce lively itchings or even painful swellings.
It is well then to mistrust velvety caterpillars,
particularly those living in companies on oaks and
pines, in large silk nests, and called processionary
caterpillars. But here we have a word that calls for
another story.”
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
.pb
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.h2 id=ch33
CHAPTER XXXIII||PROCESSIONARY CATERPILLARS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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, pear-shaped.
They are sometimes as large as a person’s head.
They are nests where live together a kind of very
velvety caterpillars with red hairs. A family of
caterpillars, coming from the eggs laid by one butterfly,
construct a silk lodging in common. All take
part in the work, all spin and weave in the general
interest. The interior of the nest is divided by thin
silk partitions into a number of compartments. At
the large end, sometimes elsewhere, is seen a wide
funnel-shaped opening; it is the large door for entering
and departing. Other doors, smaller, are distributed
here and there. The caterpillars pass the
winter in their nest, well sheltered from bad weather.
In summer they take refuge there at night and
during the great heat.
“As soon as it is day, they set out to spread themselves
on the pine and eat the leaves. After eating
their fill they reënter their silk dwelling, sheltered
from the heat of the sun. Now, when they are out
on a campaign, be it on the tree that bears the nest,
or on the ground passing from one pine to another,
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
these caterpillars march in a singular fashion, which
has given them the name of processionaries, because,
in fact, they defile in a procession, one after the
other, and in the finest order.
“One, the first come—for amongst them there is
perfect equality—starts on the way and serves as
head of the expedition. A second follows, without a
space between; a third follows the second in the same
way; and always thus, as many as there are caterpillars
in the nest. The procession, numbering
several hundreds, is now on the march. It defiles
in one line, sometimes straight, sometimes winding,
but always continuous, for each caterpillar that
follows touches with its head the rear end of the preceding
caterpillar. The procession describes on the
ground a long and pleasing garland, which undulates
to the right and left with unceasing variation.
When several nests are near together and their processions
happen to meet, the spectacle attains its
highest interest. Then the different living garlands
cross each other, get entangled and disentangled,
knotted up and unknotted, forming the most capricious
figures. The encounter does not lead to confusion.
All the caterpillars of the same file march
with a uniform and almost grave step; not one hastens
to get before the others, not one remains behind,
not one makes a mistake in the procession. Each one
keeps its rank and scrupulously regulates its march
by the one that precedes it. The file-leader of the
troop directs the evolutions. When it turns to the
right, all the caterpillars of the same line, one after
the other, turn to the right; when it turns to the left,
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
all, one after the other, turn to the left. If it stops,
the whole procession stops, but not simultaneously;
the second caterpillar first, then the third, fourth,
fifth, and so on until the last. They would be called
well-trained troops that, when defiling in order, stop
at the word of command and close their ranks.
“The expedition, simply a promenade, or a
journey in search of provisions, is now finished.
They have gone far away from their nest. It is
time to go home. How can they find it, through the
grass and underbrush, and over all the obstacles of
the road they have just traveled? Will they let
themselves be guided by sight, obstructed though it
be by every little tuft of grass; by the sense of smell,
which wafted odors of every sort may put at fault?
No, no; processionary caterpillars have for their
guidance in traveling something better than sight or
smell. They have instinct, which inspires them with
infallible resources. Without taking account of
what they do, they call to their service means that
seem dictated by reason. Without doubt, they do
not reason, but they obey the secret impulse of the
eternal Reason, in whom and through whom all live.
“Now, this is what the processionary caterpillars
do in order not to lose their way home again after
a distant expedition. We pave our roads with
crushed stone; caterpillars are more luxurious in
their highways: they spread on their road a carpet
of silk, they walk on nothing but silk. They spin
continually on the journey and glue their silk all
along the road. In fact, each caterpillar of the procession
can be seen lowering and raising its head
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
alternately. In the first movement, the spinneret,
situated in the lower lip, glues the thread to the road
that the procession is following; in the second, the
spinneret lets the thread run out while the caterpillar
is taking several steps. Then the head is
lowered and lifted again, and a second length of
thread is put in place. Each caterpillar that follows
walks on the threads left by the preceding ones and
adds its own thread to the silk, so that in all its
length the road passed over is carpeted with a silky
ribbon. It is by following this ribbon conductor
that the processionaries get back to their home without
ever losing their way, however tortuous the road
may be.
“If one wishes to embarrass the procession, it suffices
to pass the finger over the track so as to cut
the silk road. The procession stops before the cut
with every indication of fear and mistrust. Shall
they go on! Shall they not go on! The heads rise
and fall in anxious quest of the conductor threads.
At last, one caterpillar bolder than the others, or
perhaps more impatient, crosses the bad place and
stretches its thread from one end of the cut to the
other. A second, without hesitating, passes over on
the thread left by the first, and in passing adds its
own thread to the bridge. The others in turn all do
the same. Soon the broken road is repaired and the
defile of the procession continues.
“The processionary caterpillar of the oak marches
in another way. It is covered with white hairs
turned back and very long. One nest contains from
seven to eight hundred individuals. When an expedition
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
is decided on, a caterpillar leaves the nest
and pauses at a certain distance to give the others
time to arrange themselves in rank and file and form
a battalion. This first caterpillar has to start the
march. Following it, others place themselves, not
one after another, like the processionaries of the
pine, but in rows of two, three, four, and more. The
troop, completed, begins to move in obedience to the
evolutions of its file-leader, which always marches
alone at the head of the legion, while the other caterpillars
advance several abreast, dressing their ranks
in perfect order. The first ranks of the army corps
are always arranged in wedge formation, because
of the gradual increase in the number of caterpillars
composing it; the remainder are more or less expanded
in different places. There are sometimes
rows of from fifteen to twenty caterpillars marching
in step, like well-trained soldiers, so that the
head of one is never beyond the head of another.
Of course the troop carpets its road with silk as it
marches, so as to find its way back to its nest.
“The processionaries, especially those of the oak,
retire to their nests to slough their skins, and these
nests finally become filled with a fine dust of broken
hairs. When you touch these nests, the dust of
the hairs sticks to your hands and face, and causes
an inflammation that lasts several days if the skin is
delicate. One has only to stand at the foot of an
oak where the processionaries have established themselves,
to receive the irritating dust blown by the
wind, and to feel a smart itching.”
“What a pity the processionaries have those
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
detestable hairs!” Jules exclaimed. “If they
hadn’t—”
“If they hadn’t, Jules would much like to see the
caterpillars’ procession. Never mind; after all,
the danger is not so great. And then, if one had to
scratch one’s self a little, it would not be a serious
matter. Besides, we will turn our attention to the
processionary of the pine, less to be feared than that
of the oak. At the warmest part of the day we will
go and look for a caterpillars’ nest in the pine wood;
but Jules and I will go alone. It would be too hot
for Emile and Claire.”
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
.pb
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.h2 id=ch34
CHAPTER XXXIV||THE STORM
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
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 take refuge to shelter themselves
from a light that is too glaring for them; at
an earlier or later hour, the nests might be empty,
and the journey a fruitless one.
His heart full of the naïve joys proper to his age,
his mind preoccupied by the caterpillars and their
processions, Jules walked at a good pace, forgetting
heat and fatigue. He had untied his cravat and
thrown his blouse back on his shoulders. A holly
stick, cut by his uncle from the hedge, served him
as a third leg.
In the meantime the crickets chirped louder than
usual; frogs croaked in the ponds; flies became teasing
and persistent; sometimes a breath of air all at
once blew along the road and raised a whirling column
of dust. Jules did not notice these signs, but
his uncle did, and from time to time looked up at
the sky. Masses of reddish mist in the south seemed
to give him some concern. “Perhaps we shall have
rain,” said he; “we must hurry.”
About three o’clock they were at the pine wood.
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
Uncle Paul cut a branch bearing a magnificent nest.
He had guessed right: all the caterpillars had returned
to their lodging, perhaps in prevision of bad
weather. Then they sat in the shade of a group of
pines, to rest a little before returning. Naturally
they talked about caterpillars.
“The processionaries, you told me,” said Jules,
“leave their nests to scatter over the pines and
eat the leaves. There are, in fact, a great many
branches almost reduced to sticks of dry wood.
Look at that pine I am pointing at; it is half stripped
of leaves, as if fire had passed over it. I like the
way the processionaries travel, but I can’t help pitying
those fine trees that wither under the miserable
caterpillar’s teeth.”
“If the owner of these pines understood his interests
better,” returned Uncle Paul, “he would, in the
winter, when the caterpillars are assembled in their
silk bags, have the nests collected and burn them, in
order to destroy the detestable breed that will gnaw
the young shoots, browse the buds, and arrest the
tree’s development. The harm is much greater in
our orchards. Various caterpillars live in companies
on our fruit trees and spin nests in the same
way as the processionaries. When summer comes,
the starveling vermin scatter all over the trees, destroying
leaves, buds, shoots. In a few hours the
orchard is shorn and the crop is destroyed in its
budding. So it is necessary to keep a careful lookout
for caterpillar nests, remove them from the tree
before spring, and burn them, so that nothing can escape;
the future of the crop depends on it. It is fortunate
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
that several kinds of creatures, little birds
especially, come to our aid in this war to the death
between man and the caterpillar; otherwise the
worm, stronger than man on account of its infinite
number, would ravage our crops. But we will talk
of the little birds another time; the weather is threatening,
we must go.”
See how the reddish mist in the south, thicker and
darker every moment, has become a large black cloud
visibly invading the still clear part of the sky. Wind
precedes it, bending the tops of the pines like a field
of grain. There rises from the soil that odor of dust
which the dry earth gives forth at the beginning
of a storm.
“We must not think of starting now,” cautioned
Uncle Paul. “The storm is coming; it will be upon
us in a few minutes. Let us hurry and find shelter.”
Rain forms in the distance like a dim curtain extending
clear across the sky. The sheet of water advances
rapidly; it would beat the fastest racing
horse. It is coming, it has come. Violent flashes of
lightning furrow it, thunder roars in its depths.
At a clap of thunder heavier than the others Jules
starts. “Let us stay here, Uncle,” says the frightened
child; “let us stay under this big bushy pine.
It doesn’t rain here under cover.”
“No, my child,” replies his uncle, who perceives
that they are in the very heart of the storm; “let us
get away from this dangerous tree.”
And, taking Jules by the hand, he leads him hastily
through the hail and rain. Beyond the wood Uncle
Paul knows of an excavation hollowed out in the
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
rock. They arrive there just as the storm breaks
with all its force.
They had been there a quarter of an hour, silent
before the solemn spectacle of the tempest, when a
flash of fire, of dazzling brightness, rent the dark
cloud in a zigzag line and struck a pine with a frightful
detonation that had no reverberation or echo, but
was so violent that one would have said the sky was
falling. The fearful spectacle was over in the
twinkling of an eye. Wild with terror, Jules had
let himself fall on his knees, with clasped hands. He
was crying and praying. His uncle’s serenity was
undisturbed.
“Take courage, my poor child,” said Uncle Paul
as soon as the first fright had passed. “Let us embrace
each other and thank God for having kept
us safe. We have just escaped a great danger; the
thunderbolt struck the pine under which we were
going to take shelter.”
“Oh, what a scare I had, Uncle!” cried the boy.
“I thought I should die of it. When you insisted on
hurrying away in spite of the rain, did you know that
the bolt would strike that tree?”
“No, my dear, I knew nothing about it, nor could
any one know; only certain reasons made me fear
the neighborhood of the big branching pine, and prudence
dictated the search for a less dangerous shelter.
If I yielded to my fears, if I listened to the
voice of prudence, let us give thanks to God, who
gave me presence of mind at that moment.”
“You will tell me what made you avoid the dangerous
shelter of the tree, will you not?”
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
“Very willingly; but when we are all together, so
that each one may profit by it. No one ought to
ignore the danger one runs in taking shelter under
a tree during a storm.”
In the meantime the rain-cloud with its lightnings
and thunders had moved on into the distance. On
one side, the sun was setting radiant; on the opposite
side, in the wake of the storm, the rainbow bent
its immense bright arch of all colors. Uncle Paul
and Jules started on their way, without forgetting
the famous caterpillars’ nest which might have cost
them so dear.
.bn 165.png
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CHAPTER XXXV||ELECTRICITY
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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, “if I had seen the
lightning strike the pine.” After the deeper emotion
came curiosity, and they all agreed to beg their
uncle for a talk on the subject of thunder. And so
the next day Jules, Emile, and Claire gathered
around their Uncle Paul to hear him tell them all
about it. Jules broached the subject.
“Now that I am no longer afraid, will you please
tell us, Uncle, why we should not take refuge under
trees during a storm? Emile, I am sure, would like
to know.”
“I should first of all like to know what thunder
is,” said Emile.
“I too,” said Claire. “When we know a little
what thunder is, it will be much easier to understand
the danger from trees.”
“Quite right,” commented their uncle, approvingly.
“First let us see whether any one of you
knows anything about thunder.”
“When I was very small,” Emile volunteered, “I
used to think it was produced by rolling a large ball
of iron made of resounding metal over the vault of
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
the sky. If the vault broke anywhere, the ball was
dashed to the ground and the thunder fell.
But I don’t believe that now. I am too big.”
“Too big—a little fellow not so high as the first
button on my vest! Say rather that your little reasoning
powers are awakening and that the simple explanation
of the iron ball no longer satisfies them.”
Then Claire spoke. “I am not satisfied either
with the explanations I used to give myself a while
ago. With me, thunder was a wagon heavily loaded
with old iron. It rolled on top of a sonorous vault.
Sometimes a spark would flash out from under the
wheels, the same as from a horse’s hoof when it
strikes a stone: that was the lightning. The vault
was slippery and bordered with precipices. If the
wagon happened to tip over, the load of old iron
would fall to the ground, crushing people, trees, and
houses. I laughed yesterday at my explanation, but
I am no farther advanced now: I still know nothing
at all about thunder.”
“Your two thunders, varying to suit your infant
imaginations, are based on the same idea, the idea of
a sonorous vault. Well, know once for all that the
blue vault of the sky is only an appearance due to the
air which envelops us, and which, owing to the thickness
of the envelope, has a beautiful blue color.
Around us there is no vault, only a thick layer of
air; and beyond that there is nothing for a vast distance
until you come to the region of the stars.”
“We will give up the blue vault,” said Jules.
“Emile, Claire, and I are persuaded there isn’t any.
Please go on.”
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
“Go on? Here is where difficulty begins. Do you
know, my children, that your questions are sometimes
very embarrassing? ‘Go on’ is soon said; and,
filled with unbounded faith in your Uncle Paul’s
knowledge, you expect an answer which, you feel
sure, will satisfy your curiosity. You must, however,
understand that there are innumerable things
beyond your intelligence, and before you can grasp
them you must attain to riper reason. With age and
study many things will become clear that now are
dark to you. In this number is the cause of thunder.
I am very willing to tell you something about it; but
if you do not understand all that I say you must
blame your own premature curiosity. It is a difficult
subject for you, very difficult.”
“Only tell us about it,” Jules persisted; “we will
listen attentively.”
“So be it. Air is not visible, one cannot take hold
of it; if it were always at rest you would not, perhaps,
suspect its existence. But when a violent wind
bends tall poplars and scatters the leaves in eddies,
when it uproots trees and carries off the roofs of
buildings, who can doubt the existence of air? For
wind is only air streaming irresistibly from place to
place. Air, so subtle, so invisible, so peaceful in repose,
is therefore in very truth a material substance,
even a very brutal one when in violent motion. That
is to say, a substance can exist, although at times
nothing betrays its presence. We do not see it or
touch it, are not sensible of it, and yet it is there, all
about us; we are surrounded by it, live in the midst
of it.
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
“Well, there is something still more hidden than
air, more invisible, more difficult to detect. It is
everywhere, absolutely everywhere, even in us; but
it keeps itself so quiet that until now you have never
heard of it.”
Emile, Claire, and Jules exchanged glances full of
meaning, trying to guess what it could be that was
found ever where and that they did not yet know of.
They were a hundred leagues from guessing what
their uncle meant.
“You might seek in vain by yourselves all day, all
the year, perhaps all your life; you would not find it.
The thing I am speaking of, you understand, is singularly
well hidden; scholars had to make very delicate
researches to learn anything about it. Let us
make use of the means they have taught us to bring
it to light.”
Uncle Paul took from his desk a stick of sealing-wax
and rubbed it rapidly over his cloth sleeve; then
he put it near a small piece of paper. The children
were all eyes. Behold, the paper flies up and sticks
to the sealing-wax. The experiment is repeated several
times. Each time the paper rises unaided,
starts off, and fastens on to the stick.
“The piece of sealing-wax, which formerly did not
attract the paper, now does. The rubbing on the
cloth has, then, developed in it something that cannot
be seen, for the stick has not changed in appearance;
and this invisible thing is nevertheless very
real, since it can lift up the paper, draw it to the wax,
and hold it glued there. This thing is called electricity.
You can easily produce it by rubbing on
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
cloth either a piece of glass or a stick of sulphur,
resin, or sealing-wax. All these substances, when
rubbed, will acquire the property of drawing to themselves
very light objects, like small pieces of straw,
little bits of paper, or particles of dust. This evening
the cat shall teach us more about it, if it will be
good.”
.bn 170.png
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CHAPTER XXXVI||THE EXPERIMENT WITH THE CAT
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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, who cried out at
the unseasonableness of making a fire.
“Light up the stove in summer!” said she; “did
one ever see the like? No one but our master would
have such a notion. We shall be roasted.”
Uncle Paul let her talk; he had his own idea.
They sat down at the table. After eating its supper
the big cat, never too warm, settled itself on a chair
by the side of the stove, and soon, with its back turned
to the warm sheet-iron, began to purr with happiness.
All was going as desired; Uncle Paul’s projects
were taking an excellent turn. There was some
complaint of the heat, but he took no notice.
“Ah! do you think it is for you the stove is
lighted?” said he to the children. “Undeceive yourselves,
my little friends: it is for the cat, the cat
alone. It is so chilly, poor thing; see how happy
it is on its chair.”
Emile was on the point of laughing at his uncle’s
kindly attentions to the tom-cat, but Claire, who suspected
serious designs, nudged him with her elbow.
Claire’s suspicions were well founded. When they
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
had finished supper they resumed the subject of thunder.
Uncle Paul began:
“This morning I promised to show you, with the
cat’s help, some very curious things. The time has
come for keeping my word, provided Puss is agreeable.”
He took the cat, whose hair was burning hot, and
put it on his knees. The children drew near.
“Jules, put out the lamp; we must be in the dark.”
The lamp put out, Uncle Paul passed and repassed
his hand over the tom-cat’s back. Oh! oh! wonderful!
the beast’s hair is streaming with bright beads;
little flashes of white light appear, crackle, and disappear
as the hand rubs; you would have said that
sparks of fireworks were bursting out from the fur.
All looked on in wonder at the tom-cat’s splendor.
“That puts the finishing touch! Here is our cat
making fire!” cried Mother Ambroisine.
“Does that fire burn, Uncle?” asked Jules. “The
cat does not cry out, and you stroke him without being
afraid.”
“Those sparks are not fire,” replied Uncle Paul.
“You all remember the stick of sealing-wax which,
after being rubbed on cloth, attracts little pieces of
straw and paper. I told you that electricity, aroused
by friction, is what makes the paper draw to the wax.
Well, in rubbing the cat’s back with my hand I produce
electricity, but in greater abundance, so much
so that it becomes visible where it was at first invisible,
and bursts forth in sparks.”
“If it doesn’t burn, let me try,” pleaded Jules.
Jules passed his hand over the cat’s fur. The
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
bright beads and their cracklings began again still
stronger. Emile and Claire did the same. Mother
Ambroisine was afraid. The worthy woman perhaps
saw some witchcraft in the bright sparkles from
her cat. The cat was then let loose. Besides, the
experiment was beginning to give annoyance, and
if Uncle Paul had not held the animal fast perhaps it
would have begun to scratch.
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
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CHAPTER XXXVII||THE EXPERIMENT WITH PAPER
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“SINCE the cat threatens to get cross, we will
have recourse to another way of producing
electricity.
“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 hot fire. The greater the heat,
the more electricity will be developed. Finally, still
holding the strip by the ends alone, you rub it
quickly, as soon as it is hot, on a piece of woolen cloth
previously warmed and stretched over the knee. It
can be rubbed on the trousers if they are woolen.
The friction must be rapid and lengthwise of the
paper. After a short rubbing the band is quickly
raised with one hand, with great care not to let the
paper touch against anything; if it did the electricity
would be dissipated. Then without delay you bring
up the knuckles of your free hand, or, better, the end
of a key, near to the middle of the strip of paper;
and you will see a bright spark dart from the paper
to the key with a slight crackling. To get another
spark you must go through the same operations
again, for at the approach of the finger or key the
sheet of paper loses all its electricity.
“Instead of making a spark, you can hold the electrified
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
sheet flat above little pieces of paper, straw,
or feathers. These light bodies are attracted and
repelled in turn; they come and go rapidly from the
electrified strip to the object which serves them as
support, and from this to the strip.”
Adding example to precept, Uncle Paul took a
sheet of paper, folded it in a strip to give it more
resistance, warmed it, rubbed it on his knee, and
finally made a spark fly from it on the approach of
his finger-joint. The children were full of wonder
at the lightning that sprang from the paper with a
crackle. The cat’s beads were more numerous, but
less strong and brilliant.
They say that Mother Ambroisine had much
trouble that evening in getting Jules to go to bed;
for, once master of the process, he did not tire of
warming and rubbing. His uncle’s intervention was
necessary to put an end to the electric experiments.
.bn 175.png
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CHAPTER XXXVIII||FRANKLIN AND DE ROMAS
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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 of fire and the
flashes from the paper had greatly impressed them;
so their uncle, in order to profit by this awakening
of their attention, resumed as soon as possible his
instructive talk.
“I am sure you are all three asking yourselves
why, before telling you about thunder, I rubbed sealing-wax,
a strip of paper, and the cat’s back. You
shall know, but first of all listen to a little story.
“More than a century ago a magistrate of the little
town of Nérac, named de Romas, devised the most
momentous experiment ever registered in the annals
of science. One day he was seen going out into the
country in a storm, with an enormous paper kite and
a ball of twine. Over two hundred persons, keenly
interested, accompanied him. What in the world
was that celebrated magistrate going to do. Forgetful
of his grave functions, did he propose some diversion
unworthy of him? Was it to witness a puerile
kite-flying that these curious ones flocked from all
points of the town? No, no; de Romas was about
to realize the most audacious project that man’s
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
genius has ever conceived; his bold purpose was to
evoke the thunderbolt from the very depths of the
clouds, and to call down fire from heaven.
“The kite that was to draw the thunderbolt from
the midst of the storm-clouds and bring it into the
intrepid experimenter’s view did not differ from
those familiar to you; only the hemp cord had
through its entire length a copper thread. The wind
having risen, the paper contrivance was thrown into
the air and attained a height of about two hundred
meters. To the lower end of the cord was attached
a silk string, and this string was made fast under the
stoop of a house, to shelter it from the rain. A little
tin cylinder was hung to the hempen cord at one point
and in touch with the metallic thread running
through the cord. Finally, de Romas was furnished
with a similar cylinder that had at one end a long
glass tube as handle. It was with this instrument or
this exciter, held in his hand by the glass handle, that
he was to make the fire dart from the clouds, conducted
by the copper thread of the kite to the metallic
cylinder at the end of this thread. The silk cord and
the glass handle served to prevent the passage of the
thunderbolt, either into the ground or into the exciter’s
arm; for these substances have the property
of not giving passage to electricity unless it is too
strong. Metals, on the contrary, let it circulate
freely.
“Such was the simple arrangement of the apparatus
invented by de Romas to verify his audacious
prevision. What is to be expected from this
child’s plaything thrown into the air to meet the
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
thunder? Does it not seem to you foolish to suppose
that such a plaything can direct the thunderbolt and
master it? The magistrate of Nérac must, however,
by wise meditations on the nature of thunder, have
acquired the certainty of success, to dare thus, before
hundreds of witnesses, to undertake this attempt,
the failure of which would cover him with
confusion. The result of this terrible conflict between
thought and thunder cannot be in doubt:
thought, as always, when well directed, will gain the
upper hand.
“Behold, now, the clouds, forerunners of the
storm, are coming near the kite. De Romas moves
the exciter toward the tin cylinder suspended at the
end of the cord, and suddenly there is a flash of light.
It is produced by a dazzling spark which darts upon
the exciter, crackles, emits a flash of lightning, and
immediately disappears.”
“That is just what we got yesterday evening,” observed
Jules, “when we put the end of a key near the
strip of warmed and rubbed paper; it is what the
cat’s back showed us when it was stroked with the
hand.”
“The very same thing,” replied his uncle.
“Thunder, beads of fire from the cat, sparks from
paper—all are due to electricity. But let us return
to de Romas. We see that there is electricity, the
thunderbolt in miniature, in the kite’s string. It is
inoffensive yet, on account of its feeble quantity; so
de Romas does not hesitate to draw it forth with his
finger. Every time he brings his finger near the
cylinder, he draws a spark like that received by the
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
exciter. Emboldened by his example, the spectators
draw near and evoke the electric explosion. They
crowd around the wonderful cylinder that now contains
the fire from heaven, called down by man’s
genius; each one wishes to call forth the lightning,
and each wishes to see sparkle between his fingers
the fulminant substance descended from the clouds.
So they play with the thunder for half an hour with
impunity, when all at once a violent spark reaches de
Romas and almost knocks him over. The hour of
peril has come. The storm is getting nearer,
stronger, every moment; thick clouds hover over the
kite.
“De Romas summons up all his firmness; he
quickly makes the crowd draw back and remains
alone at the side of his apparatus, in the middle of
the circle of spectators, who are beginning to get
frightened. Then, with the aid of the exciter, he
elicits from the metallic cylinder first strong sparks,
capable of throwing a person down under the violence
of the commotion, then ribbons of fire that dart
in serpentine lines and burst with a crash. These
ribbons soon measure a length of two or three meters.
Any one struck by one of them would certainly perish.
De Romas, fearing from moment to moment
some fatal accident, enlarges the circle of curious
spectators and ceases the perilous provocation of
electric fire. But, braving imminent death, he continues
his perilous observations at close range, with
the same coolness as if he were engaged in the most
harmless experiment. Around him there is heard a
roaring like the continuous blast of a forge; an odor
.bn 179.png
.pn +1
of burning is in the air; the kite-string is covered
with a luminous envelope and forms a ribbon of fire
joining heaven to earth. Three long straws, lying by
chance on the ground, start up, jump, spring toward
the string, fall, spring up again, and for some minutes
entertain the spectators with their disordered
evolutions.”
“Last evening,” Claire remarked, “the down of
the feathers and the little pieces of paper jumped in
the same way between the electrified sheet of paper
and the table.”
“That is quite natural,” said Jules, “since Uncle
has just told us that the rubbed sheet of paper takes
to itself the very essence of thunder, only in a very
small quantity.”
“I am glad to see you grasp the close resemblance
between thunder and the electricity that we produce
by rubbing certain bodies. De Romas made his perilous
experiment on purpose to prove that resemblance.
I said perilous experiment; you will see, in
fact, what danger the audacious experimenter ran.
Three straws, I told you, were jumping from the
string to the ground, and from the ground to the
string, when all at once everybody turned pale with
fright: there came a violent explosion and a thunderbolt
fell, making a large hole in the ground and
raising a cloud of dust.”
“My goodness!” gasped Claire. “Was de Romas
killed?”
“No, de Romas was safe and beaming with joy:
his previsions were verified with a success that bordered
on the prodigious: it was demonstrated that a
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
thunderbolt can be brought from the clouds within
reach of the observer; he had proved that electricity
is the cause of thunder. That, my children, was no
trivial result, fit only to satisfy our curiosity: the
nature of thunder being ascertained, it became possible
to secure protection from its ravages, as I will
tell you in the story of the lightning-conductor.”
“De Romas, who made these important experiments
at the peril of his life, must have been loaded
with honors and riches by his contemporaries,” said
Claire.
“Alas! my dear child,” replied her uncle, “things
do not commonly happen that way. Truth rarely
finds any free spot in which to plant itself; it has to
fight against prejudice and ignorance. The battle is
sometimes so painful, that men of strong will succumb
to the task. De Romas, wishing to repeat his
experiment at Bordeaux, was stoned by the mob, who
saw in him a dangerous man evoking thunder by his
witchcraft. He was obliged to flee in haste, abandoning
his apparatus.
“A short time before de Romas, in the United
States of North America, Franklin made similar researches
on the nature of thunder. Benjamin Franklin
was the son of a poor soap-manufacturer. He
found at home merely the requisite means for learning
to read, write, and cipher; and yet he became by
his learning one of the most remarkable men of his
time. One stormy day in 1752 he went into the
country near Philadelphia, accompanied by his son,
who carried a kite made of silk tied at the four corners
to two little glass rods. A metal tail terminated
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
the apparatus. The kite was thrown up toward
a storm-cloud. At first nothing happened to
confirm the learned American’s previsions: the
string gave no sign of electricity. Rain came on.
The wet string let the electricity circulate more
freely; and Franklin, without thinking of the danger
he ran, and transported with joy at thus stealing its
secret from the thunder, elicited with his finger a
shower of sparks strong enough to set fire to spirits
of wine.”
.bn 182.png
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CHAPTER XXXIX||THUNDER AND THE LIGHTNING-ROD
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“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, it leaps to meet one’s
finger in bright, crackling sparks, without danger to
the experimenter, and that all bodies containing it
attract neighboring light substances, just as the kite-string
attracted the straws in the experiment made
by de Romas, and just as sealing-wax and rubbed
paper attract the down of feathers. In short, they
taught us that electricity is the cause of thunder.
“Now there are two distinct kinds of electricity,
which are present in equal quantities in all bodies.
As long as they are united, nothing betrays their
presence; it is as if they did not exist. But, once
separated, they seek each other across all obstacles,
attract each other, and rush toward each other with
an explosion and a flash of light. Then all is in
complete repose until these two electric principles
are again separated. The two electricities, therefore,
supplement and neutralize each other; that is
to say, they form something invisible, inoffensive,
inert, that is found everywhere and is called neutral
electricity. To electrify a body is to decompose its
neutral electricity, to disunite the two principles
.bn 183.png
.pn +1
which, when mixed, remain inert, but, separated
from each other, manifest their wonderful properties
and their violent tendency to recombination.
Rubbing is one way of effecting the separation of the
two electric principles, but it is far from being the
only one. Every radical change in the inmost nature
of a body also causes a manifestation of the two
electricities. So clouds, which are water changed
into vapor by the sun’s heat, are often found to be
electrified.
“When two differently electrified clouds come
near together, immediately their contrary electricities
run toward each other to recombine, and with a
loud report there is a burst of flame that throws a
bright and sudden light. This light is lightning;
this burst of flame is a thunderbolt; the noise of the
explosion is thunder. Finally, the electric spark
can dart from a cloud electrified in one way to a spot
on the ground electrified in the other.
“Generally you know a thunderbolt only by the
sudden illumination it produces and the crash of its
explosion. To see the thunderbolt itself you must
overcome an unwarranted fear and look attentively
at the clouds, the center of the storm. From moment
to moment you can see a dazzling streak of
light, simple or ramified, and of very irregular sinuous
shape. A glowing furnace, metals at white
heat, have not its brilliancy; the sun alone furnishes
a comparison worthy the sovereign splendor of the
thunderbolt.”
“I saw the thunderbolt,” put in Jules, “when it
struck the big pine the day of the storm. For a
.bn 184.png
.pn +1
moment I was blinded by its brightness, as if I had
looked the sun full in the face.”
“The next storm,” said Emile, “I will watch the
sky to see the ribbon of fire, but on condition that
uncle is there. I should not dare to alone; it is so
terrible.”
“I, too,” added Claire, “will do my best to overcome
my fear, if Uncle is only there.”
“I will be there, my children,” their uncle promised
them, “if my presence reassures you, for it is a
most imposing sight, that of a stormy sky set on fire
by lightning and full of the rumbling of the thunder.
And yet, when from the bosom of the clouds there
comes the dazzling flash of the thunderbolt and the
whole region echoes with the crash of the explosion,
a foolish fear dominates you; admiration has no further
place in your mind, and your terrified eyes
close at the magnificence of the electrical phenomena
of the atmosphere, proclaiming with so much
eloquence the majesty of the works of God. From
your heart, congealed with fear, there comes no outburst
of gratitude, for you do not know that at this
moment, in the flashes of lightning, the uproar of
the shower, of the thunder, and of the unchained
winds, a great providential act is being accomplished.
Thunder, in fact, is far more the cause of
life than of death. In spite of the terrible but rare
accidents that it causes, obeying in that the inscrutable
decrees of God, it is one of the most powerful
means that Providence employs to render the atmosphere
wholesome, to clear the air we breathe of
the deadly exhalations engendered by decay. We
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
burn straw and paper torches in our rooms to purify
the air; with its immense sheets of flame the
thunderbolt produces an analogous effect in the surrounding
atmosphere. Each of those lightning
flashes that make you start with fear is a pledge of
general salubrity; each of those claps of thunder
that freeze you with fear is a sign of the great work
of purification that is operating in favor of life.
And who does not know with what delight, after a
storm, the breast fills itself with pure air, when the
atmosphere, purified by the fires of the thunderbolt,
gives new life to all that breathe it! Let us beware
then of a foolish terror when it thunders, but lift up
our thoughts to God, from whom the thunder and
the lightning have received their salutary mission.
“The thunderbolt, like everything in this world,
plays a part in accord with the general well-being;
but, again, like everything else, it can, in fulfilling the
hidden purposes of an all-seeing Providence, cause
here and there a rare accident that makes us forget
the immense service it renders us. Let us always
remember that nothing happens without the permission
of our heavenly Father. A reverent fear of
God ought to exclude all other fear. Let us, then,
calmly examine the danger that a thunderbolt exposes
us to. Let us remember above all that a thunderbolt
by preference strikes the most prominent
points of ground, for it is there that the opposite
electricity, attracted by that of the storm-cloud, is
present in greatest abundance, ready to unite with
that which attracts it.”
“The two electricities seeking reunion do their
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
utmost to meet,” said Claire, to fix the facts in her
mind. “That of the ground, in its effort to reach
the cloud, gains the top of a tall tree; that of the
cloud, on its side, is impelled downward toward the
tree. Then comes the moment when the two electricities,
still attracting each other but no longer
having a road open for their peaceful reunion, rush
together with a crash. Then the streak of fire can’t
help reaching the tree. Is that it, Uncle!”
“My dear child, I could not have put it better myself.
That is why, in fact, high buildings, towers,
steeples, tall trees, are the points most exposed to
fire from heaven. In the open country it would be
very imprudent, during a storm to seek refuge from
rain under a tree, especially a tall and isolated one.
If the thunderbolt is to fall in the neighborhood, it
will preferably be upon that tree, which forms a
high point where the electricity of the ground accumulates,
to get as near as possible to that of the
cloud attracting it. The sad and deplorable instances
every year of persons struck by lightning
are for the most part confined to the imprudent who
seek shelter from the rain under a tall tree.”
“If you had not known about these things, Uncle,”
Jules here remarked, “we should have been
killed the day of the storm, when I wanted to get
under the tall pine-tree.”
“It is very doubtful whether the thunderbolt, in
destroying the tree, would have spared us. It is
impious boldness to expose one’s self to peril without
a motive, and then to throw upon Providence the
task of extricating us from our perilous situation.
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
Heaven will help him who helps himself. We helped
ourselves by fleeing from the dangerous tree, and we
arrived home safe. But to help oneself effectively
requires knowledge; so, to impress these things well
on your mind, I emphasize once more the danger
that, in time of storm, lurks in high towers, steeples,
lofty buildings, and, above all, in tall and isolated
trees. As for other precautions that are commonly
recommended, such as not to run, in order not
to cause a violent displacement of the air, and to
shut the doors and windows in order to prevent a
draught, they are of no value whatever: the direction
taken by the thunderbolt is in no way affected
by the air-currents. Railway trains, which run at
high speed and displace the air with so much violence,
are not more exposed to lightning than objects
at rest. Every-day experience is a proof of
it.”
“When it thunders,” said Emile, “Mother Ambroisine
hurries to shut all the doors and windows.”
“Mother Ambroisine is like a great many others
who believe they are safe as soon as they cease to
see the peril. They shut themselves up so as not to
hear the thunder nor see the lightning; but that does
not in the least lessen the danger.”
“Then there are no precautions to be taken!”
asked Jules.
“In the usual circumstances, none, unless it be
this precaution: to be of good heart and rely on the
will of God.
“To protect tall buildings, more menaced than
others, we use a lightning-conductor, a wonderful invention
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
due to Franklin’s genius. The lightning-conductor
is composed of a rod of iron, long, strong,
and pointed, fastened to the top of the building.
From its base starts another rod, also of iron, which
runs along the roofs and walls, where it is fastened
with staples, and plunges into damp ground or, better
still, into a deep well of water. If a thunderbolt
falls, it strikes the lightning-conductor, which is the
nearest object to the cloud as well as the best suited
to the electric current on account of its metallic nature.
Besides, its pointed form has much to do with
its efficacy. The bolt that strikes the metal lightning-conductor
follows it and is dissipated in the
depths of the earth without causing any damage.”
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch40
CHAPTER XL||EFFECTS OF THE THUNDERBOLT
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 our dwellings;
it splits the trunks of trees and divides the wood into
little shreds; it overthrows walls, or even wrenches
them from their foundations. In penetrating the
ground, it melts the sand on its way and makes irregular
glass tubes. It reddens, melts, and vaporizes
metallic substances that give free passage to the
electric current, such as metal chains, the iron wire
of bells, the gilding of frames. Its preference, in
short, is for objects made of metal. There are instances
of persons left uninjured while the lightning
consumed the various metallic objects worn or carried
by them, such as gold-lace, metal buttons, and
coins. It sets fire to piles of combustible matter like
bundles of straw and stacks of dried fodder.
“A feeble electric spark, like those I taught you
how to get from paper, makes but the slightest perceptible
impression on us. At the very most, we
feel a little prick at the point of communication.
But with the help of powerful apparatus at the disposal
of science, the electric shock becomes painful
and can be dangerous, or even mortal. When one
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
is struck by a rather strong spark, one feels, particularly
in the joints, a sudden shock that makes one
tremble and feel weak in the knees. With a still
stronger spark, the whole body is seized with a sudden
shaking so violent that the joints seem to be severed
and one is knocked down by the stroke. Science
possesses appliances powerful enough to kill an
ox with the electric shock.
“The thunderbolt, a spark incomparably stronger
than that of our electric machines, gives to men and
animals an extremely violent shock; it throws them
down, injures them, and even kills them instantly.
Sometimes a person thus struck bears traces, more
or less deep, of burning; sometimes not the slightest
wound is to be seen. Death is not, therefore, as a
rule, due to any wounds inflicted by the thunderbolt,
but to the sudden and violent shock given to the
body. Sometimes death is only apparent: the electric
shock simply suspends the primary vital functions,
circulation and respiration. This state, which
would end in death if prolonged, we can combat by
giving the person struck the same care bestowed
upon the drowned; that is to say, by seeking to revive
by friction the respiratory movement of the
breast. At other times the electric shock more or
less paralyzes some part of the body, or perhaps
only produces a passing disorder which wears off of
itself.”
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch41
CHAPTER XLI||CLOUDS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 mountains of cotton
were piled up. The eye was delighted with the soft
outlines of that celestial wadding.
“You remember,” he began, “all those fogs that
on damp autumn and winter mornings cover the
earth with a veil of gray smoke, hide the sun, and
prevent our seeing a few steps in front of us!”
“Looking into the air, you could see something
like fine dust of water floating,” said Claire; and
Jules added:
“We played hide and seek with Emile in that kind
of damp smoke. We could not see each other a few
steps away.”
“Well,” resumed Uncle Paul, “clouds and fog are
the same thing; only fog spreads about us and shows
for what it is, gray, damp, cold; while clouds keep
more or less above us and take on, with distance, a
rich appearance. There are some of dazzling whiteness,
like those you see over there; others of a red
color, or golden-hued, or like fire; still others of the
color of ashes, and others that are black. The color
changes, too, from moment to moment. At sunset
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
you will see a cloud begin with being white, then
turn scarlet, then shine like a pile of embers, or like
a lake of melted gold, and finally become dull and
turn gray or black, according as the sun’s rays
strike it less and less. All that is a matter of illumination
by the sun. In reality, clouds, however
splendid in appearance, are formed of a damp vapor
like that of fog. We can assure ourselves of this
by a near approach.”
“People can then mount as high as the clouds,
Uncle?” Emile asked.
“Certainly. All one needs is a pair of legs stout
enough to climb to the top of a mountain. Often
then clouds are under one’s feet.”
“And you have seen clouds underneath you?”
“Sometimes.”
“That must be a very beautiful sight.”
“So beautiful that words cannot express it. But
it is not exactly a pleasure if the clouds mount and
envelop you. You can be very much embarrassed
by the obscurity of the fog alone. You lose your
way; you become confused, without suspecting any
danger in the most dangerous places, at the risk of
falling into some abyss; you lose sight of the guides,
who alone know the way and could save you from a
false step. No, all is not roses up among the clouds.
You will perhaps learn that some day to your cost.
Meanwhile let us transport ourselves in imagination
to the top of a cloud-capped mountain. If circumstances
are favorable, here is what we shall see:
“Above our heads the sky, perfectly clear, presents
no unusual appearance; the sun shines there
.bn 193.png
.pn +1
in all its brilliancy. Down there at our feet, almost
in the plains, white clouds spread themselves out.
The wind sweeps them before it and drives them toward
the summit. There they are, rolling and
mounting up the side of the mountain. One would
think they were immense flocks of cotton pushed up
the slope by some invisible hand. Now and then
a ray of sunlight penetrates their depths and gives
them the brilliancy of gold and fire. The beautiful
clouds behind which the sun disappears at its setting
are not richer. What brilliant tints, what soft suppleness!
They mount higher and higher. Now
they roll up like a shining white band around the
top of the mountain, and hide the view of the plain
from us. Only the point where we are projects
above the cloud-curtain, like an islet above the sea.
At last this point is invaded, we are in the bosom of
the clouds. Warm tints, soft outlines, striking
views—all have disappeared. It is now only a dark
fog that saturates with moisture and makes us feel
depressed. Ah, if some breath of wind would make
haste and sweep away these disagreeable clouds!
“That, my little friends, is what one does not fail
to wish when one is in the clouds, which, so beautiful
at a distance, are nothing but gloomy fog when close
at hand. The spectacle of the clouds should be seen
from afar. When in our curiosity we wish to examine
certain appearances too closely, we sometimes
find them deceptive; but we also find that, under a
secondary brilliancy, which serves to adorn the
earth, they hide realities of the first importance.
The marvels of the clouds are only an appearance,
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
an illusion of light; but under this illusion are concealed
the reservoirs of rain, source of the earth’s
fecundity. God, by whom the smallest details of
creation have been ordered, willed that the most
common but also most necessary substances should
serve as an ornament to the earth in spite of their
really humble aspect; and he clothes them with a
prestige dependent on the distance from which we
are to contemplate
them. The gray vapor
of the clouds
gives us rain. That
is its chief utility.
The sun illuminates
it, and that suffices to transform it into a celestial
tapestry in which the astonished eye finds the splendor
of purple, gold and fire. That is its ornamental
function.
.if h
.il fn=i184.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Cirrus
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Cirrus]
.sp 2
.if-
“The height maintained by clouds is very variable
and is generally less than you might suppose.
There are clouds that lazily trail along the ground;
they are the fogs. There are others that cling to the
sides of moderately high mountains, and still others
that crown the summits. The region where they are
commonly found is at a height varying from 500 to
1500 meters. In some rather rare instances they
rise to nearly four leagues. Beyond that eternal
serenity reigns; clouds never mount there, thunder
never rumbles, and snow, hail, and rain never form.
“Those clouds are called ‘cirrus’ that look sometimes
like light flocks of curly wool, sometimes like
drawn-out-filaments of dazzling whiteness, sharply
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
contrasting with the deep blue of the sky. They are
the highest of all the clouds. They are often a league
high. When cirrus clouds are small and rounded
and closely grouped in large numbers, so as to look
like the backs of a flock of sheep, the sky thus covered
is said to be dappled. It is usually a sign that
the weather is going to change.
.if h
.il fn=i185.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Cumulus
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Cumulus]
.sp 2
.if-
“The name ‘cumulus’
is given to those large
white clouds with round
outlines which pile up,
during the heat of
summer, like immense
mountains of cotton-wool. Their appearance presages
a storm.”
“Then the clouds we see over there next to the
mountains,” queried Jules, “are cumulus? They
look like piles of cotton. Will they bring us a
storm?”
“I think not. The wind is driving them in another
direction. The storm always takes place in
their neighborhood. There! Hear that!”
A sudden light had just flashed through the flocks
of the cumulus. After rather a long wait the noise
of the thunder reached them, but greatly weakened
by distance. Questions came quickly from Jules’s
and Emile’s lips: “Why does it rain over there,
and not here? Why does the noise of the thunder
come after the lightning? Why—”
“We are going to talk about all that,” said Uncle
Paul; “but first let us learn the other forms of
clouds. ‘Stratus’ is applied to clouds disposed in
.bn 196.png
.pn +1
irregular bands placed in tiers on the horizon at
sunrise or sunset. They are clouds that, in the fading
daylight, especially in autumn, take the glowing
tints of melted metals
and of flame. The
red stratus of the
morning are followed
by rain or wind.
.if h
.il fn=i186.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Stratus
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Stratus]
.sp 2
.if-
“Finally, we give
the name ‘nimbus’ to a mass of dark clouds of a uniform
gray, so crowded together that it is impossible
to distinguish one cloud from another. These
clouds generally dissolve into rain. Seen from a
distance, they often look like broad stripes extending
in a straight line from heaven to earth. They are
trails of rain.
“Now Emile may ask his questions.”
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch42
CHAPTER XLII||THE VELOCITY OF SOUND
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 contrary,
the sky is blue. So it does not rain everywhere at
the same time. When rain is falling in one country,
it is fine in others. And yet, when it rains here the
whole sky is covered with clouds.”
“You need only put your hand over your eyes
to hide the sky,” his uncle explained. “A cloud
much farther off, but also much larger, produces the
same effect: it veils what is surrounding us and
makes it all cloudy. But that is only in appearance;
beyond the region covered by the cloud the sky may
be serene and the weather magnificent. Under the
cumulus where the thunder is growling now, it rains,
you may be sure, and the sky looks black. To the
people in that region the surroundings present only
a rainy appearance, because they are wrapped in
clouds; if they were to go elsewhere, beyond the
clouds, they would find the sky as serene as we have
it here.”
“With a fast horse they could, then,” suggested
Emile, “get from under the clouds, leave the rain,
and come into fine weather; as also they could leave
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
the sunshine and get into the rain under the clouds.”
“Sometimes that would be possible, but more
often not, because clouds can cover large areas. Besides,
they travel, they go from one country to another,
with such speed that the best horseman could
not follow them in their course. You have all seen
the shadow of the clouds run over the ground when
the wind blows. Hills, valleys, plains, water-courses,
all are crossed in less than no time. The
shadow of a cloud passes over you at the moment
you reach the top of a hill. Before you have taken
three steps to descend into the valley, the shadow,
with giant strides, is mounting the opposite slopes.
Who could flatter himself that he could follow the
cloud and keep under its cover?
“If rain sometimes falls over great stretches of
country, it is never general, absolutely. If it should
rain at one time over a whole province, what is that
compared with the earth? A clod compared with
a large field. Chased by the wind, clouds run hither
and thither in the vast spaces of the atmosphere.
They travel, and on their way throw a shadow or
precipitate rain. Where they pass there is rain;
everywhere else, no. In the same place there can
even be both rain and fine weather, according as one
is below or above the clouds. You know that on a
mountain-top the clouds are sometimes beneath one.
The plain under the clouds may receive a hard
shower, while on the summit the sun shines without
a single drop of rain.”
“All that is easily understood,” said Jules. “It
is my turn now, Uncle, to ask you a question. From
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
the storm-cloud that we see from here, there first
came a flash of lightning; then, after waiting some
time, the sound of the thunder was heard. Why do
not the sound and the lightning come together?”
“Two things tell us of the thunderbolt: light and
noise. The light is the flash of the lightning, the
noise is thunder. Likewise in the discharge of firearms
there is the light produced by the ignition of
the powder and the noise resulting therefrom. At
the scene of the explosion light and noise are coincident;
but for persons at a distance the light, which
travels at an incomparably greater velocity, arrives
before the sound, which moves more slowly. If you
note the discharge of a gun a considerable distance
away, you see first the flash and smoke of the explosion,
and do not hear the report until some time
after; the more distant the explosion, the longer
the time. Light travels an immense distance in an
exceedingly short time. The flash of the explosion,
therefore, reaches the eye at the very instant of its
occurrence. If the sound does not arrive until after,
it is because it travels much less rapidly and, in order
to cover a considerable distance, requires considerable
time, which is easily measured.
“Suppose ten seconds pass between the flash of a
cannon’s discharge and the arrival of the sound.
The distance is measured between the place where
the explosion occurred and that where it was heard.
It is found to be 3400 meters. Sound, therefore,
moves through the air, in a single second, a distance
of 340 meters. That is a good rate of speed, comparable
with that of the cannon-ball, but nothing,
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
after all, in comparison with the inconceivable velocity
of light.
“The unequal rapidity with which sound and light
travel accounts for the following fact. From a distance
a wood-cutter is seen chopping wood, or a
mason cutting stone. We see the ax strike the wood,
the mallet tap the stone, and some time after we
hear the sound.”
.if h
.il fn=i190.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Bells Ringing
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Bells Ringing]
.sp 2
.if-
“One Sunday before
church,” interposed
Jules, “I was watching
from a distance the ringing
of the bell. I saw
the tongue strike and the
sound did not come until
later. Now I see the reason.”
“If you count the number
of seconds between
the appearance of the
flash and the instant the
thunder begins to be
heard, you can tell what distance you are from the
storm-cloud.”
“Is a second very long!” Emile asked.
“It is about the length of one beat of the pulse.
All we have to do, then, is to count, one, two, three,
four, etc., without haste, but not too slowly, to have
about the number of seconds. Note the instant the
flash lights up the stormy cumulus, and count slowly
until you hear the thunder.”
With watchful eye and attentive ear all began
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
the observation. Finally a flash was seen. They
counted, the uncle beating time. One—two—three—four—five—At
twelve came the thunder, but so
faint that they could only just hear it.
“It took twelve seconds for the sound of the thunder
to reach us,” said Uncle Paul. “From what distance
does it come, if sound travels 340 meters a second?”
“You must multiply 340 by twelve,” replied
Claire.
“Well, Miss, do it.”
Claire made the calculation. The result was 4080
meters.
“The flash of lightning was 4080 meters away; we
are more than a league from the storm-cloud,” said
her uncle.
“How easy that is!” exclaimed Emile. “You
count one, two, three, four, and without moving you
know how far away the thunderbolt has just fallen.”
“The longer the time between the flash and the
noise, the farther away is the cloud. When the report
comes at the same time as the flash, the explosion
is quite near. Jules knows that well since the
day of the storm in the pine woods.”
“I have heard that there is no longer any danger
after the lightning is seen,” said Claire.
“A thunderbolt is as rapid as light. An electric
explosion is, therefore, ended as soon as the flash
appears, and all danger is then passed; for the thunder,
however loud it may be, can do no harm.”
.bn 202.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch43
CHAPTER XLIII||THE EXPERIMENT WITH THE BOTTLE OF COLD WATER
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 composed of and
how formed. So the next day he continued his talk
on clouds.
“When Mother Ambroisine hangs the clothes she
has just washed on the line, what does she do it for?
To dry the linen, to free it from the water with
which it is saturated. Well, what becomes of this
water, if you please?”
“It disappears, I know,” answered Jules, “but I
should find it very hard to tell what becomes of it.”
“This water is dissipated in the air, where it dissolves
and becomes as invisible as the air itself.
When you wet a heap of dry sand, the water
permeates it throughout and disappears. It is true
that the sand then takes a different appearance: it
was dry before, it is wet afterward. The sand
drinks the water that comes into contact with it.
Air does the same: it drinks the moisture from the
linen and becomes damp itself; and it drinks it so
completely that all—air and water—remain as invisible
as if the air held no foreign substance.
Vapor is the name given to water thus made invisible,
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
or in some sort aërial, that is to say resembling
the air; and the reduction of water to this new state
is called evaporation. The moisture of the linen
we wish to dry evaporates; the water is dissipated
in the air and thus becomes invisible vapor, which
spreads in every direction at the will of the wind.
The warmer it is, the quicker and more abundant
the evaporation. Have you not noticed that a wet
handkerchief dries very quickly in a hot sun, and
loses its moisture only very slowly if the weather is
cloudy and cold?”
“Mother Ambroisine is always very glad when she
has a fine day for her washing,” Claire remarked.
“Remember, too, what happens after watering the
garden. When, at close of a very warm day, we
have to give a drink to those poor plants dying of
thirst, something like this happens: The pump runs
at its utmost capacity; you all make haste with your
watering-pots; one goes here, another there, carrying
water to the suffering plants, seed-plots, and
potted flowers. Soon the garden has drunk copiously.
How fresh it is then, how the plants, wilted
by the heat, regain vigor and straighten up again,
as happy as ever! You could almost think you
heard them whispering to one another and telling
how glad they were to be watered. If it could only
stay that way! But, bah! the next day the earth is
dry once more and all has to be done over again.
What has become of the last evening’s water? It
has evaporated, dissolved into the air; and now it
is perhaps traveling far away, at a great height,
until, turned into a scrap of cloud, it falls again in
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
rain. When Jules tires himself working the pump
to water the flowers, has he ever thought that the
water drawn from the well and spread over the
ground sooner or later is dissipated in the immensities
of the air to play its modest part in the formation
of clouds?”
“In watering my garden,” answered Jules, “I
did not think I was watering the air more than anything
else. But I see now: air is the great drinker.
Of the contents of a watering-pot the plants take
perhaps a handful; the air drinks up the rest. And
that is why we have to do it all over again every
day.”
“And if you exposed a plateful of water to the
sun what would finally become of it?”
“I will answer that,” Emile hastened to reply.
“Little by little, the water would turn into invisible
vapor and there would be nothing but the plate left.”
“What takes place at the expense of a plate of
water, and of the moisture of the soil or wet linen,
takes place also, on a vast scale, over the entire
surface of the earth. The air is in contact with
damp soil, with innumerable sheets of water, lakes,
marshes, streams, rivers, brooks, above all with the
sea, the immense sea, which presents thrice as much
surface as the dry land. The great drinker, as Jules
calls it, the air, must therefore drink to satiety and
everywhere and always contain moisture, sometimes
more, sometimes less, according to the heat.
“The air that is around us now, that invisible air
in which the eye distinguishes nothing, nevertheless
contains water that can be made visible. The means
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
is very simple; all that is necessary is to cool the air
a little. When you squeeze a wet sponge with the
hand, you make water ooze out of it. Cold acts on
moist air very much as the pressure of the hand on
the sponge: it causes the moisture to distil in the
form of minute drops. If Claire will go to the pump
and fill a bottle with very cold water, I will show
you this curious experiment.”
Claire went to the kitchen and came back with a
bottle full of the coldest water possible. Her uncle
took the bottle, wiped it well with his handkerchief
so that no trace of moisture should remain on the
outside, and put it on an equally well-wiped plate.
Now the bottle, at first perfectly clear, becomes
covered with a kind of fog which tarnishes its transparency:
then little drops appear, run down its sides,
and fall into the plate. At the end of a quarter of
an hour there was enough water accumulated in the
plate to fill a thimble.
“The drops of water now running down the outside
of the bottle,” Uncle Paul explained, “do not
come, it is very clear, from the inside, for glass cannot
be pierced by water. They come from the surrounding
air, which cools off on touching the bottle
and lets its moisture distil. If the bottle were colder,
if full of ice, the deposit of liquid drops would be
more abundant.”
“The bottle reminds me of something of the
same kind,” said Claire. “When you fill a perfectly
clean glass with very cold water, the outside of
the glass immediately tarnishes and looks as if badly
washed.”
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
“That again is the surrounding air depositing its
moisture on the cold side of the glass.”
“Is that invisible moisture contained in the air
abundant?” asked Jules.
“The invisible vapor of the air is always a thing
so subtle, so disseminated, that it would take enormous
volumes to make a small quantity of water.
During the heat of summer, when the air holds the
most vapor, it takes 60,000 liters of moist air to furnish
one liter of water.”
“That is very little,” was Jules’s comment.
“It is a great deal if one thinks of the immense
volume of the atmosphere,” replied his uncle, and
then added:
“The experiment of the bottle teaches us two
things: first, there is always invisible vapor in the
air; in the second place, this vapor becomes visible
and changes into fog, then into drops of water, by
cooling. This return of invisible vapor to visible
vapor or fog, then to a state of water, is called condensation.
Heat reduces water to invisible vapor,
and cold condenses this vapor, that is to say brings
it back to a liquid state or at least to the state of
visible vapor or fog. We will have the rest this
evening.”
.bn 207.png
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CHAPTER XLIV||RAIN
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“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 different sheets of water,
lakes, ponds, marshes, streams, and above all the
sea. The vapors formed rise into the air and remain
invisible as long as the heat is sufficient. But since
heat diminishes as the height increases, there comes
a time when the vapors can no longer be kept in complete
solution, and they condense into a mass of
visible vapor, into a fog or cloud.
“When, after a chill encountered in the upper
strata of the atmosphere, the cloud-mist reaches a
certain degree of condensation, little drops of water
form and fall in rain. At first very small, they increase
in volume on the way by the union of other
similar little drops. Their size on reaching us is
proportioned to the height from which they fell, but
never exceeds the limits suitable to the part rain is
intended to play. If too large, the rain-drops would
fall heavily on the plants they are to water, and
would lay them flat on the ground, dead. And what
would happen if the condensation of vapor, instead
of taking place gradually, should be sudden? There
would no longer descend from heaven rain-drops,
.bn 208.png
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but heavy columns of water, which, in their fall,
would strip the trees of their branches, crush the
harvests, and make the roofs of our houses fall in.
But, far from taking this devastating form, rain
falls in drops as if passed through a sieve placed by
design in its passage to divide it and weaken the
shock. On rare occasions, it is true, rain does reach
us under so strange a disguise as to strike the ignorant
with terror. Who would not be frightened
when it rains blood or sulphur?”
“What do you say, Uncle?” interrupted Emile;
“rains blood or sulphur? For my part, I should be
dreadfully afraid.”
“I too,” said Claire.
“Is that true?” Jules asked, in his turn.
“True. You know well I only tell you true stories.
There are rains of blood and sulphur, at least
in appearance. It is proved that showers have been
seen of which the drops left on the walls, roads,
leaves of the trees, and clothes of passers-by, are red
spots like blood. At other times, with the rain, there
has fallen from the sky a fine dust, of a beautiful
yellow, resembling sulphur. Did it really rain blood,
sulphur? No. This so-called rain of blood or
sulphur, causing foolish alarms, is ordinary rain
stained with various sorts of dust raised from the
ground by the wind. In the spring when, in mountainous
countries, immense forests of fir-trees are
in blossom, every breath of wind carries clouds of
a fine yellow dust contained in the little flowers
of the fir-tree. You can see a similar dust in all
flowers, especially the lily.”
.bn 209.png
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“It is that dust that daubs your nose yellow when
you smell a lily too close,” declared Jules.
“Exactly. It is called pollen. Well, in falling
at a distance, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied
by rain, the pollen gathered up from the
forests by a breath of wind causes the so-called sulphur-rain.”
“Your rain of blood or sulphur isn’t at all terrifying,”
Claire remarked.
“Of course not; and yet whole populations have
their hearts frozen with fear at the inoffensive fall of
a whirlwind of pollen or red dust. They believe
themselves visited with plagues, precursors of the
end of the world. Ignorance is a pitiful thing, my
dear children, and knowledge is a fine thing, even if
it only served to deliver us from stupid terrors.”
“In future,” said Jules, stoutly, “it can rain sulphur
or blood; if any one is afraid, it will not be I.”
“There can also fall from the sky, with or without
rain, various mineral substances, such as sand,
for example, or powdered chalk, or dust from the
roads. There is even mention of showers of small
animals, caterpillars, insects, and very young toads.
The marvelous feature of these rains disappears if
one considers that a violent blast of wind can carry
with it all light substances encountered in its course,
and can transport them long distances before letting
them fall again.
“At other times a rain of insects is due to something
else besides transportation by the wind. Some
kinds of grasshoppers, for example, gather together
in immense swarms to go to another district when
.bn 210.png
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nutriment fails them. The emigrating band flies, as
at a given signal, and passes through the air in the
form of a great cloud that intercepts the daylight.
The migration continues for days at a time, so numerous
is the host. Then the voracious swarm
alights, like a living storm, on the vegetation of some
distant province. In a few hours grass, leaves of
trees, grain, prairies—everything is browsed. The
soil, as if ravaged by fire, hasn’t a blade of grass
left. Sometimes the people of Algeria die of hunger.
The grasshopper has devoured their harvests.
“Volcanoes cause cinder-showers. Volcanic ashes
is the name given to the calcined dust thrown up to
a great height by volcanoes at the moment of their
eruption. These powdered substances form enormous
clouds, which produce in the daytime a darkness
like that of the darkest nights, and which, falling
to earth at a greater or less distance, stifle animals
and plants under their showers of dust.”
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CHAPTER XLV||VOLCANOES
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“IT is not late yet, Uncle,” said Jules; “you ought
to tell us about those terrible mountains, those
volcanoes that the showers of ashes come from.”
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 entreaties.
“A volcano is a mountain that throws up smoke,
calcined dust, red-hot stones, and melted matter
called lava. The summit is hollowed out in a great
excavation having the shape of a funnel, sometimes
several leagues in circumference. That is what we
call the crater. The bottom of the crater communicates
with a tortuous conduit or chimney too deep to
estimate. The principal volcanoes of Europe are:
Vesuvius, near Naples; Etna in Sicily; Hecla in Iceland.
Most of the time a volcano is either in repose
or throwing up a simple plume of smoke; but from
time to time, with intervals that may be very long,
the mountain grumbles, trembles, and vomits torrents
of fiery substances. It is then said to be in
eruption. To give you a general idea of the most remarkable
phenomena attending volcanic eruption, I
will choose Vesuvius, the best known of the European
volcanoes.
.bn 212.png
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“An eruption is generally announced beforehand
by a column of smoke that fills the orifice of the
crater and rises vertically, when the air is calm, to
nearly a mile in height. At this elevation it spreads
out in a sort of blanket that intercepts the sun’s
rays. Some days before the eruption the column of
smoke sinks down on the volcano, covering it with a
big black cloud. Then the earth begins to tremble
around Vesuvius; rumbling detonations under the
ground are heard, louder and louder each moment,
soon exceeding in intensity the most violent claps
of thunder. You would think you heard the cannonades
of a numerous artillery detonating ceaselessly
in the mountain’s sides.
“All at once a sheaf of fire bursts from the crater
to the height of 2000 or 3000 meters. The cloud that
is floating over the volcano is illumined by the redness
of the fire; the sky seems inflamed. Millions of
sparks dart out like lightning to the top of the blazing
sheaf, describe great arcs, leaving on their way
dazzling trails, and fall in a shower of fire on the
slopes of the volcano. These sparks, so small from
a distance, are incandescent masses of stone, sometimes
several meters in dimension, and of a sufficient
momentum to crush the most solid buildings in their
fall. What hand-made machine could throw such
masses of rock to such heights? What all our efforts
united could not do even once, the volcano does
over and over again, as if in play. For whole weeks
and months these red blocks are thrown up by Vesuvius,
in numbers like the sparks of a display of
fireworks.”
.bn 213.png
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“It is both terrible and beautiful,” said Jules.
“Oh! how I should like to see an eruption, but far
off, of course.”
“And the people who are on the mountain?” questioned
Emile.
“They are careful not to go on the mountain at
that time; they might lose their lives, suffocated by
the smoke or crushed by the shower of red-hot stones.
“Meantime, from the depths of the mountain,
through the volcanic chimney, ascends a flux of
melted mineral substance, or lava, which pours out
into the crater and forms a lake of fire as dazzling
as the sun. Spectators who, from the plain, anxiously
follow the progress of the eruption, are
warned of the coming of the lava-flood by the brilliant
illumination it throws on the volumes of smoke
floating in the upper air. But the crater is full; then
the ground suddenly shakes, bursts open with a noise
of thunder, and through the crevasses as well as over
the edges of the crater the lava flows in streams.
The fiery current, formed of dazzling and paste-like
matter similar to melted metal, advances slowly; the
front of the lava-stream resembles a moving rampart
on fire. One can flee before it, but everything
stationary is lost. Trees blaze a moment on contact
with the lava and sink down, reduced to charcoal; the
thickest walls are calcined and fall over; the hardest
rocks are vitrified, melted.
“The flow of lava comes to an end, sooner or later.
Then subterranean vapors, freed from the enormous
pressure of the fluid mass, escape with more violence
than ever, carrying with them whirlwinds of fine dust
.bn 214.png
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that floats in sinister clouds and sinks down on the
neighboring plain, or is even carried by the winds
to a distance of hundreds of leagues. Finally, the
terrible mountain calms down, and peace is restored
for an indefinite time.”
“If there are towns near the volcanoes, cannot
those streams of fire reach them? Cannot those
clouds of ashes bury them?” asked Jules.
“Unfortunately all that is possible and has happened.
I will tell you about it to-morrow, for it is
time to go to bed now.”
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CHAPTER XLVI||CATANIA
.sp 2
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“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 eruption of
Mount Etna.”
“Etna is that volcano in Sicily where the big chestnut
tree of a hundred horses is?” asked Claire.
“Yes. I must tell you that two hundred years ago
there occurred in Sicily one of the most terrible eruptions
on record. During the night, after a furious
storm, the earth began to tremble so violently that a
great many houses fell. Trees swayed like reeds
shaken by the wind; people, fleeing distracted into
the country to avoid being crushed under the ruins
of their buildings, lost their footing on the quaking
ground, stumbled, and fell. At that moment Etna
burst in a fissure four leagues long, and along this
fissure rose a number of volcanic mouths, vomiting,
amid the crash of frightful detonations, clouds of
black smoke and calcined sand. Soon seven of these
mouths united in an abyss that for four months did
not cease thundering, glowing, and throwing up cinders
and lava. The crater of Etna, at first quite at
rest, as if its furnaces had no connection with the
new volcanic mouths, woke up a few days after and
.bn 216.png
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threw to a prodigious height a column of flames and
smoke; then the whole mountain shook, and all the
crests that dominated its crater fell into the depths
of the volcano. The next day four mountaineers
dared to climb to the top of Etna. They found
the crater very much enlarged by the falling-in of the
day before: its orifice, which before had measured
one league, now measured two.
“In the meantime, torrents of lava were pouring
from all the crevasses of the mountain down upon
the plain, destroying houses, forests, and crops.
Some leagues from the volcano, on the seacoast, lies
Catania, a large town surrounded then by strong
walls. Already the liquid fire had devoured several
villages, when the stream reached the walls of Catania
and spread over the country. There, as if to
show its strength to the terrified Catanians, it tore
a hill away and transported it some distance; it lifted
in one mass a field planted with vines and let it float
for some time, until the green was reduced to charcoal
and disappeared. Finally, the fiery stream
reached a wide and deep valley. The Catanians believed
themselves saved: no doubt the volcano would
exhaust its strength by the time it covered the vast
basin which the lava had just entered. But what
an error of judgment! In the short space of six
hours, the valley was filled, and the lava, overflowing,
advanced straight toward the town in a stream
half a league wide and ten meters high. It would
have been all over with Catania if, by the luckiest
chance, another current, whose direction crossed the
first, had not come and struck against the fiery flood
.bn 217.png
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and turned it from its course. The stream, thus
turned, coasted the ramparts of the town within pistol-shot,
and turned toward the sea.”
“I was very much afraid for those poor Catanians,”
interposed Emile, “when you spoke of that
wall of fire, high as a house, going straight toward
the town.”
“All is not over yet,” his uncle proceeded. “The
stream, I told you, was going toward the sea. There
was, then, a formidable battle between the water and
the fire. The lava presented a perpendicular front
of 1500 meters in extent and a dozen meters high.
At the touch of that burning wall, which continued
plunging further and further into the waves, enormous
masses of vapor rose with horrible hissings,
darkened the sky with their thick clouds, and fell in
a salt rain over all the region. In a few days the
lava had made the limits of the shore recede three
hundred meters.
“In spite of that, Catania was still menaced. The
stream, swollen with new tributaries, grew from day
to day and approached the town. From the top
of the walls the inhabitants followed with terror the
implacable progress of the scourge. The lava
finally reached the ramparts. The fiery flood rose
slowly, but it rose ceaselessly; from hour to hour it
was found to have risen a little higher. It touched
the top of the walls, whereupon, yielding to the pressure,
they were overthrown for the length of forty
meters, and the stream of fire penetrated the town.”
“My goodness!” cried Claire. “Those poor people
are lost?”
.bn 218.png
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“No, not the people, for lava runs very slowly, on
account of its sticky nature, and one can be warned in
time; it was the town itself that ran the greatest risk.
The quarters invaded by the lava were the highest;
from there the current could spread everywhere. So
Catania seemed destined to total destruction, when
it was saved by the courage of some men who attempted
to battle with the volcano. They bethought
themselves to construct stone walls, which, placed
across the route of the on-coming stream, would
change its direction. This device partly succeeded,
but the following was the most efficacious. Lava
streams envelop themselves in a kind of solid sheath,
embank themselves in a canal formed of blocks coagulated
and welded together. Under this covering
the melted matter preserves its fluidity and continues
its ravaging course. They thought, then, that by
breaking these natural dikes at a well-chosen spot,
they would open to the lava a new route across country
and would thus turn it from the town. Followed
by a hundred alert and vigorous men, they attacked
the stream, not far from the volcano, with blows of
iron bars. The heat was so great that each worker
could strike only two or three blows in succession,
after which he withdrew to recover his breath. However,
they managed to make a breach in the solid
sheath, when, as they had foreseen, the lava flowed
through this opening. Catania was saved, not without
great loss, for already the lava flood had consumed,
within the town walls, three hundred houses
and some palaces and churches. Outside of Catania,
this eruption, so sadly celebrated, covered from five
.bn 219.png
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to six square leagues with a bed of lava in some
places thirteen meters thick, and destroyed the homes
of twenty-seven thousand persons.”
“Without those brave men who did not hesitate,
at the risk of being burnt alive, to go and open a new
passage for the stream of fire, Catania would certainly
have been lost,” remarked Jules.
“Catania would have been all burnt down, there is
no doubt. To-day its calcined ruins would be buried
under a bed of cold lava, and there would be nothing
left but the name of the large town that had disappeared.
Three or four stout-hearted men revive the
courage of the terrified population; they hope that
heaven will aid them in their devotion, and, ready
to sacrifice their lives, they prevent the frightful disaster.
Ah! may God give you grace, my dear child,
to imitate them in the time of danger; for, you see,
if man is great through his intelligence, he is still
greater through his heart. In my old age, when I
hear you spoken of, I shall be more gladdened by the
good you may have done than by the knowledge you
may have acquired. Knowledge, my little friend, is
only a better means of aiding others. Remember
that well, and when you are a man bear yourself in
danger as did those of Catania. I ask it of you in
return for my love and my stories.”
Jules furtively wiped away a tear. His uncle perceived
that he had sown his word in good ground.
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CHAPTER XLVII||THE STORY OF PLINY
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“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 times. This writer
is called Pliny. His writing is in Latin, the great
language of those days.
“It was in the year 79 of our era. Contemporaries
of our Savior were still living. Vesuvius was
then a peaceful mountain. It was not terminated
then, as to-day, by a smoking cone, but by a table-land
slightly concave, the remains of an old filled-up
crater where thin grasses and wild vines grew. Very
fertile crops covered its sides; two populous towns,
Herculaneum and Pompeii, lay stretched at its base.
“The old volcano, which seemed forever lulled,
and whose last eruptions went back to times beyond
the memory of man, suddenly awakened and began
to smoke. On the 23d of August, about one o’clock
in the afternoon, an extraordinary cloud, sometimes
white, sometimes black, was seen hovering over Vesuvius.
Impelled violently by some subterranean
force, it first rose straight up in the form of a tree-trunk;
then, after attaining a great height, it sank
down under its own weight and spread out over a
wide area.
.bn 221.png
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“Now, there was at that time at Messina, a seaport
not far from Vesuvius, an uncle of the author
who has handed down these things to us. He was
called Pliny, like his nephew. He commanded the
Roman fleet stationed at this port. He was a man
of great courage, never retreating from any danger
if he could gain new knowledge or render aid to others.
Surprised at the singular cloud that hovered
over Vesuvius, Pliny immediately set out with his
fleet to go to the aid of the menaced coast towns and
to observe the terrible cloud from a nearer point.
The people at the foot of Vesuvius were fleeing in
haste, wild with fear. He went to the side where all
were in flight and where the peril appeared the
greatest.”
“Fine!” cried Jules. “Courage comes to you
when you are with those who are not afraid. I
love Pliny for hastening to the volcano to learn
about the danger. I should like to have been
there.”
“Alas! my poor child, you would not have found
it a picnic. Burning cinders mixed with calcined
stones were falling on the vessels; the sea, lashed
to fury, was rising from its bed; the shore, encumbered
with debris from the mountain, was becoming
inaccessible. There was nothing to do but retreat.
The fleet came to land at Stabiæ, where the danger,
still distant, but all the time approaching, had already
caused consternation. In the meantime, from
several points on Vesuvius great flames burst forth,
their terrifying glare rendered more frightful by the
darkness caused by the cloud of cinders. To reassure
.bn 222.png
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his companions Pliny told them that these
flames came from some abandoned villages caught
by the fire.”
“He told them that to give them courage,” Jules
conjectured, “but he himself well knew the truth of
the matter.”
“He knew it well, he knew the danger was great;
nevertheless, overcome by fatigue, he fell into a
deep sleep. Now, while he slept, the cloud reached
Stabiæ. Little by little the court leading to his
apartment was filled with cinders, so that in a short
time he would not have been able to get out. They
woke him to prevent his being buried alive and to
deliberate on what was to be done. The houses,
shaken by continual shocks, seemed to be torn from
their foundations; they swayed from side to side.
Many fell. It was decided to put to sea again. A
shower of stones was falling—small ones, it is true,
and calcined by the fire. As a protection from them,
the men covered their heads with pillows, and going
through the most horrible darkness, hardly relieved
by the light of the torches they carried, they made
their way toward the shore. There Pliny sat on the
ground a moment to rest, when violent flames, accompanied
by a strong smell of sulphur, put everybody
to flight. He rose and then instantly fell back
dead. The emanations, cinders, and smoke from
the volcano had suffocated him.”
“Poor Pliny! To be stifled to death like that by
the horrible mountain, and he so courageous!”
lamented Jules.
“Whilst the uncle was dying at Stabiæ, the
.bn 223.png
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nephew, left at Messina with his mother, was witness
of what he relates to us. ‘The night after my
uncle’s departure,’ he tells us, ‘the earth began to
tremble violently. My mother hastened in alarm to
waken me. She found me getting up to go and
waken her. As the house threatened to collapse, we
sat outside in the court, not far from the sea. With
the carelessness of youth—I was then eighteen—I
began to read. A friend of my uncle’s came along.
Seeing my mother and me both of us seated, and me
with a book in my hand, he blamed us for our confidence
and induced us to look out for our safety.
Although it was seven o’clock in the morning, we
could hardly see, the air was so obscured. At times
buildings were so shaken that their fall was imminent
at any moment. We followed the example of
the rest and left the town. We stopped some distance
off in the country. The wagons that were
brought away swayed continually with the shaking of
the ground. Even with their wheels blocked with
stones they could hardly be held in place. The sea
flowed back on itself: driven from the shore by the
earthquake shocks, it receded from the beach and left
a multitude of fish dry on the sand. A horrible black
cloud came toward us. On its flanks were serpentine
lines of fire like immense flashes of lightning.
Soon the cloud descends, covering earth and sea.
Then my mother begs me to flee with all the speed
of my youth, and not to expose myself to imminent
death by adapting my pace to hers, weighed down
as she was by years. She would die content if she
knew I was out of danger.’”
.bn 224.png
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“And Pliny left his old mother behind in order
to get away the faster?” queried Jules.
“No, my child, he did what you would all have
done. He remained, sustaining and encouraging
her, resolved to save himself with her or else
die with her.”
“Good!” cried Jules. “The nephew was worthy
of his uncle. And then what happened?”
“Then it was frightful. Cinders began to fall;
darkness descended, so intense that they could see
nothing. There was general confusion, outcry, and
moaning. Wild with terror, the people fled at random,
knocking down and treading on those who were
in their way. The greater part were convinced that
that night was the last, the eternal night that was
to swallow the world. Mothers went groping for
their children, lost in the crowd or perhaps crushed
under the feet of the fugitives; they called them
with doleful cries to embrace them once more
and then die. Pliny and his old mother had seated
themselves apart from the crowd. From time to
time they were obliged to get up and shake off the
cinders which would soon have buried them. At last
the cloud dispersed and daylight reappeared. The
earth was unrecognizable; everything had disappeared
under a thick shroud of calcined dust.”
“And the houses, were they buried in the cinders?”
asked Emile.
“At the foot of the mountain the dust thrown up
by the volcano lay deeper than the height of the tallest
houses, and whole towns had disappeared under
.bn 225.png
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the enormous bed of cinders. Amongst these were
Herculaneum and Pompeii. The volcano buried
them alive.”
“With the inhabitants?” inquired Jules.
“With a small number, for most of them, like
Pliny and his mother, had time to flee to Messina.
To-day, after being buried eighteen centuries, Herculaneum
and Pompeii are exhumed by the miner’s
pick, just as they were when caught by the cloud of
volcanic cinders. Vineyards cover them where they
are not yet cleared.”
“These vineyards, then, are the roofs of
houses!” said Emile.
“Higher than the roofs of houses. The traveler
who visits the quarters not yet uncovered, but made
accessible by means of wells dug for the purpose,
descends under-ground to a great depth.”
.bn 226.png
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.pb
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.h2 id=ch48
CHAPTER XLVIII||THE BOILING POT
.sp 2
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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 to give his
nephews the diversion of a little journey. He had
Jules and Emile dressed in their Sunday clothes,
and they set out to wait for the train at the neighboring
station. At the station Uncle Paul went up
to a grating behind which was a very busy man, and
through a wicket he handed him some money. In
exchange the busy man gave him three pieces of
cardboard. Uncle Paul presented these pieces of
cardboard to a man who guarded the entrance to a
room. The man looked and let them enter.
Here they are in what is called the waiting-room.
Emile and Jules open their eyes wide and say nothing.
Soon they hear steam hissing. The train arrives.
At its head is the locomotive, which slackens
its speed so as to stop a moment. Through the
window of the waiting-room Jules sees the people
passing. Something preoccupies him: he is trying
to understand how the heavy machine moves, what
turns its wheels, which seem to be pushed by an
iron bar.
They enter the railway car, the steam hisses, the
.bn 227.png
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train starts, and they are off. After a moment,
when full speed had been gained: “Uncle Paul,”
said Emile, “see how the trees run, dance, and whirl
around!” His uncle made him a sign to be silent.
He had two reasons for this: first, Emile had just
made a foolish remark, and, secondly, his uncle did
not choose to notice the giddy-pate’s self-betrayal in
public.
Besides, Uncle Paul is not very communicative
when traveling; he prefers to maintain a discreet
reserve and keep silence. There are people whom
you have never seen before, and perhaps will never
see again, who immediately become very familiar
with their traveling companions. Rather than hold
their tongues they would talk to themselves. Uncle
Paul does not like such people; he considers them
weak-minded.
By evening the three travelers had returned, all
much pleased with their trip. Uncle Paul had
brought to a favorable conclusion his business in
town. Emile and Jules each came back with an
idea. When they had done honor to the excellent
supper Mother Ambroisine had prepared on purpose
to wind up the holiday with a little treat, Jules
was the first to impart his idea to his uncle.
“Of all that I saw to-day,” he began, “what struck
me most was the engine at the head of the train, the
locomotive that draws the long string of cars. How
do they make it move? I looked well, but could not
find out. It looks as if it went by itself, like a great
beast on the gallop.”
“It does not go by itself,” replied his uncle; “it is
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
steam that puts it in motion. Let us, then, first
learn what steam is and what its power.
“When water is put on the fire, it first gets hot,
then begins to boil, sending off vapor, which is dissipated
in the air. If the boiling continues some
time, it ends with there being nothing in the pot;
all the water has disappeared.”
“That is what happened to Mother Ambroisine
day before yesterday,” put in Emile. “She was
boiling some potatoes, and having neglected to look
into the pot for some time, she found them without
a drop of water, half burnt. She had to begin all
over again. Mother Ambroisine was not pleased.”
“By heat,” continued Uncle Paul, “water becomes
invisible, intangible, as subtle as air. That is
what is called vapor.”
“You told us that the moisture in the air, the
cause of fogs and clouds, is also vapor.” This from
Claire.
“Yes, that is vapor, but vapor formed only by
the heat of the sun. Now, you must know that the
stronger the heat, the more abundant is the vapor.
If you put a pot full of water on the fire, the burning
heat of the grate sets free incomparably more vapor
than the temperature of a hot summer sun could.
As long as it escapes freely from the pot, the vapor
thus formed has nothing remarkable about it; so
your attention has never been arrested by the fumes
of a boiling pot. But if the pot is covered, covered
tight, so as not to leave the slightest opening, then
the steam, which tends to expand to an enormous
volume, is furious to get out of its prison; it pushes
.bn 229.png
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and thrusts in all directions to remove the obstacles
that oppose its expansion. However solid it may
be, the pot ends by bursting under the indomitable
pushing of the imprisoned steam. That is what I
am going to show you with a little bottle, and not
with a pot, which would not shut tight enough and
the cover of which could be easily pushed off by the
steam. And besides, even if I had a suitable pot, I
should take care not to use it, for it might blow the
house up and kill us all.”
Uncle Paul took a glass vial, put a finger’s breadth
of water into it, corked it tightly with a cork stopper,
and then tied the cork with a piece of wire. The
vial thus prepared was put on the ashes before the
fire. Then he took Emile, Jules, and Claire, and
drew them quickly into the garden, to see from a
distance what would happen, without fear of being
injured by the explosion. They waited a few minutes,
then boom! They ran up and found the vial
broken into a thousand pieces scattered here and
there with extreme violence.
“The cause of the explosion and the bursting of
the bottle was the steam, which, having no way of
escape, accumulated and exerted against its prison
walls a stronger and stronger pressure as the temperature
rose. A time then came when the vial
could no longer resist the pressure of the steam, and
it burst to pieces. They call elastic force the pressure
exerted by steam on the inside of pots that hold
it prisoner. The greater the heat, the stronger the
pressure. With heat enough it may acquire an irresistible
power, capable of bursting, not only a glass
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
bottle, but also the thickest, most solid pots of iron,
bronze, or any other very resistant material. Is it
necessary to say that under those conditions the explosion
is terrific? The fragments of the pot are
thrown with a violence comparable to that of a cannon-ball
or a bursting bomb. Everything standing
in the way is broken or knocked down. Powder
does not produce more terrific results. What I
have just shown you with the glass vial is also not
without some danger. You can be blinded with this
dangerous experiment, which it is well to see once
under proper precautions, but which it would be
imprudent for you to repeat. I forbid you all, understand,
to heat water in a closed vial; it is a game
that might cost you your eyesight. If you should
disobey me on this point, good-by to stories; I
would not keep you with me any longer.”
“Don’t be afraid, Uncle,” Jules hastened to interpose;
“we will be careful not to repeat the experiment;
it is too dangerous.”
“Now you know what makes the locomotive and
a great many other machines move. In a strong
boiler, tightly closed, steam is formed by the action
of a hot furnace. This steam, of an enormous
power, makes every effort to escape. It presses
particularly on a piece placed for that purpose,
which it chases before it. From that a movement
results that sets everything going, as you will see
in the case of the locomotive. To conclude, let us
remember that in every steam engine the essential
thing, the generator of the force, is a boiler, a
closed pot that boils.”
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch49
CHAPTER XLIX||THE LOCOMOTIVE
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
UNCLE PAUL showed his nephews the following
picture, and explained it to them.
.if h
.il fn=i221.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
An old-time Locomotive
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: An old-time Locomotive]
.sp 2
.if-
“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 one end to
the other, borne on six
wheels. It is built of
solid iron plates, perfectly
joined together with large rivets. In front the
boiler terminates in a smoke-stack; behind, in a furnace,
the door of which is represented as open. A
man, called a stoker, is constantly occupied in filling
the furnace with pit-coal, which he throws in by the
shovelful; for he must keep up a very hot fire to
heat the volume of water contained in the boiler
and obtain steam in sufficient quantity. With an
iron bar he pokes the fire, arranges it, makes it burn
fast. That is not all: skilful arrangements are
made to utilize the heat and warm the water quickly.
From the end of the furnace start numerous copper
pipes which traverse the water from one end to the
other of the boiler, and terminate at the smoke-stack.
You will see some in B where the picture
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
supposes a part of the casing taken away to show
the interior. The flame of the furnace runs through
these pipes, themselves surrounded by water. By
this means the fire is made to circulate through the
very midst of the water, and so steam is obtained
very quickly.
.if h
.il fn=i222.jpg w=500px
.ca
A modern Locomotive
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: A modern Locomotive]
.sp 2
.if-
“Now look at the front of the locomotive. In A
is seen a short cylinder closed tightly, but represented
in the picture with a part of the outside removed
to show what is within. There are two of
these cylinders, one on the right, the other on the
left of the locomotive. Inside the cylinder is an
iron stopper called a piston. The steam from the
boiler enters the cylinder alternately in front of and
behind the piston. When the steam comes in front,
what is behind escapes freely into the air by an orifice
that opens of itself at the right moment. This
escaping steam ceases to press on the piston, since
it finds its prison open and that it can get out. We
do not try to force doors when other outlets are
open. So does steam act: the instant it can escape
freely, it ceases to push. The entering steam, on
the contrary, finds itself imprisoned. It pushes the
piston, therefore, with all its strength and drives it
to the other end of the cylinder. But then the rôles
immediately change. The steam that hitherto has
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
been pushing, escapes into the air and ceases to act,
while on the other side a jet of steam rushes in from
the boiler and begins to push in the contrary direction.”
“Let me repeat it,” said Jules, “to see if I have
understood it properly. Steam comes from the
boiler, where it forms unceasingly. It goes into the
cylinder before and behind the piston by turns.
When it gets in front, that behind escapes into the
air and no longer pushes; when it gets behind, that
in front escapes. The piston, pushed first one way,
then the other, alternately, must advance and retreat,
go and come, in the cylinder. And then?”
“The piston is in the form of a solid iron rod that
enters the cylinder through a hole pierced in the
middle of one of the ends, and just large enough to
give free passage to the rod, without letting the
steam escape. This rod is bound to another iron
piece called a crank, and finally the crank is attached
to the neighboring wheel. In the picture
all these things can easily be seen. The piston, advancing
and retreating in turn in the cylinder,
pushes the crank forward and back, and the crank
thus makes the great wheel turn. On the other side
of the locomotive the same things are taking place
by means of a second cylinder. Then the two great
wheels turn at the same time and the locomotive
moves forward.”
“It isn’t so hard as I thought,” Jules remarked.
“Steam pushes the piston, the piston pushes the
crank, the crank pushes the wheel, and the engine
moves.”
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
“After acting on the piston, the steam enters the
same chimney that the smoke comes out of. So you
can see this smoke-stack sometimes throwing out
white puffs, sometimes black. These latter are
smoke coming from the furnace through the tubes
that go through the water; the others come from the
steam thrown out of the cylinders after each stroke
of the piston. These white puffs, in rushing violently
from the cylinder to the smoke-stack after
acting on the piston, make the noise of the engine
as it moves.”
“I know: pouf! pouf! pouf!” exclaimed Emile.
“The locomotive carries with it a supply of coal
to feed the fire, and a supply of water to renew the
contents of the boiler as fast as evaporation may require.
These supplies are carried in the tender;
that is to say, in the vehicle that comes immediately
behind the locomotive. On the tender are the
stoker, who tends the furnace, and the engineer, who
controls the passage of the steam into the cylinders.”
“The man in the picture is the engineer?” Emile
asked.
“He is the engineer. He holds his hand on the
throttle, which allows the steam from the boiler to
enter the cylinders in greater or less quantity, according
to the speed he wishes to obtain. By one
movement of the throttle, the steam is cut off from
the cylinders and the engine stops; by another movement
the steam is admitted and the locomotive
moves, slowly or rapidly at will.
“The power of a locomotive is no doubt considerable;
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
however, if it is able to draw with great
speed a long train of cars, all heavily loaded, this
is due, above all, to the preparation of the road on
which it runs. Strong bars of iron, called rails, are
fixed solidly on the road, all along its length, in two
parallel lines, on which all the wheels of the train
roll without ever running off. A light flange with
which the wheels are furnished keeps the train from
slipping off the rails.
“The iron road not having the inconveniences of
other roads, that is to say the ruts, pebbles, and inequalities
that impede the progress of carriages and
cause the waste of much energy, the whole traction
of the locomotive is utilized, and the results obtained
are wonderful. A passenger engine draws at a rate
of twelve leagues an hour a train weighing as much
as 150,000 kilograms. A freight engine pulls at
about seven leagues an hour a total weight of 650,000
kilograms. More than 1300 horses would
be necessary to replace the first locomotive, and
more than 2000 to replace the second, if they were
employed to transport similar loads with the same
velocity and to the same distances by the aid of cars
running on rails. What an army of horses it would
require with wagons running on ordinary roads having
all the inequalities that cause such a great loss
of energy!
“And now, my little friends, think of the thousands
of locomotives running daily in all parts of
the world, annihilating distances, as it were, and
bringing the most distant nations together; think
what a vast number of machines of all kinds, moved
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
by steam, are ceaselessly working for man; think
how the engine that makes a warship move, sometimes
represents in itself the united strength of
42,000 horses; think of all these things, and see
what inconceivable development of power man’s
genius has given to him with a few shovelfuls of
coal burning under a pot of water!”
“Who first thought of the use of steam?” asked
Jules. “I should like to remember his name.”
“The use of steam as a mechanical power was
proposed nearly two hundred years ago by one of
the glories of France, the unfortunate Denis Papin,
who, after giving the first suggestion of the steam-engine,
source of incalculable riches, languished in
a foreign land, poverty-stricken and forlorn. To
realize his fruitful idea, which was to increase man’s
motive power a hundredfold, he could hardly find a
paltry half-crown.”
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch50
CHAPTER L||EMILE’S OBSERVATION
.sp 2
.dc 0.25 0.65
EMILE’S turn came to tell what he had seen.
“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, ranged in long rows,
were going with their heads waving as if saying
good-by to us. Fields turned around, houses fled.
But on looking closer I soon saw that we were moving
and all the rest was motionless. How strange!
You see something running that is really not moving
at all.”
“When we are comfortably seated in the railway
car,” his uncle replied, “without any effort on our
part to go forward, how can we judge of our motion
except by the position we occupy in relation to
the objects that surround us? We are aware of the
way we are going by the continual changing of the
objects in sight, and not by any feeling of fatigue,
since we do not move our legs. But the objects and
people nearest to us and always before our eyes, our
traveling companions and the furnishings of the
car, remain for us in the same position. The left-hand
neighbor is always at the left, the one in front
is always in front. This apparent immobility of
everything in the car makes us lose consciousness of
.bn 238.png
.pn +1
our own movement; then we think ourselves immobile
and fancy we see flying in an opposite direction
exterior objects, which are always changing as we
look at them. Let the train stop, and immediately
trees and houses cease moving, because we no longer
have a shifting point of view. A simple carriage
drawn by horses, a boat borne along by the current,
lend themselves to this same curious illusion.
Every time we ourselves are gently moved along,
we tend, more or less, to lose consciousness of this
movement, and surrounding objects, in reality immobile,
seem to us to move in a contrary direction.”
“Without being able to explain it to myself well,”
returned Emile, “I see that it is so. We move and
we think we see the other things moving. The faster
we go, the faster the other things seem to go.”
“You hardly suspect, my little friends, that Emile’s
naïve observation leads us straight to one of
the truths that science has had the most trouble in
getting accepted, not on account of its difficulty, but
because of an illusion that has always deceived most
people.
“If men passed their whole life on a railroad,
without ever getting out of the car, stopping, or
changing speed, they would firmly believe trees and
houses to be in motion. Except by profound reflection,
of which not everybody is capable, how could it
be otherwise, since none would have seen the testimony
of their eyes contradicted by experience? Of
those that have been convinced, one sharper than
the others rises and says this: ‘You imagine that
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
the mountains and houses move while you remain at
rest. Well, it is just the opposite: we move and the
mountains, houses, and trees stand still.’ Do you
think many would agree with him? Why! they
would laugh at him, for each one sees, with his own
eyes, mountains running, houses traveling. I tell
you, my children, they would laugh at him.”
“But, Uncle—” began Claire.
“There is no but. It has been done. They have
done worse than laugh; they have become red with
anger. You would have been the first to laugh, my
girl.”
“I should laugh at somebody asserting that the
car moves and not the houses and mountains?”
“Yes, for an error that accompanies us all
through life and that every one shares, is not so easily
removed from the mind.”
“It is impossible!”
“It is so possible that you yourself, at every turn,
make the mountain move and the car that carries us
stand still.”
“I do not understand.”
“You make the round earth, the car that bears us
through celestial space, stand still; and you give motion
to the sun, the giant star that makes our earth
seem as nothing by comparison. At least, you say
the sun rises, pursues its course, sets, and begins its
course again the next day. The enormous star
moves, the humble earth tranquilly watches its motion.”
“The sun does certainly seem to us,” said Jules,
“to rise at one side of the sky and set at the other,
.bn 240.png
.pn +1
to give us light by day. The moon does the same,
and the stars too, to give us light at night.”
“Listen then to this. I have read, I don’t know
where, of an eccentric person whose wrong-headedness
could not reconcile him to simple methods. To
attain the simplest result he would use means whose
extravagance caused every one to laugh. One day,
wishing to roast a lark, what do you think he took it
into his head to do? I will give you ten, a hundred
guesses. But, bah! you would never guess it. Just
imagine! He constructed a complicated machine,
with much wheelwork and many cords, pulleys, and
counterpoises; and when it was started there was a
variety of movement, back and forth, up and down.
The noise of the springs and the grinding of the
wheels biting on each other was enough to make one
deaf. The house trembled with the fall of the counterpoises.”
“But what was the machine for?” asked Claire.
“Was it to turn the lark in front of the fire?”
“No, indeed; that would have been too simple. It
was to turn the fire before the lark. The lighted
firebrands, the hearth and chimney, dragged heavily
by the enormous machine, all turned around the
lark.”
“Well, that beats all!” Jules ejaculated.
“You laugh, children, at this odd idea; and yet,
like that eccentric man, you make the firebrands,
hearth, the whole house turn around a little bird on
the spit. The earth is the little bird; the house is
the heavens, with their enormous, innumerable
stars.”
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
“The sun isn’t very big—at most, as large as a
grindstone,” said Jules. “The stars are only
sparks. But the earth is so large and heavy!”
“What did you just say? the sun as large as a
grindstone? the stars only little sparks? Ah, if you
only knew! Let us begin with the earth.”
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch51
CHAPTER LI||A JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE WORLD
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 distant seas
shown more zeal. Provisions, the first necessity in
long expeditions, were not forgotten. Breakfast
was doubled. There were in the basket six nuts, a
bread-and-butter sandwich, and two apples! Where
can one not go with all that? The family was not
informed: they might have dissuaded the audacious
traveler from his project by acquainting him with
the perils of the expedition. For fear of softening
before his mother’s tears, he kept silent. Basket in
hand, without saying good-by to any one, he takes
his departure. Soon he is in the country. To left
or right makes no difference to him; all roads lead
whither he wishes to go.”
“Where does he want to go?” asked Emile.
“To the end of the world. He takes the right-hand
road, which is bordered by a hawthorn hedge
where golden green beetles rustle and shine. But
the beautiful insects do not stop him for a moment,
nor yet the little red-bellied fish that play in the
streamlet. The day is so short and the journey so
long! He keeps on walking straight ahead, sometimes
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
shortening the distance by cutting across
fields. At the end of an hour the sandwich, chief
item in the provisions, had been eaten, although the
eating of it was regulated by the wise economy of a
prudent traveler. Quarter of an hour later an apple
and three nuts were gone. Appetite comes
quickly to those who tire themselves. It comes so
quickly that at a turn of the road, in the shade of a
large willow, the second apple and the three remaining
nuts are taken out of the basket. The provisions
were exhausted, and (no less grave a matter)
legs refused to go. Just imagine the situation.
The journey had lasted two hours, and the end
proposed was no nearer, not a bit. The little boy
retraced his steps, persuaded that with better legs
and more provisions he would succeed another time
in his project.”
“What was this project?” Jules asked.
“I told you: the audacious child wished to reach
the end of the world. According to his ideas, the
sky was a blue vault, which kept getting lower until
it rested on the edge of the earth, so that, if ever he
arrived there, he would have to walk bent over so as
not to bump his head against the firmament. He
started with the idea that he should soon be able to
touch the sky with his hand; but the blue vault, retiring
as he advanced, was always at the same distance.
Fatigue and want of provisions made him
renounce further continuance of his journey.”
“If I had known that little boy,” said Emile, “I
would have dissuaded him from his expedition. It
is impossible, however far one goes, to touch the sky
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
with the hand, even with the help of the tallest ladder.”
“If I remember aright, Emile has not always been
of that opinion,” said his uncle.
“That is true, Uncle. Like the little boy you have
been telling about, I believed that the sky was a
large blue cover resting on the earth. By good
walking one ought to reach the edge of the cover and
the end of the world. I thought, too, that the sun
rose behind these mountains, and set behind those
on the opposite side, where there was a deep well
that the sun plunged into and remained hidden during
the night. One day you took me to the mountains
where the edges of the blue cover seem to rest.
It was a long way off, I remember; you lent me your
cane, which helped me in walking. I did not see
any well for the sun to plunge into; everything
looked just as it does here. The edge of the sky
still seemed to rest on the earth, only much farther
away. And you told me that by going to the end
of what we saw, then farther and farther still, we
should find the same appearance everywhere, without
ever seeing the end of a vault that does not
really exist.”
“Nowhere, as all three of you know, does the sky
rest on the earth; nowhere is there any danger of
striking one’s head against the firmament; everywhere
the blue vault has the same appearance as
here. You know, too, that in always going ahead
you meet with plains, mountains, valleys, water-courses,
seas; but nowhere are there any barriers
marking the limits of the world.
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
“Imagine a large ball suspended in the air by a
thread, and on this ball a gnat. If this gnat should
take a notion to go all over the surface, is it not true
that it could come and go over the ball, above, below,
on the side, without ever encountering an obstacle,
without ever seeing a barrier rise up to block its
passage? Is it not equally true that if it always
kept on in the same direction, the gnat would end
by making the tour of the ball and would come back
to its starting-point? So it is with us on the surface
of the earth, though we are far more insignificant
when compared with the globe that bears us
than is the tiniest gnat in comparison with the biggest
ball you can imagine. Without ever encountering
a barrier, without ever touching the cupola of
the sky, we come and go in a thousand different directions,
we accomplish the most distant journeys,
even make the tour of the earth and return to our
starting-point. The earth, then, is round; it is an
immense ball that swims without support in celestial
space. As to the blue vault that arches above
us, it is mere appearance caused by the blue color of
the air enveloping the earth on all sides.”
“The ball on which your imaginary gnat travels
is suspended by a thread. By what chain is
the enormous ball of the earth hung?” asked
Jules.
“The earth is not suspended from the firmament
by any celestial chain, nor does it rest upon any support,
like a geographical globe on its pedestal. According
to an Indian legend the terrestrial globe is
borne upon four bronze columns.”
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
“And what do the four columns rest on, in their
turn?”
“They rest on four white elephants.”
“And the white elephants?”
“They rest on four monstrous turtles.”
“And the turtles?”
“Well, they swim in an ocean of milk.”
“And the ocean of milk?”
“The legend says nothing about that, and it is
right to be silent. It would have been better not
to imagine all these various supports, resting one
on another, to hold the earth up. Suppose a pedestal
for the earth, then a second to uphold the first,
then a third, fourth, thousandth, if you like; it is
only postponing the question without answering it,
since finally, after having erected all the supports
imaginable, one must ask what will the last one rest
on. Perhaps you are thinking of the vault of the
heavens, which might well sustain the earth; but
know that this vault has no reality, that it is nothing
but an appearance caused by the air. Besides, thousands
of travelers have gone over the earth in every
direction, and nowhere have they seen either a suspending
chain or a pedestal of any kind. Everywhere
they see only what is to be seen here. The
earth is isolated in space; it swims in a void without
any support, just as do the moon and the sun.”
“But, then, why doesn’t it fall?” persisted Jules.
“To fall, my little friend, is to rush earthward as
a stone does when raised in the hand and then left
to itself. How can the large ball rush to the earth,
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
when it is the whole earth? Is it possible for a
thing to rush toward itself?”
“No.”
“Well, then! Besides, imagine this. All is the
same around the terrestrial globe; properly speaking,
there is no up or down, no right or left. We
call up the direction toward adjacent space, or toward
the sky; but remember that there is sky also on
the other side of the earth, that there it is just the
same as we see it here, and that this is true for all
parts of the earth’s surface. If it seemed to you
quite simple that the earth does not rush toward the
sky which is above us, why should you expect it to
rush toward the opposite sky? To fall toward the
opposite sky would be to rise, as the lark rises here,
when with one stroke of the wing it takes its flight
and soars above us.”
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch52
CHAPTER LII||THE EARTH
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 view, from a certain
distance the highest points of the town, the
summits of towers and steeples, are seen first.
From a lesser distance the spires of the steeples become
entirely visible, then the roofs of buildings
themselves; so that the view embraces a great number
of objects, beginning with the highest and ending
with the lowest, as the distance diminishes. The
curvature of the ground is the cause of it.”
.if h
.il fn=i238.jpg w=500px
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: The Earth]
.sp 2
.if-
Uncle Paul took a pencil and traced on paper the
picture that you see here; then he continued:
“To an observer at A the tower is quite invisible
because the curvature of the ground hides the view.
To the observer at B the upper half of the tower is
visible, but the lower half is still hidden. Finally,
when the observer is at C he can see the whole tower.
It would not be thus if the earth were flat. From
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
any distance the whole of a tower would be visible.
Afar off, no doubt, it would be seen with less clearness
than near to, on account of the distance; but it
could be seen more or less well from top to bottom.”
Here is another drawing of Uncle Paul’s, representing
two spectators, A and B, who, placed at very
different distances, nevertheless see the tower from
top to bottom on a flat surface. He resumed his
talk.
.if h
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.if-
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.sp 2
[Illustration: A Tower]
.sp 2
.if-
“On dry land it is rare to find a surface that in
extent and regularity is adapted to the observation
I have just told you about. Nearly always hills,
ridges, or screens of verdure intercept the view and
prevent one’s seeing the gradual appearance, from
summit to base, of the tower or steeple that one is
approaching. On the sea no obstacle bars the view
unless it be the convexity of the waters, which follow
the general curvature of the earth. It is, accordingly,
there especially that it is easy to study the
phenomena produced by the rounded form of the
earth.
“When a ship coming from the open sea approaches
the coast, the first points of the shore visible
to those on board are the highest points, like the
crests of mountains. Later the tops of high towers
come into sight; still later the edge of the shore itself.
In the same way an observer who witnesses
from the shore the arrival of a vessel begins by perceiving
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
the tops of the masts, then the topsails, then
the sails next below, and finally the hull of the vessel.
If the vessel were departing from the shore,
the observer would see it gradually disappear and
apparently plunge under the water, all in inverse
order; that is to say, the hull would be first hidden
from view, then the low sails, then the high ones, and
finally the top of the mainmast, which would be the
last to disappear. Four strokes of the pencil will
make you understand it.”
.if h
.il fn=i240.jpg w=500px
.if-
.if t
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.nf c
[Illustration: A Ship at Sea]
.nf-
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.if-
“How large is the earth?” was the next question
from Jules.
“The earth is forty million meters in circumference
or 10,000 leagues, for a league measures four
kilometers. To encircle a round table, you take hold
of hands, three, four, or five of us. To encircle in
the same manner the vast bosom of the earth, it
would take a chain of people about equal to the whole
population of France. A traveler able to walk day
after day at the rate of ten leagues a day, which no
one could do, would take three years to girdle the
globe, supposing it to be all land and no sea. But,
where are the hamstrings that could resist three
years of such continual fatigue, when a walk of ten
leagues generally exhausts our strength and makes
it impossible for us to begin again the next morning?”
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
“The longest walk I ever took was to the pine
woods, where we went to look for the nest of the
processionary caterpillars, the day of the thunderstorm.
How many leagues did we go?”
“About four, two to go and two to come back.”
“Only four leagues! All the same I was played
out. At the end I could hardly put one foot before
the other. It would take me, then, from seven to
eight years to go round the world, walking every
day as far as my strength would let me.”
“Your calculation is right.”
“The earth then is a very large ball?”
“Yes, my friend, very large. Another example
will help you to understand it. Let us represent the
terrestrial globe by a ball of greater diameter than
a man’s height—by a ball two meters in diameter;
then, in correct proportion, represent in relief on
its surface some of the principal mountains. The
highest mountain in the world is Gaurisankar, a part
of the Himalaya chain, in central Asia. Its peaks
rise to a height of 8840 meters. Rarely are the
clouds high enough to crown its crest, and its base
covers the extent of an empire. Alas! what does
man become, materially, in face of such a prodigious
colossus! Well, let us raise the giant on our large
ball representing the earth; do you know what will
be needed to represent it? A tiny little grain of
sand which would be lost between your fingers, a
grain of sand that would stand out in relief only a
millimeter and a third! The gigantic mountain that
overwhelmed us with its immensity is nothing when
compared with the earth. The highest mountain in
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
Europe, Mont Blanc, whose height is 4810 meters,
would be represented by a grain of sand half as
large as the other.”
“When you told us of the roundness of the earth,”
put in Claire, “I thought of the enormous mountains
and deep valleys, and asked myself how, with
all these great irregularities, the earth could nevertheless
be round. I see now that these irregularities
are a mere nothing in comparison with the immensity
of the terrestrial ball.”
“An orange is round in spite of the wrinkles in its
skin. It is the same with the earth: it is round in
spite of the irregularities of its surface; it is an
enormous ball sprinkled with grains of dust and
sand proportioned to its size, and these are mountains.”
“What a big ball!” exclaimed Emile.
“To measure the circumference of the earth is not
an easy thing, you may be sure; and yet they have
done more than that: they have weighed the immense
ball as if it were possible to put it in a scale-pan
with kilograms for counterweights. Science,
my dear children, has resources demonstrating in all
its grandeur the power of the human mind. The
immense ball has been weighed. How it was done
cannot be explained to you to-day. No scales were
used, but it was accomplished by the power of
thought with which God has endowed us, to solve, to
His glory, the sublime enigma of the universe; by the
force of reason, for which the burden of the earth is
not too heavy. This burden is expressed by the figure
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
6 followed by twenty-one zeros, or by 6 sextillions
of kilograms.”
“That number means nothing to me; it is too
large,” Jules declared.
“That is the trouble with all large numbers. Let
us get around the difficulty. Suppose the earth
placed on a car and drawn on a surface like that of
our roads. For such a load, what should the team
be? Let us put in front a million horses; and in
front of that row a second million; then a third
row, still of a million; a hundredth, finally a thousandth.
We shall thus have a team of a thousand
millions of horses, more than could be fed in all the
pastures of the world. And now start; apply the
whip. Nothing would move, my children; the
power would be insufficient. To start the colossal
mass, it would need the united efforts of a hundred
millions of such teams!”
“I don’t grasp it any better,” said Jules.
“Nor I, it is so enormous,” assented his uncle.
“Yes, enormous, Uncle.”
“So that the mind gets lost in it,” said Claire.
“That is what I wanted to make you acknowledge,”
concluded Uncle Paul.
.bn 254.png
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.pb
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.h2 id=ch53
CHAPTER LIII||THE ATMOSPHERE
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 reveals its presence
by a light shock that produces an impression of
freshness. But the shock from the air is not always,
like this, a simple caress. It can become very
brutal. A violent wind, which sometimes uproots
trees and overthrows buildings, is still air in motion,
air that flows from one country to another like
a stream of water. Air is invisible, because it is
transparent and almost colorless. But if it forms a
very thick layer through which one can look, its
feeble coloring becomes perceptible. Seen in small
quantities, water appears equally colorless; seen in
a deep layer, as in the sea, in a lake, or in a river,
it is blue or green. It is the same with air: in thin
strata it seems deprived of color; in a layer several
leagues in thickness, it is blue. A distant landscape
appears to us bluish, because the thick bed of
intervening air imparts to it its own color.
“Now air forms all around the earth an envelope
fifteen leagues thick. It is the aërial sea or atmosphere,
in which the clouds swim. Its soft blue tint
causes the sky’s color. It is in fact the atmosphere
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
that produces the appearance of a celestial vault.
“Do you know, my children, what is the use of
this aërial sea at the bottom of which we live as fish
live in water?”
“Not very well,” Jules replied.
“Without this ocean of air life would be impossible,
plant life as well as animal. Listen. Chief of
those imperious needs to which we are subjected
are those of eating, drinking, and sleeping. As long
as hunger is only its diminutive, appetite, that
savory seasoning of the grossest viands; as long as
thirst is only that nascent dryness of the mouth
that gives so great a charm to a glass of cold water;
as long as sleepiness is nothing more than that gentle
lassitude that makes us desire the night’s rest,
so long is it the attraction of pleasure rather than
the rude prick of pain that urges the satisfaction
of these primordial needs. But if their satisfaction
is too long delayed, they impose themselves as inexorable
masters and command by torture. Who
can think without terror of the agonies of hunger
and thirst! Hunger! Ah! you do not know what
it is, my children, and God preserve you from ever
knowing it! Hunger! If you could have any idea
of its tortures, your heart would be oppressed at
the thought of the unhappy ones who experience it.
Ah! my dear children, always help those that are
hungry; help them, and give, give; you will never
do a nobler deed in this world. Giving to the poor
is lending to the Lord.”
Claire had put her hand before her eyes to hide a
tear of emotion. She had observed a flash on her
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
uncle’s face that spoke from the depth of his heart.
After a moment’s pause Uncle Paul continued:
“There is, however, a need before which hunger
and thirst, however violent they may be, are mute;
a need always springing up afresh and never satisfied,
which continually makes itself felt, awake or
asleep, night or day, every hour, every moment.
It is the need of air. Air is so necessary to life
that it has not been given us to regulate its use, as
we do with eating and drinking, so as to guard us
from the fatal consequences that the slightest forgetfulness
would cause. It is, as it were, without
consciousness or volition on our part that the air
enters our body to perform its wonderful part. We
live on air more than anything else; ordinary nourishment
comes second. The need of food is only
felt at rather long intervals; the need of air is felt
without ceasing, always imperious, always inexorable.”
“And yet, Uncle,” said Jules, “I have never
thought of feeding myself with air. It is the first
time I ever heard that air is so necessary for us.”
“You have not given it a thought, because all that
is done for you; but try a moment to prevent air
entering into your body: close the ways to it, the
nose and mouth, and you will see!”
Jules did as his uncle told him, shut his mouth
and pinched his nose with his fingers. At the end
of a moment, his face red and puffed up, the little
boy was obliged to put an end to his experiment.
“It is impossible to keep it up, Uncle; it suffocates
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
a person and makes him feel as if he should
certainly die if it kept on a little longer.”
“Well, I hope you are convinced of the necessity
of air in order to live. All animals, from the tiniest
mite, hardly visible, to the giants of creation, are
in the same condition as you: on air, first of all,
their life depends. Even those that live in the
water, fish and others, are no exception to this rule.
They can live only in water into which air infiltrates
and dissolves. When you are older you shall see a
striking experiment which proves how indispensable
to life is the presence of air. You put a bird under
a glass dome, shut tight everywhere; then with
a kind of pump the air is drawn out. As it is withdrawn
from the inside of the glass cage, the bird
staggers, struggles a moment in an anguish horrible
to see, and falls dead.”
“It must take a lot of air,” was Emile’s comment,
“to supply the needs of all the people and
animals in the world. There are so many!”
“Yes, indeed; a great quantity is needed. One
man needs nearly 6000 liters of air an hour. But
the atmosphere is so vast that there is plenty of
air for all. I will try to make you understand it.
“Air is one of the most subtle of substances; a
liter of it weighs only one gram and three decigrams.
That is very little: the same volume of water weighs
1000 grams; that is to say, 769 times as much.
However, such is the enormous extent of the atmosphere
that the weight of all the air composing it outstrips
your utmost powers of imagination. If it
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
were possible to put all the air of the atmosphere
into one of the pans of an immense pair of scales,
what weight do you think it would be necessary to
put into the other pan to make it equal the air?
Don’t be afraid of exaggerating; you can pile up
thousands on thousands of kilograms; if air is very
light, the aërial sea is very vast.”
“Let us put on a few millions of kilograms,” suggested
Claire.
“That is a mere trifle,” her uncle replied.
“Let us multiply it by ten, by a hundred.”
“It is not enough, the pan would not be raised.
But let me tell you the answer, for in this calculation
numerical terms would fail you. For the great
weight I am supposing, the heaviest counterweights
would be insignificant. New ones must be invented.
Imagine, then, a copper cube, a kilometer in each
dimension; this metallic die, measuring a quarter
of a league on its edge, shall be our unit of weight.
It represents nine thousand millions of kilograms.
Well, to balance the weight of the atmosphere, it
would be necessary to put into the other pan 585,000
of these cubes!”
“Is it possible!” Claire exclaimed.
“I told you so! Imagination vainly seeks to picture
the stupendous mass of the layer of air wound
like a scarf by the Creator around the earth. Now
do you know what relation it bears to the terrestrial
globe—this ocean of air having a weight represented
by half a million of copper cubes a quarter of
a league each way? Scarcely what the imperceptible
velvety down of a peach is to the peach itself.
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
What, then, are we, materially, we poor beings of a
day, who move about at the bottom of this atmospheric
sea! But how great we are through thought,
which makes game of weighing the atmosphere and
the earth itself! In vain does the material universe
overwhelm us with its immensity; the mind is
superior to it, because it alone knows itself, and
it alone, by a sublime privilege, has knowledge of
its divine author.”
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch54
CHAPTER LIV||THE SUN
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.dc 0.25 0.65
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 village were the
milkmaid, on her
way to town with
her butter and
milk, and the blacksmith
hammering
away at the red-hot
iron on his anvil,
while the glow
from the forge illumined
the darkness
of the road.
.if h
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.ca
The Sun
.ca-
.if-
.if t
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[Illustration: The Sun]
.sp 2
.if-
Sheltered by a
clump of juniper-trees,
Paul and the three children await the grand
spectacle they have come to the top of the hill to see.
In the east the sky is getting lighter, the stars turn
pale and go out one by one. Flakes of rosy cloud
swim in a brilliant streak of light whence gradually
there rises a soft illumination. It reaches the zenith,
and the blue of day reappears with all its delicate
transparency. This cool morning light, this half-daylight
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
that precedes the rising of the sun, is the
aurora or morning twilight. In the meantime a lark,
the joy of the fields, takes wing to the highest clouds,
like a rocket, and is the first to salute the awakening
day. It mounts and mounts, always singing, as if to
get in front of the sun; and with its enthusiastic
songs it celebrates in the high heavens the glory of
the day-bringer. Listen: there is a breath of wind
in the foliage, which stirs and rustles; the little birds
are waking up and chirping; the ox, already led to
work in the fields, stops as if thinking, raises its
large eyes full of gentleness, and lows; everything
becomes animated, and, in its own language, renders
thanks to the Master of all things, who with
His powerful hand brings us back the sun.
And here it is: a bright thread of light bursts
forth, and the tops of the mountains are suddenly
illumined. It is the edge of the sun beginning to
rise. The earth trembles before the radiant apparition.
The shining disc keeps rising: there it
is almost whole, now completely so, like a grindstone
of red-hot iron. The mist of the morning
moderates its glare and allows one to look it in the
face; but soon no one could endure its dazzling
splendor. In the meantime its rays inundate the
plain; a gentle heat succeeds the keen freshness of
the night; the mists rise from the depths of the
valleys and are dissipated; the dew, gathered on
the leaves, becomes warm and evaporates; on all
sides there is a resumption of life, of the animation
suspended during the night. And all day, pursuing
its course from east to west, the sun moves on, flooding
.bn 262.png
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the earth with light and heat, ripening the yellow
harvest, giving perfume to the flowers, taste to
fruit, life to every creature.
Then Uncle Paul, in the shade of the juniper-trees,
began his talk.
“What is the sun? Is it large, is it very far
away? That, my children, is what I should now
like to teach you.
“To measure the distance from one point to another,
you know of only one means: that of laying
off, as many times as it will go, the unit of length,
the meter, from one end to the other of the distance
to be measured. But science has methods
adapted to the measuring of distances that one cannot
travel in person; it tells us what must be done
to find the height of a tower or mountain, without
going to the top, without even approaching the base.
They are methods of the same kind as are employed
to calculate the distance that separates us from
the sun. The result of the astronomer’s calculations
is that we are distant from the sun 38 millions
of leagues of 4000 meters each. This distance is
equivalent to 3800 times the circumference of the
earth. I told you that, to make the tour of the terrestrial
globe, a man, a good walker, capable of walking
ten leagues a day, would take about three years.
He would need, then, nearly twelve thousand years to
go from the earth to the sun, supposing that the
journey were possible. The longest human life is incomparably
too short for a journey of this length
ever to be accomplished by one person; and a hundred
generations of a hundred years each, succeeding
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
one another on the journey and uniting their
efforts, would not even be enough.”
“And a locomotive,” asked Jules, “how long
would it take to get over that distance?”
“Do you remember how fast it goes?”
“I saw it myself the day we took the trip with
you. If one looks out, the road seems to fly back
so fast it frightens you and makes you dizzy.”
“The locomotive that drew us went at the rate of
about ten leagues an hour. Let us suppose a locomotive
that never stops and that goes still faster, or
fifteen leagues an hour. Rushing at that speed, the
engine would go from one end of France to the other
in less than a day; and yet, to cover the distance
from the earth to the sun, it would take more than
three centuries. For such a journey, the fastest
engine ever made by the hand of man is hardly more
than a sluggish snail ambitious to make the tour of
the world.”
“And I who thought, not long ago,” said Emile,
“that by climbing to the roof and with the aid of a
long reed I could touch the sun!”
“To one who trusts to appearances the sun is only
a dazzling disc, at the most as large as a grindstone.”
“That is what I said yesterday,” observed Jules.
“But, as it is so far away, it might well be as large
as a millstone.”
“In the first place, the sun is not flat like a grindstone;
it has, like the earth, the shape of a ball.
Furthermore, it is much larger than a grindstone, or
even than a millstone.
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
“Objects seem to us small in proportion to their
distance from us, until finally they become invisible.
A high mountain seen from afar seems only a moderate-sized
hill; the cross that surmounts a steeple,
seen from below, looks very small despite its very
large dimensions. It is the same with the sun: it
looks so small only because it is very far off; and as
the distance is prodigious, its size must be excessive;
if not, instead of looking to us like a dazzling grindstone,
it would cease to be visible to us.
“You found the terrestrial globe enormous; and,
despite my comparisons, your imagination, I am
sure, has not been able to picture things properly.
How will it be with the sun, which is one million four
hundred thousand times as large as the earth! If
we suppose the sun hollow like a spherical box, to
fill it would take one million four hundred thousand
balls the size of the earth.
“Let us try another comparison. To fill the measure
of capacity called the liter, it takes about 10,000
grains of wheat. It would take, then, 100,000 to fill
10 liters or one decaliter, and 1,400,000 to fill 14
decaliters. Well, suppose in one pile 14 decaliters
of wheat, and beside it one solitary grain of wheat.
For the respective sizes, this isolated grain represents
the earth; the pile of 14 decaliters represents
the sun.”
“How wrong we were!” Claire exclaimed. “This
little shining disc, to which, for fear of exaggeration,
we should have hesitated to assign the dimensions
of a millwheel, is a globe so big that in comparison
.bn 265.png
.pn +1
with its gigantic size the earth is as nothing.”
“Oh, God in heaven!” cried Jules.
“Yes, my friend, you may well say, ‘God in
heaven,’ for the mind is bewildered at the thought
of this inconceivable mass. Say: God in heaven!
how great You are, You who out of nothing have
created the sun and the earth, and hold them both
in the shadow of Your hand!
“I have not finished, my dear children. One day,
in speaking to you of lightning and thunder, I told
you that light moves with excessive rapidity. In
fact, to come to us from the sun, to cover the distance
that a locomotive at its highest speed would take
three hundred years to cover, a ray of light needs
only the half of a quarter of an hour, or about eight
minutes. Now listen to this. Astronomy teaches
us that each star, small as it may appear from here,
is itself a sun comparable in size to ours; it tells us
that these suns, of which we with the naked eye can
perceive only a very small part, are so numerous
that it is impossible to count them; it tells us that
their distance is so great that, to come to us from
the nearest star, light, which travels so fast, as I
have just told you, takes nearly four years; to reach
us from others that are by no means the most distant
it takes whole centuries. After that, if you can,
estimate the distance that separates us from those
far-off suns; think also of their number and size.
But no, do not try: the intellect is overwhelmed by
these immensities in which is revealed all the majesty
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
of God’s handiwork. Do not try, it would be in
vain; but let arise from your heart the burst of admiration
that you cannot suppress, and bless God,
whose infinite power has scattered suns through the
boundless regions of celestial space.”
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch55
CHAPTER LV||DAY AND NIGHT
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“IT seems to me,” said Claire, “we have lost sight
of the hearth that turns with its lighted firebrands
around the lark.”
“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 would have to go in a minute?
More than 100,000 leagues. But this incomprehensible
speed is nothing. The stars, as I have just told
you, are so many suns, comparable to ours in volume
and brilliancy; only they are much farther away, and
that is what makes them appear so small. The nearest
is about thirty thousand times as distant as the
sun. Accordingly, in order to go around the earth
in twenty-four hours, as it appears to do, it would
have to move at the rate of thirty thousand times
100,000 leagues a minute. And how would it be with
other stars a hundred times, a thousand times, a
million times farther away—stars which, despite
their distance, would all have to accomplish their
journey around the earth always in exactly twenty-four
hours? And remember, furthermore, the
prodigious size of the sun. You want it, the giant,
the colossus, beside which the earth is only a lump of
clay, to circle at an impossible speed in infinite space,
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
in order to give light and heat to our planet; you
want thousands and thousands of other suns, quite
as large and immensely farther off—in a word, the
stars—to accomplish also, with velocities increasing
according to the distance, a daily journey around
this humble terrestrial globe! No! no! such an arrangement
is contrary to reason; to allow it is to
want to make the firebrands, the hearth, the whole
house, turn around a little bird on a spit.”
“Then it is the earth that turns, and we turn with
it,” Claire again interposed. “In consequence of
this movement the sun and stars seem to us to move
in the opposite direction, like trees and houses when
we are on the train. Since the sun seems to go
around the earth from east to west in twenty-four
hours, it is a proof that the earth turns on its axis
from west to east in twenty-four hours.”
“The earth turns in front of the sun in a manner
to present its different parts successively to the rays
of that body; it pirouettes on its axis like a top.
Moreover, while it thus rotates in twenty-four hours,
it revolves around the sun in the interval of a year.
In playing with a top you find a good example of
two analogous movements executed together. When
the top turns on its point, not moving from the same
place—in short, when it sleeps—it has only the movement
of rotation. But in throwing it in a certain
way, you know better than I that it circles on the
ground while turning on its point. In that instance,
it represents in a small way the double movement of
the earth. Its rotation on its point represents the
whirling motion of the earth on its axis; its course
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
on the ground represents the earth’s revolution
around the sun.
“You can familiarize yourself in another way with
the double movement of the terrestrial globe, as
follows: place in the middle of a room a round table,
and on that table a lighted candle to represent the
sun. Then circle around the table, pirouetting on
your toes. Each of your pirouettes corresponds to a
turn of the earth on its axis, and your course around
the table corresponds to its journey around the sun.
Notice that in turning on your toes you present in
succession to the rays of the candle the front, one
side, the back, and the other side of your head, which
in our experiment may represent the terrestrial
globe; so that each one of its parts is in turn in
the light or in the shade. The earth does the same:
in turning it presents one after the other its different
regions to the rays of the sun. It is day for the
region that sees the sun, night for the opposite
region. That is the very simple cause of day and
night. In twenty-four hours the earth makes one
rotation on its axis. Of these twenty-four hours the
duration of the day and night is composed.”
“I understand very well the cause of the alternation
of day and night,” said Jules. “It is day for
the half of the earth that sees the sun, night for the
opposite half. But as the globe turns, each country
comes in succession to face the sun while others
pass into the unlighted half. The lark that turns on
the hearth presents, in the same way, each of its
sides in turn to the heat of the flame.”
“One might almost say,” remarked Emile, “it is
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
day for the half of the lark next to the fire, and night
for the other half.”
“One difficulty still perplexes me,” Jules continued.
“If the earth turns around once in every
twenty-four hours, in half of that time we ought to
make a half-turn with the globe that carries us, and
find ourselves upside-down. At this moment we
have our heads up, feet down; twelve hours later it
will be just the opposite: our heads will be down and
our feet up. We are upright, we shall be upside-down.
In that inconvenient position why don’t we
feel uncomfortable? Why are we not thrown down?
So as not to fall, it seems to me, we ought to be
obliged to cling to the ground in desperation.”
“Your observation is right,” returned Uncle Paul,
“but only in a certain degree. Yes, it is true that
twelve hours from now we shall be in an inverse position;
our heads will be toward that point in space to
which our feet are now turned. But despite this inversion
there will be no danger of our falling, nor
even the slightest inconvenience of any kind; for our
heads will always be up, that is to say toward the
sky, since the sky surrounds the terrestrial globe
everywhere; our feet will always be down, that is to
say resting on the ground. Understand thoroughly,
once for all, that to fall is to rush toward the ground,
and not into surrounding space. So that notwithstanding
all the evolutions of our globe, as we are
always on the earth, feet on the ground, head toward
the sky, we are always in an upright position, without
any unpleasant feeling, without any danger of
falling.”
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
“Does the terrestrial globe turn very fast?” Emile
inquired.
“It turns on its axis once in twenty-four hours.
Therefore any point in its middle region, the region
that makes the longest journey, travels in the same
time forty millions of meters, that is to say a journey
equal to the circuit of the earth, or 462 meters a second.
That is about the speed of a cannon-ball as it
leaves the cannon’s mouth, or about thirty times the
speed of the fastest locomotive. Mountains, plains,
seas, apparently fixed in their places for time and
for eternity, are perpetually chasing one another in a
circle, with the formidable speed of more than one-tenth
of a league a second.”
“And yet everything seems to us to be stationary.”
“Without the jolting of the car should we not think
we were standing still when the train carries us with
such frightful speed? Well, the rapid movement of
the earth is at the same time so gentle that it is impossible
to be aware of it except by the apparent
motion of the stars.”
“By rising to a certain height in a balloon,” said
Jules, “we ought to see the earth turning under
us. Seas and their islands, continents with their
empires, forests, and mountains, ought in succession
to come under the eyes of the observer, who in
twenty-four hours sees the turning of the whole
earth. What a magnificent spectacle that must be!
What a journey, so wonderful and with so little fatigue!
When the rotation brings back one’s own
country, one descends and it is accomplished. In
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
twenty-four hours, without changing place, one has
seen the whole world.”
“Yes, I agree with you, it would be an admirable
way to see countries. To this spot where we are
other peoples will come, brought by the rotation;
seas, distant regions, snowy mountains will take our
place; and to-morrow at the same hour we shall be
here again. Where we are talking now, in the shade
of the juniper-trees, first will pass the sea, the somber
Atlantic, which will replace our conversation by
the grand voice of its waves. In less than an hour
the ocean will be here. Some large war-vessel, with
its triple row of guns, will float perhaps, all sails
set, over the spot we are occupying. The sea has
passed. Now we have North America, the great
Canadian lakes, and the interminable prairies where
the red-skinned Indians hunt buffaloes. The sea
begins again, much larger than the Atlantic; it takes
nearly seven hours to pass. What line of islands is
this where fishermen wrapped in furs are drying
herrings? They are the Koorile Isles, south of
Kamchatka. They pass quickly; we scarcely have
time to give them a glance. Now it is the turn of the
yellow-faces—the Mongolians and Chinese, with
slanting eyes. Oh! what curious things we could see
here! But the ball is always turning, and China is
already in the distance. The sandy plateaus of Central
Asia and mountains higher than the clouds come
next. Here are the pastures of the Tartars, with
neighing herds of mares; here are the grassy plains
of the Caspian with the flat-nosed Cossacks; then
southern Russia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland,
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
and finally France. Let us descend quickly, get on
to our feet; the earth has finished its rotation.
“Do not for an instant, my little friends, think
that this giddy spectacle of the earth passing with
the rapidity of a cannon-ball would be visible to any
but spiritual eyes. By rising into the upper air in
a balloon, as Jules said, it does at first seem as if we
ought to see the earth turning and lands and seas
passing under our feet. Nothing of the kind takes
place, for the atmosphere turns with the terrestrial
globe and drags the balloon in the general rotation,
instead of leaving it at rest, as would be necessary
if the observer were to have successively under his
eyes the different regions of the earth.”
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch56
CHAPTER LVI||THE YEAR AND ITS SEASONS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“YOU told us,” said Claire, “that at the same time
the earth turns on its axis it travels round the
sun.”
“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 time spent in this journey
makes just a year.”
“The earth takes one day of twenty-four hours to
turn on its axis; one year to turn round the sun,”
said Jules.
“That is it. Imagine yourself turning around a
circular table the center of which is occupied by a
lamp representing the sun, while you represent the
earth. Each of your walks around the table is one
year. To represent things exactly, you must turn
on your heels three hundred and sixty-five times
while you circle the table once.”
“It is as if the earth waltzed around the sun,”
Emile suggested.
“The comparison is not so well chosen as it might
be, but it is exact. It shows that in spite of the giddiness
of his age Emile has understood perfectly.
A year is divided into twelve months which are:
January, February, March, April, May, June, July,
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
August, September, October, November, December.
The unequal length of the months is sometimes confusing.
Some have 31 days, others 30; February
has 28 or 29, according to the year.”
“For my part,” said Claire, “I should find it hard
to tell whether May, September, and other months
have 30 or 31 days. How can one remember which
months have 31 days and which 30?”
“A natural calendar, engraved on our hands,
teaches us in a very simple way. Close the fist of
the left hand. At the knuckles the four fingers,
other than the thumb, from each a bump, separated
by a hollow from the next bump. Place the index
finger of the right hand in turn on these bumps and
hollows, beginning with the little finger, and at the
same time name the months of the year in order:
January, February, March, etc. When the series of
the four fingers is exhausted, return to the starting-point
and continue naming the twelve months on the
bumps and hollows. Well, all the months corresponding
to the bumps have 31 days; all those corresponding
to the hollows, 30. You must except
February, answering to the first hollow. That has
28 or 29 days, according to the year.”
“Let me try,” proposed Claire. “We’ll see how
many days May has: January, bump; February, hollow;
March, bump; April, hollow; May, bump. May
has 31 days.”
“It is as easy as that,” said her uncle.
“My turn now,” interposed Jules. “Let us try
September: January, bump; February, hollow;
March, bump; April, hollow; May, bump; June, hollow;
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
July, bump. And now? I am at the end of
my hand.”
“Now begin again and go on naming the months,”
Uncle Paul instructed him.
“You go on at the same point where you began?”
“Yes.”
“All right. August, bump. There are two
bumps in succession. There are then two months
together, July and August, that have 31 days?”
“Yes.”
“I will begin again. August, bump; September,
hollow. September has 30 days.”
“Why has February sometimes 28 and sometimes
29 days?” asked Claire.
“I must tell you that the earth does not take exactly
365 days to turn around the sun. It takes
nearly six hours more. To make up these six hours
that were disregarded at first in order to have a
round number of days in the year, they are reckoned
in every four years, and the additional day they make
all together is added to February, which then becomes
29 days long instead of 28.”
“So, for three years running, February has 28
days, and the fourth year it has 29.”
“Exactly. Remember, too, that the years when
February has 29 days are called leap years.”
“And the seasons?” queried Jules.
“For reasons that would be a little too difficult for
you to understand yet, the annual journey of the
earth around the sun causes the seasons and the
unequal length of days and nights.
“There are four seasons, of three months each:
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Spring is
from about March 20th to June 21st; summer from
June 21st to September 22d; autumn from September
22d to December 21st; winter from December
21st to March 20th.
“On March 20th and September 22d the sun is
visible 12 hours and invisible 12 hours, from one end
of the earth to the other. The 21st of June is for
us the time of the longest days and shortest nights;
the sun is visible sixteen hours and invisible eight
hours. Farther north the length of the day increases
and that of the night diminishes. There
are countries where the sun, an earlier riser than
here, rises at two o’clock in the morning and sets at
ten o’clock at night; still others where the time of
its rising and that of its setting are so close together
that the sun has hardly sunk below the apparent
edge of the sky before it appears again. Finally, at
the very pole of the earth, that is to say at the point
that remains stationary, like the end of the axle of a
wheel, while all the rest turns, one could witness the
wonderful spectacle of a sun that does not set, that
turns around the spectator for six whole months,
equally visible at midnight and midday. In those
countries there is no longer any night.
“On the 21st of December we have a state of affairs
just the reverse of that observed in June.
With us the sun rises at 8 o’clock in the morning; at
four in the afternoon it has already set. That is
eight hours of day for sixteen of night. Farther
north there are now nights of 18, 20, 22 hours, and
corresponding days of six, four, and two hours. In
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
the neighborhood of the pole, the sun does not even
show itself, and there is no longer any daylight; for
six months there is the same darkness in the middle
of the day as at midnight.”
“And do people live in that country of the
pole, where the year is composed of a day lasting
six months and a night of six months?” asked
Jules.
“No, up to this time[#] man has not been able to
reach the pole on account of the horrible cold there;
but there are countries more or less near the pole
which are inhabited. When winter comes, wine,
beer, and other beverages turn into blocks of ice in
their casks; a glass of water thrown into the air
falls back in flakes of snow; the moisture of the
breath becomes needles of rime at the opening of
the nostrils; the sea itself freezes to a great depth
and thus increases the apparent extent of the dry
land, which it resembles, having, like it, its fields of
snow and mountains of ice. For whole months the
sun does not show itself, and there is no difference
between day and night, or rather it is one long night,
the same at midday as at midnight. However, when
the weather is fine darkness is not complete; the light
of the moon and stars, augmented by the whiteness
of the snow, produces a kind of semi-daylight sufficient
for seeing. By this wan light, in sledges drawn
in disorderly fashion by teams of dogs, the people
of these dark regions hunt what scanty game there
is. Fishing furnishes them more abundant food.
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
Fish, dried, stored, half decayed, and rancid whale’s
blubber are their habitual food. For fuel for their
hearths their dependence is, again, on their fishing,
which supplies them with fish-bones
and slices of blubber.
Here, in short, wood is unknown;
no tree, however hardy, can resist
the rigors of winter. Willows,
birches, dwarfed to insignificant
underbrush, venture as
far as the southern extremities
of Lapland, where the cultivation
of barley, the hardiest of cultivated plants
ceases. Beyond this point all woody vegetation
ceases; and during the summer there are found
only occasional tufts of grass and moss, hastily
ripening their seeds in the sheltered hollows of the
rocks. Further on the summer is too short for the
snow and ice to melt completely; the ground is never
bare, and all vegetation is impossible.”
.pm fn-start
This was written before Peary’s and Amundsen’s achievements
in polar exploration.—Translator.
.pm fn-end
.if h
.il fn=i269.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
A part of the moon’s surface
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: A part of the moon’s surface]
.sp 2
.if-
“Oh, the doleful countries!” cried Emile. “One
more question, Uncle. In traveling around the sun
does the earth go fast?”
“It takes a year for the entire tour; but as it circles
at an enormous distance from the sun, a distance
of 38 millions of leagues, it must travel this wide
circle with a speed beyond your power to conceive.
This speed is 27,000 leagues an hour. In the same
time the fastest locomotive goes about 15 leagues.
Compare and judge.”
“What!” exclaimed Jules, “the immense ball of
which we have never been able to comprehend the
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
frightful weight travels in the sky with such rapidity?”
“Yes, my friend; with a speed of twenty-seven
thousand leagues an hour the terrestrial ball goes
rolling through space, without axle, without support,
always on the ideal line that has been given it for
its race-track. Who caused it to move so rapidly
that the very thought of it makes you feel giddy?
Let us bow the head, my children; it is the power of
God.”
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch57
CHAPTER LVII||BELLADONNA BERRIES
.sp 2
.dc 0.4 0.7
BAD news was circulating from house to house in
the village. Here is what they were saying:
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 buttons that shone
in the sun; he kept turning his pockets inside out to
see if there was room enough for all his playthings.
What made him the happiest was a tin watch, always
marking the same hour. His brother, Joseph, two
years older, was also much pleased. Now that Louis
was dressed like him, nothing prevented his taking
him to the woods, where there were birds’ nests and
strawberries. They owned in common a lamb whiter
than snow, with a pretty little bell at its neck. The
two brothers were to take it to the meadow. Some
lunch was packed in a basket. They kissed their
mother, who advised them not to go far. “Take care
of your brother,” said she to Joseph; “hold him by
the hand and come back soon.” They started. Joseph
carried the basket, Louis led the lamb. From
the door their mother watched them going off, herself
happy in their joy. Every now and then the
children turned to smile at her; then they disappeared
at the turn of the path.
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
They reach the meadow. The lamb frolics on the
grass; Joseph and Louis run after butterflies in
the midst of a clump of tall trees.
“Oh, the beautiful cherries!” exclaimed Louis,
suddenly; “see how big and black they are! Cherries,
cherries! We are going to have a feast. Let
us pick some to eat.”
There were, in fact, some large berries of a dark
violet hue on low plants.
“How small these cherry-trees are!” answered
Joseph. “I have never seen any like them. We
shan’t have to climb the tree for them, and you
won’t tear your new trousers.”
Louis picked one of the berries and put it into his
mouth. It was insipid and sweetish.
“These cherries are not ripe,” says little Louis,
spitting it out.
“Take this one,” answers Joseph, giving him one
that felt very soft. “It is ripe.”
Louis tastes it and spits it out.
“No, they are not at all good,” repeats the little
boy.
“Not good, not good?” says Joseph; “you will
see.” He eats one, then another, then another still,
then a fourth, then a fifth. At the sixth he is obliged
to stop. Decidedly they were not good.
“It is true, they are not very ripe. But let’s pick
some, all the same. We’ll let them ripen in the
basket.”
They gathered a handful or two of these black berries,
then began running after butterflies. The
cherries were forgotten.
.bn 283.png
.pn +1
An hour later, Simon, who was returning from
the mill with his donkey, found two little children
seated at the foot of the hedge, crying aloud and
clasping each other. At their feet a lamb was lying
and bleating plaintively. And the younger was saying
to the other: “Joseph, get up; we will go
home.” The elder tried to rise, but his legs, seized
with a convulsive trembling, could not support him.
“Joseph, Joseph, speak to me,” said the poor little
one; “speak to me.” And Joseph, his teeth chattering,
looked at his brother with eyes so big they
frightened him. “There is one more apple in the
basket; would you like it? I will give you all of it,”
went on the little fellow, his cheeks bathed in tears.
And the elder trembled and then became rigid, by
fits and starts, and stared fixedly with eyes growing
ever larger and larger.
It was then that Simon passed. He put the two
children on the donkey, took the basket, and, followed
by the lamb, hastened to the village.
When the unhappy mother saw Joseph, her dear
Joseph, so well a few hours before, so rejoiced at
taking his brother for a walk, and now unconscious,
dying, it was a scene to melt the heart.
“My God, my God!” cried she, crazed with grief,
“take me and leave my son! Oh, my Joseph! Oh,
my poor Joseph!” And, covering him with kisses,
she burst into cries of despair.
The doctor was summoned; the basket in which
were still some of the black berries mistaken for
cherries explained to him the cause of the sad event.
“Deadly nightshade, great God!” he exclaimed under
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
his breath. “Alas! It is too late.” Broken-hearted,
he ordered a potion, the efficacy of which he
could not count on, for the poison had made irreparable
progress. And, in fact, an hour later, while
the mother, on her knees at the foot of the bed, was
praying and weeping, a little hand was stretched out
from under the coverings and placed all cold in hers.
It was the last good-by: Joseph was dead.
The next day they buried the poor little one. The
whole village attended the funeral. Emile and Jules
returned from the cemetery so sad that for several
days they did not think of asking their uncle the
cause of this lamentable accident.
Since then, in the house of mourning, little Louis
stops playing every now and then and begins to cry,
despite his beautiful tin watch. He has been told
that Joseph has gone far away and that he will come
back some day. “Mother,” he says sometimes,
“when will Joseph come back? I am tired of playing
alone.” His mother kisses him and, covering
her face with a corner of her apron, sheds hot tears.
“Don’t you love Joseph any more, and is that why
you cry when I speak of him?” asks the poor little
innocent. And his mother, overwhelmed, tries in
vain to stifle her sobs.
.bn 285.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch58
CHAPTER LVIII||POISONOUS PLANTS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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. They might find
poisonous plants that would tempt them with their
flowers or their berries, and poison them. Many
said, with reason, that the best way to prevent these
terrible accidents was to know the dangerous plants
and teach the children to beware of them. They
went and found Maître Paul, whose great knowledge
was appreciated by all, and asked him to teach them
the poisonous plants of the neighborhood. So Sunday
evening there was a numerous gathering at
Uncle Paul’s. Besides his two nephews and his
niece, Jacques and Mother Ambroisine, there were
Simon, who had come upon the two unfortunate children
on his way home from the mill, Jean the miller,
André the plowman, Philippe the vine-dresser, Antoine,
Mathieu, and many others. The day before,
Uncle Paul had taken a walk in the country to gather
the plants he was to talk about. A large bunch of
the principal poisonous plants, some in blossom,
others with berries, were in a pitcher of water on the
table.
“There are people, my friends,” he began, “who
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
shut their eyes so as not to see danger, and think
themselves safe because they wilfully ignore
peril. There are others who inform themselves
about what may be a menace to them, persuaded that
one warned person may be worth two unwarned.
You belong to this latter class, and
I congratulate you. Countless ills
lie in wait for us; let us try to
diminish their number by our vigilance,
instead of giving ourselves
up to lazy carelessness. Now that
a frightful misfortune has overtaken
one of our families, who
does not realize the extreme importance
of our all knowing, so as
to avoid them, these terrible plants that claim victims
every year? If this knowledge were more extended,
the poor little fellow whose loss we now
lament would still be his mother’s consolation. Ah!
unfortunate child!”
.if h
.il fn=i276.jpg w=250px align=l
.ca
Belladonna
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Belladonna]
.sp 2
.if-
Uncle Paul, whom thunder never caused even to
knit his brows, had tears in his eyes and his voice
trembled. The good Simon, who had seen the two
children in each other’s arms under the hedge, felt
more moved than the others at this recollection. He
pulled down the broad rim of his hat to hide the big
tears that were rolling down his rough cheeks
bronzed by the sun. After a few moments of silence
Uncle Paul continued:
“The death of the unfortunate little boy was
caused by belladonna. It is a rather large weed
with reddish bell-shaped flowers. The berries are
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
round, purplish-black, and resemble cherries. The
leaves are oval and pointed at the end. The whole
plant has a nauseous odor and a somber appearance,
as if to announce the poison it conceals. The berries
particularly are dangerous because they may
tempt children by their resemblance to cherries and
their sweetish taste. Enlargement of the pupil of
the eye and a dull, fixed stare are the characteristics
of belladonna poisoning.”
Paul took from the bouquet in the pitcher a sprig
of belladonna, and passed it around in the audience
so that each one could examine the plant closely.
“What do you say that is called?” asked Jean.
“Belladonna.”
“Belladonna; good. I know that weed. I have
often found it near the mill, in shady places. Who
would believe those pretty cherries held such a
frightful poison.”
Here André asked: “What does the word belladonna
mean?”
“It is an Italian word meaning fine lady. Formerly,
it seems, ladies used the juice of this plant to
keep their complexion white.”
“That is a property that does not concern our
brown skin. What concerns us is this confounded
berry which may tempt our children.”
“Are not our herds in danger when this weed
grows in pastures?” Antoine next inquired.
“It is very seldom that animals touch poisonous
plants; they avoid browsing what might harm them,
warned by the odor, and above all by instinct.
“This other plant with large leaves, whose flowers,
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
red on the outside and spotted on the inside with
white and purple, are arranged in a long and magnificent
cluster almost as high as a
man, is called digitalis. The flowers
have the form of long, tun-bellied
bells, or rather of glove-fingers;
therefore it is called by
different names, all referring to
this peculiarity.”
.if h
.il fn=i278.jpg w=200px align=l
.ca
Fox-glove
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Fox-glove]
.sp 2
.if-
“If I am not mistaken,” said
Jean, “it is what we call fox-glove.
It is common on the edges of
woods.”
“We call it fox-glove on account
of its resemblance to the thumb of
a glove. For the same reason it has elsewhere the
name of gloves of Notre-Dame, gloves of the Virgin,
and finger-stall. The name digitalis, borrowed
from the Latin, also refers to the finger-shaped
flower.”
“It is a great pity that fine plant is poisonous,”
commented Simon; “it would be a pleasure to see it
in our gardens.”
“It is, indeed, cultivated as an ornamental plant,
but in gardens under stricter vigilance than ours.
As for us, my friends, who hardly have time to
watch over flowers, we shall do well not to put digitalis
within reach of children by introducing it in
our gardens. The whole plant is poisonous. It has
the singular property of slowing up the beating of
the heart and finally stopping it. It is unnecessary
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
to tell you that when
the heart no longer
beats, all is over.
.if h
.il fn=i279.jpg w=250px align=r
.ca
Hemlock
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Hemlock]
.sp 2
.if-
“Hemlock is still
more dangerous. Its
finely-divided leaves
resemble those of
chervil and parsley.
This resemblance has
often occasioned fatal
mistakes, all the
easier, because the
formidable plant
grows in the hedges
of enclosures and
even in our gardens.
A plain enough characteristic, however, enables
us to distinguish the poisonous weed from the
two pot-herds that resemble it: that is the odor.
Rub that tuft of hemlock in your hands, Simon, and
smell.”
“Ouf!” said Simon, “that smells very bad; parsley
and chervil have not that horrid odor. When
one is warned, no mistake can be made, in my opinion.”
“Yes, when one is warned; but those who are not
take no account of the smell and mistake hemlock
for parsley or chervil. It is in order to be warned
that you are listening to me this evening.”
“You are doing us a great service, Maître
Paul,” said Jean, “by putting us on our guard
.bn 290.png
.pn +1
against these dangerous plants. Every one at home
ought to know what you have just taught us, so
as not to gather a salad of hemlock instead of
chervil.”
.if h
.il fn=i280.jpg w=250px align=l
.ca
Arum
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Arum]
.sp 2
.if-
“There are two kinds of hemlock. One, called
the great hemlock, is found
in damp and uncultivated
places. It is very like chervil.
Its stems are marked
with black or reddish spots.
The other, called the little
hemlock, resembles parsley.
It grows in cultivated fields,
hedges, and gardens. Both
have a nauseating odor.
“Now here is a poisonous plant very easy to recognize.
It is the arum, or, as it is commonly called,
cuckoopint or calves’-foot. The arum is common in
hedges. The leaves are very broad and shaped
like a large lance-head. The blossom is shaped
like a donkey’s ear. It is a large yellowish trumpet,
from the bottom of which rises a fleshy rod
that might be taken for a little finger of butter.
This strange flower is succeeded by a bunch of
berries as large as peas and of a splendid red
color. The whole plant has an unbearable burning
taste.”
“Let me tell you, Maître Paul,” put in Mathieu,
“what happened one day to my little Lucien. Coming
home from school, he saw in the hedge those
large flowers you are speaking of, like donkey’s
ears; the fleshy rod in the middle looked to him
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
like something good to eat. You have just compared
it to a little finger of butter. The thoughtless
creature was taken with its looks. He bit into
the deceitful finger of butter. What had he done!
In a moment his tongue began to burn as if he
had bitten a red-hot coal. I saw him come
home spitting and making faces. He won’t be
taken in again, you may be sure. Luckily he hadn’t
swallowed the piece. The next morning he was all
right.”
“A similar burning flavor is found in the white
milk-like juice that runs from the euphorbia when
cut. The euphorbia are plants of mean appearance,
very common everywhere.
Their flowers, small and yellowish,
grow in a head, the
even branches of which radiate
at the top of the stem. These
plants are easily recognized by
their white juice, their milk,
which runs in abundance from
the cut stems. This juice is
dangerous, even on the skin
alone, if it is tender; its acrid,
burning taste is its sufficient
characteristic.
.if h
.il fn=i281.jpg w=225px align=r
.ca
Aconites
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Aconites]
.sp 2
.if-
“The aconites, like digitalis,
are fine plants which for
their beauty have been introduced in gardens,
notwithstanding the violence of their poison. They
are found in hilly countries. Their blossoms are
blue or yellow, helmet-shaped, and grow in an elegant
.bn 292.png
.pn +1
terminal bunch of the finest effect. Their
leaves, of a lustrous green, are cut out in radiating
sprays. The aconites are very poisonous.
The violence of their poison has given them the
name of dog’s-bane and wolf’s-bane. History
tells us that formerly arrow-heads and lance-heads
were soaked in the juice of the aconites, to
poison the wounds made in war and to make them
mortal.
“There is sometimes cultivated in our gardens a
shrub with large shiny leaves, which do not fall in
winter, and with black, oval berries as large as
acorns. It is the cherry-bay. All its parts, leaves,
flowers, and berries, have the odor of bitter almonds
and peach kernels. The leaves of the cherry-bay
are sometimes used to give their perfume to cream
and milk products. They should be used only with
great prudence, for the cherry-bay is extremely poisonous.
They even say one has only to remain some
time in its shade to become indisposed from its exhalations
of a bitter-almond odor.
“In autumn there is seen in abundance, in damp
fields, a large and beautiful flower, rose or lilac in
color, that rises from the ground alone, without
stem or leaves. It is the colchicum, called also
meadow saffron, or veillotte, also veilleuse, because
it blossoms on the eve of the cold season. If you
dig a little way down, you will find that this flower
starts from a rather large bulb, covered with a
brown skin. Colchicum is poisonous; so cows never
touch it. Its bulb is still more poisonous.
“But we have talked enough about harmful plants
.bn 293.png
.pn +1
for to-day. I should be afraid of befogging your
memories were I to enter into more details. Next
Sunday I will expect you again, my friends, and
will talk to you about mushrooms.”
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch59
CHAPTER LIX||THE BLOSSOM
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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, would have
been glad to hear more. How are the flowers made
that their uncle showed them yesterday? What is
to be seen inside them? Of what use are they to
the plant? Under the big elder-tree in the garden
their uncle talked to them as follows:
“Let us begin with the blossoms of the digitalis,
which I spoke of yesterday. Here is one. It has,
as you see, almost the form of a glove-finger, or
better, of a long pointed cap. Emile could put one
on to his little finger; there would be plenty of room.
It is purplish-red in color. Inside, it has spots of
dark red encircled with white. The red glove-finger
rises from the center of a circle of five little leaves.
These little leaves are also part of the flower. Together
they form what is called the calyx. The rest,
the red part, is called the corolla. Remember these
words, which are new to you.”
“The corolla is the colored part of the flower; the
calyx is the circle of little leaves at the base of the
corolla,” repeated Jules.
“Most flowers have two envelopes like these, one
.bn 295.png
.pn +1
within the other. The exterior, or calyx, is nearly
always green; the interior, or corolla, is embellished
with those magnificent
tints that please
us in so many flowers.
.if h
.il fn=i285.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Mallow
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Mallow]
.sp 2
.if-
“In the mallow,
which you see here,
the calyx consists of
five little green
leaves, and the corolla
of five large
pieces of lilac rose-color.
Each of these
pieces is called a
petal. The petals,
all together, make the corolla.”
“The corolla of the digitalis has only one piece or
petal; that of the mallow has five,” remarked Claire.
“It looks that way at first, but on examining
closely you will find that they both have five. I must
tell you that in a great many flowers the petals unite
as soon as they begin to form in the bud, and by
their union constitute a corolla which looks like only
one piece. But very often the united petals separate
a little at the edge of the flower, and by indentations
more or less deep show how many are joined
together.
“Look at this tobacco blossom. The corolla forms
a tun-bellied funnel, apparently composed of only
one piece. But the edge of the flower is cut out in
five similar parts, which are the extremities of so
.bn 296.png
.pn +1
many petals. The tobacco blossom, then, has five
petals, the same as the mallow; only, these five petals,
instead of being separate
all their length, are
welded together in a sort
of funnel.
.if h
.il fn=i286.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Tobacco
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Tobacco]
.sp 2
.if-
“Corollas with separate
petals are called polypetalous
corollas.”
“Like that of the mallow,”
suggested Claire.
“And that of the pear,
almond, and strawberry,”
added Jules.
“Jules forgets some
very pretty ones: the pansy and violet,” said Emile.
“Corollas with petals all joined together are called
monopetalous corollas,” continued Uncle Paul.
“For example, digitalis and tobacco,” said Jules.
“And the bell-flowers, don’t forget them, the beautiful
white bell-flowers that climb the hedges,” Emile
added.
“The five petals joined together are just as easily
distinguishable in this flower we have here, called
snap-dragon.”
“Why is it called snap-dragon?” asked Emile.
“Because when it is pressed on both sides it opens
its mouth like an animal.”
Uncle Paul made the flower yawn; under pressure
of his fingers it opened and shut its mouth as if biting.
Emile looked on in amazement.
“In this mouth there are two lips, upper and
.bn 297.png
.pn +1
lower. Well, the upper lip is split in two by a deep
indentation, the sign of two petals, and the lower
lip is split in three, indicating three petals. The
corolla of the snap-dragon, although
apparently all in one piece,
is therefore in reality composed of
five petals welded together.”
.if h
.il fn=i287.jpg w=200px align=r
.ca
Snap-dragon
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Snap-dragon]
.sp 2
.if-
“There are, then,” said Claire,
“five petals in the mallow, pear, almond,
digitalis, tobacco, and snap-dragon,
with this difference, that
the five petals are separate in the
mallow, pear, and almond, and
welded together in the digitalis,
snap-dragon, and tobacco.”
“Five petals, either separate or united,” Uncle
Paul went on, “are found in a great many other
flowers.
“Let us come back to the calyx. The little green
leaves of which it is composed are called sepals.
There are five in the different flowers we have just
examined, five in the mallow, five in tobacco, five in
digitalis, five in the snap-dragon. Like the petals,
the parts of the calyx, or sepals, sometimes remain
separate, sometimes join together, but generally
leave some indentations showing their number.
“The calyx having its parts distinct from one another
is called a polysepalous calyx. That of the
digitalis and of the snap-dragon is of this class.
“The calyx with sepals united is known as a monosepalous
calyx. Such is that of the tobacco blossom.
By the five indentations at its edge one can
.bn 298.png
.pn +1
easily see that it is formed of five pieces joined together.”
“The number five occurs again and again,” observed
Claire.
“A flower, my child, is beyond doubt a wonderful
thing of beauty, but especially is it a masterpiece
of wise construction. Everything about it is
calculated according to fixed rules, everything arranged
by number and measure. One of the most
frequent arrangements is in sets of five. That is
why we have just found five petals and five sepals
in all the flowers examined this morning.
“Another grouping that often occurs is that in
threes. It is found in bulb flowers,—the tulip, lily,
lily of the valley, etc. These flowers have no green
covering or calyx; they have only a corolla composed
of six petals, three in an inner circle, three in an
outer.
“The calyx and the corolla are the flower’s clothing,
a double clothing having both the substantial
material that guards from inclemency, and the fine
texture that charms the eye. The calyx, the outer
garment, is of simple form, modest coloring, firm
structure, suitable for withstanding bad weather.
It has to protect the flower not yet opened, to shield
it from the sun, from cold, and wet. Examine the
bud of a rose or mallow; see with what minute precision
the five sepals of the calyx are united to cover
the rest. Not the slightest drop of water could
penetrate the interior, so carefully are their edges
joined together. There are flowers that close the
calyx every evening as a safeguard against the cold.
.bn 299.png
.pn +1
“The corolla or inner garment unites elegance of
form and richness of tint with fineness of texture.
It is to the flower what wedding garments are to us.
That is what especially captivates our eye, so that
we commonly consider it the most essential part of
the flower, while it is really only a simple ornamental
accessory.
“Of the two garments, the calyx is the more necessary.
Many flowers, of severe taste, know how to
dispense with the pleasing part, the corolla; but they
are very careful not to renounce the useful, the calyx,
which, in its simplest form, is reduced to a tiny little
leaf like a scale. Flowers without corolla remain
unseen, and the plants that bear them seem to us to
have no blossoms. It is a mistake: all trees and
plants bloom.”
“Even the willow, oak, poplar, pine, beech, wheat,
and so many others whose blossoms I have never
seen?” asked Jules.
“Even the willow, oak, and all the others. Their
blossoms are extremely numerous, but, as they are
very small and have no corolla, they escape the inattentive
eye. There is no exception: every plant
has its blossom.”
.bn 300.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch60
CHAPTER LX||FRUIT
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 when one
knows that it is clothed
with a calyx and a corolla.
What is under this covering?
.if h
.il fn=i290.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
A flowering branch of the Gillyflower
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: A flowering branch of the Gillyflower]
.sp 2
.if-
“Let us examine together
this gillyflower. It
has a calyx of four sepals
and a corolla of four yellow
petals. I take away
these eight pieces. What
is left now is the essential
part; that is to say, the
thing without which the
flower could not fill its rôle
and would be perfectly useless. Let us go carefully
over this remaining part. You will find it well
worth the trouble.
“First, there are six little white rods, each one
surmounted by a bag full of yellow powder. These
six pieces are called stamens. They are found in
.bn 301.png
.pn +1
all flowers in greater or less number. The gillyflower
has six, four longer ones arranged in pairs,
and two shorter.
“The double bag that surmounts the stamen is
called an anther. The dust contained in the anther
is known as pollen. It is yellow in the gillyflower,
lily, and most plants; ashy gray in the poppy.”
“You have already told us,” Jules interposed,
“how clouds of pollen, raised by the wind in the
woods, are the cause of supposed showers of sulphur
that frighten people so.”
“I take away the six stamens. There remains a
central body, swollen at the bottom, narrow at the
top, and surmounted by a kind of head wet with a
sticky moisture. In its entirety this central body
takes the name of pistil; the swelling at the bottom
is called an ovary, and the sticky head that terminates
it is a stigma.”
“What big names for such little things!” exclaimed
Jules.
“Little, yes; but of unparalleled importance.
These little things, my dear friend, give us our daily
bread; without the miraculous work of these little
things we should die of hunger.”
“I will take care to remember their names, then.”
“I, too,” chimed in Emile; “but you must go over
them again, they are so hard to learn.”
Uncle Paul began again. Jules and Emile repeated
after him: stamen, anther and pollen; pistil,
stigma and ovary.
“With a penknife I divide the flower in two. The
split ovary shows us what is inside.”
.bn 302.png
.pn +1
“I see little seeds in regular rows in two compartments,”
observed Jules.
“Do you know what those hardly visible seeds
are?”
“Not yet.”
“They are the future seeds of the plant. The
ovary, then, is the part of the plant where the seeds
form. At a certain time the flower withers; the petals
wilt and fall; the calyx does the same, or remains
to play the part of protector a while longer; the dried
stamens break off; only the ovary remains, growing
larger, ripening, and finally becoming the fruit.
“Every fruit—the pear, apple, apricot, peach,
walnut, cherry, melon, strawberry, almond, chestnut—began
by being a little swelling of the pistil;
all these excellent things that the plant furnishes us
for food were first ovaries.”
“A pear began by being the ovary of a pear blossom?”
“Yes, my child; pears, apples, cherries, apricots,
begin by being the ovaries of their respective flowers.
I will show you an apricot in its blossom.”
Uncle Paul took an apricot blossom, opened it with
his penknife, and showed the children what is here
shown in the picture.
“In the heart of the flower you see the pistil surrounded
by numerous stamens. The head that terminates
it at the top is the stigma; the swelling at
the bottom is the ovary or future apricot.”
“That little green thing would have been an apricot,
full of sweet juice, that I like so much?” inquired
Emile.
.bn 303.png
.pn +1
“That little green thing would have become an
apricot like those Emile is so fond of. Now would
you like to see the ovary that gives us bread?”
“Oh, yes! All these things are very curious,” replied
Jules.
“Better than that, very important.”
Claire gave her uncle a needle at his request; then
with the delicate patience necessary for this operation
he isolated one of the numerous flowers of which
the whole forms the ear of wheat. The delicate little
flower displayed clearly, on the point of the needle,
the different parts composing it.
.if h
.il fn=i293.jpg w=500px
.ca
Wheat
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Wheat]
.sp 2
.if-
“The blessed plant that gives us bread has not
time to think of its toilet. It has such weighty things
to attend to: it must feed the world! So you see
what quiet clothes it wears! Two poor scales serve
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
it for calyx and corolla. You can easily recognize
three hanging stamens with their double sachets for
anthers. The principal body of the flower is the
tun-bellied ovary, which, when ripe, will be a grain
of wheat. It is surmounted by the stigma, fashioned
like a double plume of exquisite delicacy. Salute
it, my children: behold the modest little flower
that gives life to us all!”
.bn 305.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch61
CHAPTER LXI||POLLEN
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“IN a few days, even in a few hours, a flower
withers. Pistils, stamens, calyx, fade and die.
Only one thing survives: the ovary, which will become
fruit.
“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 vigor, receives a supplement
of strength, I should almost say a new life.
The magnificence of the corolla, its sumptuous colorings,
its perfumes, serve to celebrate the
solemn moment when this new vitality
comes to the ovary. This great act accomplished,
the flower has had its day.
.if h
.il fn=i295.jpg w=100px align=r
.ca
Grains of Pollen
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Grains of
Pollen]
.sp 2
.if-
“Well, it is the pollen, the yellow dust of
the stamens, that gives this increase of energy
without which the nascent seeds would
perish in the ovary, itself withered. It falls
from the stamens on to the stigma, always
coated with a stickiness apt to hold it; and
from the stigma, it makes its mysterious action
felt in the depths of the ovary. Animated
with new life, the nascent seeds develop
rapidly, while the ovary swells so as to give
them necessary room. The final result of this incomprehensible
travail is the fruit, with its contents
.bn 306.png
.pn +1
of seeds ready to germinate and produce new plants.
Do not question me further about these wonderful
things concerning which even the keenest observer
ceases to see clearly. God only, the wisest of beings,
knows how a grain of pollen can give birth to something
that was not before, and can cause the ovary
to feel the stirring of the vital principle.
“I will tell you now how we know that the falling
of the pollen on to the stigma is indispensable to the
development of the ovary into fruit.
“Most flowers have both stamens and pistils. All
those we have just looked at are in that class. But
there are plants that have some flowers with stamens
and others with pistils. Sometimes the flowers with
stamens only and those with pistils only are found
on the same plant; sometimes they are found on
separate plants.
“Did I not fear to overcharge your memory, I
would tell you that plants having flowers with stamens
only and flowers with pistils only on the same
plant are called monœcious plants. This expression
means ‘living in one house.’ In a word, the flowers
with stamens and those with pistils live together in
the same house, since they are found on the same
plant. The pumpkin, cucumber, melon, are monœcious
plants.
“Vegetables whose flowers with stamens and
flowers with pistils are found on different plants are
termed diœcious; that is to say, plants with a double
house. By this is meant that the ovary and pollen
are not found in the same plant. The locust, date,
and hemp are diœcious.
.bn 307.png
.pn +1
.if h
.il fn=i297.jpg w=300px align=r
.ca
Flowering branch of Locust Tree
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Flowering branch of Locust Tree]
.sp 2
.if-
“The locust is a tree of extreme southern France.
Its fruit grows in pods similar to those of the pea,
but brown, very long,
and plump. This
fruit, in addition to
seeds, has a sugary
flesh. Supposing we
took a notion, if the
climate permitted, to
grow locust seeds in
our garden. What locust
tree must we
plant? Evidently the
tree with pistils, because
it alone possesses
the ovaries
which become fruit.
But that is not enough. Planted by itself, the locust
tree with pistils will be able to blossom abundantly
every year, without ever producing any fruit; for
its flowers would fall without leaving a single ovary
on the branches. What is wanting? The action of
the pollen. Close to the locust with pistils let us
plant one with stamens. Now fructification proceeds
as we wish. Wind and insects carry the pollen
from the stamens to the stigmas; the torpid
ovaries spring to life, and in time the locust pods
grow and ripen perfectly. With pollen, fruit; without
pollen, no fruit. Are you convinced, Jules?”
“Without doubt, Uncle; only, unfortunately, we
do not know the locust. I should prefer a plant of
our own region.”
.bn 308.png
.pn +1
.if h
.il fn=i298.jpg w=250px align=l
.ca
Date-palm
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Date-palm]
.sp 2
.if-
“I will tell you of one that will permit you to
prove what I have told you; but first of all let me
mention a second example.
“The date-tree, like the
locust, is diœcious. Arabs
cultivate it for its fruit,—dates,
their chief food.”
“Dates are those long
fruits of a very sweet taste,
preserved dry in boxes,”
said Jules. “A Turk was
selling some at the last fair.
The kernel is long and split
all along one side from one
end to the other.”
“That is it. In the country
of the date-tree, a sandy country burnt by the
sun, spots of watered and fertile earth are rare.
These spots are called oases. It is necessary to
utilize them as much as possible. So the Arabs
plant only date-trees with pistils, the only ones that
will produce dates. But when they are in flower,
the Arabs go long distances to seek bunches of flowers
with stamens on wild date-trees, to shake the
dust on the trees they have planted. Without this
precaution there is no harvest.”
“Uncle will tell us so much,” Emile interposed,
“that I shall have as much regard for the pollen as
I have for the ovary. Without it, I should not have
tasted the dates of the Turk who smoked such a long
pipe; without it, no apricots and no cherries.”
“In the garden there is a long pumpkin-vine that
.bn 309.png
.pn +1
will soon blossom. I will give it to you for the following
experiment.
“The pumpkin is monœcious; flowers with stamens
and flowers with pistils inhabit the same house,
the same plant. Before they are full-blown they
can easily be distinguished from each other. The
flowers with pistils have under the corolla a swelling
almost as large as a nut. This swelling is the ovary,
the future pumpkin. The blossoms with stamens
have not this swelling.
“Cut off all the blossoms with stamens before they
are full-blown, and leave those with pistils. For
greater surety, wrap each one of these in a piece of
gauze before it is in full-bloom. The covering must
be large enough to permit the flower to open. Do
you know what will happen? Not being able to receive
the pollen, since the flowers with stamens are
cut off, and since, also, the gauze wrapping keeps out
the insects from the neighboring gardens, the pistillate
flowers will wither after languishing a while,
and the plant will not produce any pumpkins.
“Would you, on the contrary, like such and such
blossoms, at your choice, to produce pumpkins in
spite of their gauze prison and the suppression of
the staminate blossoms? With the tip of your finger
take a little pollen from one of the blossoms you
have cut off, and put the yellow dust on the stigma
of a pistillate flower. Then replace the gauze wrapping.
That is enough, the pumpkin will come.”
“You will let us try that delightful experiment?”
asked Jules.
“I will, I give the pumpkin-vine over to you.”
.bn 310.png
.pn +1
“I have some gauze,” volunteered Claire.
“And I some string to tie it with,” added Emile.
“Come along,” cried Jules.
And, gay as larks, the three children ran to the
garden to get everything ready for the experiment.
.bn 311.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch62
CHAPTER LXII||THE BUMBLE-BEE
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 flowers they
powdered the stigmas of four or five pistillate blossoms.
And it happened just as their uncle had said.
The ovaries whose stigmas had received the pollen
became pumpkins, the others dried up without swelling.
Now, during these experiments, which were
both a serious study and a joyful amusement, Uncle
Paul continued his account of the flower.
“The pollen reaches the stigma in divers ways.
Sometimes the stamens, which are longer, let it fall
by its own weight on the shorter pistil. Sometimes
the wind, shaking the flower, deposits the dust of
the stamens on the stigma, or even carries it long
distances for the benefit of other ovaries.
“There are flowers whose stamens behave in such
a manner as to fulfil their mission. They bend over
alternately and apply their anthers to the stigma,
there to deposit some pollen; then slowly raise themselves
to give place one to another. They might be
regarded as a circle of courtiers depositing their
offerings at the feet of a great king. These salutations
at an end, the rôle of the stamens is finished.
.bn 312.png
.pn +1
The flower fades, but the ovary begins to ripen its
seeds.
.if h
.il fn=i302.jpg w=250px align=l
.ca
Diœcious plants (male and female)
of Vallisneria Spiralis
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Diœcious plants (male and female) of Vallisneria Spiralis]
.sp 2
.if-
“The vallisneria is a plant that lives under the
water. It is very common in the Southern Canal.
Its leaves resemble narrow green ribbons. It is diœcious,
that is to say it has
flowers with stamens and
those with pistils on different
plants. The pistillate
flowers are borne on long,
tightly curled stems. The
blossoms with stamens
have only very short stems.
Under water, where the
current would carry away the pollen and prevent
its fastening itself on the stigmas, the quickening
action of the stamens on the pistil cannot
take place. So the vallisneria, fixed by its
roots in the mud, is obliged to send its flowers to
the surface of the water to let them blossom in the
open air. It is easy for the pistillate flowers. They
unwind the curl that supports them, and mount to
the surface. But what will the staminate flowers
do, fastened as they are to the bottom with their
short stems?”
“I cannot undertake to say,” answered Jules.
“Well, by their own strength, without any external
aid, these flowers pull away from their stems,
break their moorings, and mount to the surface to
rejoin the pistillate flowers. Then they open their
little white corollas and free their pollen to wind and
insects, which deposit it on the stigmas. After that
.bn 313.png
.pn +1
they die and the current carries them away, while
the flowers quickened by the pollen curl up again and
descend once more beneath the water, there to ripen
their ovaries at leisure.”
“It is wonderful, Uncle; one would say those little
flowers know what they are doing.”
“They do not know what they are doing; they
obey mechanically the laws of Providence, which
makes sport of difficulties and knows how to accomplish
miracles in a simple blade of grass. Would
you like another striking example of this infinite wisdom
that foresees everything, arranges everything?
Let us come back to the snap-dragon.
“Insects are the flower’s auxiliaries. Flies,
wasps, honey-bees, bumble-bees, beetles, butterflies,
all vie with one another in rendering aid by carrying
the pollen of the stamens to the stigmas. They dive
into the flower, enticed by a honeyed drop expressly
prepared at the bottom of the corolla. In their efforts
to obtain it they shake the stamens and daub
themselves with pollen, which they carry from one
flower to another. Who has not seen bumble-bees
coming out of the bosom of the flowers all covered
with pollen? Their hairy stomachs, powdered with
pollen, have only to touch a stigma in passing to
communicate life to it. When in the spring you see
on a blooming pear-tree, a whole swarm of flies, bees,
and butterflies, hurrying, humming, and fluttering,
it is a triple feast, my friends: a feast for the insect
that pilfers in the depth of the flowers; a feast for
the tree whose ovaries are quickened by all these
merry little people; and a feast for man, to whom
.bn 314.png
.pn +1
abundant harvest is promised. The insect is the
best distributor of pollen. All the flowers it visits
receive their share of quickening dust.”
“It is in order to prevent the insects coming from
neighboring gardens and bringing pollen that you
have had the pumpkin blossoms covered with bags
of gauze?” inquired Emile.
“Yes, my child. Without this precaution the
pumpkin experiment would certainly not succeed;
for insects come from a distance, very far perhaps,
and deposit on our flowers the pollen gathered from
other pumpkins. And very little of it is necessary;
a few grains are enough to give life to an ovary.
“To attract the insect that it needs, every flower
has at the bottom of its corolla a drop of sweet
liquor called nectar. From this liquor bees make
their honey. To draw it from corollas shaped like a
deep funnel, butterflies have a long trumpet, curled
in a spiral when at rest, but which they unroll and
plunge into the flower like a bore when they wish to
obtain the delicious drink. The insect does not see
this drop of nectar; however, it knows that it is there
and finds it without hesitation. But in some flowers
a grave difficulty presents itself: these flowers are
closed tight everywhere. How is the treasure to be
got at, how find the entrance that leads to the nectar?
Well, these closed flowers have a signboard, a
mark that says clearly: Enter here.”
“You won’t make us believe that!” cried Claire.
“I am not going to make you believe anything,
my dear child; I am going to show you. Look at this
snap-dragon blossom. It is shut tight, its two closed
.bn 315.png
.pn +1
lips leave no passage between. Its color is a uniform
purplish red; but there, just in the middle of
the lower lip, is a large spot of bright yellow. This
spot, so appropriate for
catching the eye, is the mark,
the signboard I told you of.
By its brightness it says:
Here is the keyhole.
.if h
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Bumble-Bee
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[Illustration: Bumble-Bee]
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“Press your little finger on
the spot. You see. The flower yawns immediately,
the secret lock works. And you think the bumble-bee
does not know these things? Watch it in the
garden and you will see how it can read the signs of
the flowers. When it visits a snap-dragon, it always
alights on the yellow spot and nowhere else. The
door opens, it enters. It twists and turns in the corolla
and covers itself with pollen, with which it daubs
the stigma. Having drunk the drop, it goes off to
other flowers, forcing the opening of which it knows
the secret thoroughly.
“All closed flowers have, like the snap-dragon, a
conspicuous point, a spot of bright color, a sign that
shows the insect the entrance to the corolla and says
to it: Here it is. Finally, insects whose trade it is
to visit flowers and make the pollen fall from the
stamens on to the stigma, have a wonderful knowledge
of the significance of this spot. It is on it they
use their strength to make the flower open.
“Let us recapitulate. Insects are necessary to
flowers to bring pollen to the stigmas. A drop of
nectar, distilled on purpose for this, attracts them to
the bottom of the corolla; a bright spot shows them
.bn 316.png
.pn +1
the road to follow. Either I am a triple idiot or we
have here an admirable chain of facts. Later, my
children, you will find only too many people saying:
This world is the product of chance, no intelligence
rules it, no Providence guides it. To those people,
my friends, show the snap-dragon’s yellow spot. If,
less clear-sighted than the burly bumble-bee, they do
not understand it, pity them: they have diseased
brains.”
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CHAPTER LXIII||MUSHROOMS
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.dc 0.2 0.65
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 first
time. The story of poisonous plants had been repeated
in the village. Some people in a rut, content
with their stupid ignorance, had said: “What is
the use of it?” “The use!” replied the others; “it
teaches one to beware of poisonous plants, so as not
to die miserably like poor Joseph.” But those in
the rut had tossed their heads with a satisfied air.
Nothing is so sufficient unto itself as folly. So only
willing listeners came to Uncle Paul.
“Of all poisonous plants, my friends,” he began,
“mushrooms are the most formidable; and yet some
furnish a delightful food capable of tempting the
soberest.”
“For my part,” observed Simon, “I acknowledge,
nothing is equal to a dish of mushrooms.”
“Nobody will accuse you of gluttony, for, as I
have just said, mushrooms can tempt the soberest.
I do not wish to discourage their use. I know too
well what a resource they are in the country; I simply
propose to put you on your guard against the
poisonous kinds.”
“You are going to teach us to distinguish the
good from the bad?” asked Mathieu.
.bn 318.png
.pn +1
“No; that is impossible for us.”
“How impossible? Everybody knows that you
can eat without fear mushrooms that grow at the
foot of such and such a tree.”
“Before answering that remark, I will address
myself to you all and ask: Have you confidence in
my word? Do you think that passing one’s life in
studying such things is more instructive than the
hear-say of those who do not concern themselves
with these matters?”
“You may speak, Maître Paul: we all have full
confidence in your learning,” Simon made answer
for the company.
“Well, then, I repeat it in all conviction: it is impossible
for us who are not specialists to distinguish
an edible mushroom from a poisonous one, for none
has a mark to say: This is eatable and this is not.
Neither the nature of the ground, nor the trees at
the foot of which they grow, nor their form, color,
taste, smell, can teach us anything or enable us to
distinguish at sight the harmless from the poisonous.
I admit that a person who had passed long
years studying mushrooms with the minute attention
of a scientist would succeed in distinguishing
pretty well the poisonous from the harmless, just
as one acquires a knowledge of any other plant;
but can we undertake such studies? Have we the
time? We scarcely know a dozen weeds, and yet we
would presume to pass judgment on the properties
of mushrooms, so many in kind and resembling one
another so closely?
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Mushrooms
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[Illustration: Mushrooms]
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“I hasten to add that, in every locality, actual use
.bn 319.png
.pn +1
has long since taught the people some kinds that
they can eat without danger. It is a good thing to
conform to this usage, which makes us profit by other
people’s experience—on condition, be it understood,
that we acquaint ourselves
with the kinds used. But
that is not enough to keep us
safe from all peril. It is so
easy to make a mistake!
And then, go to another
place and you will come
across other mushrooms
which, while apparently of
the same family as those
you have known as eatable, will be dangerous.
My rule of conduct is, you see, absolute: you must
beware of all mushrooms; excess of prudence is necessary
here.”
“I admit with you,” said Simon, “that it is impossible
for us to distinguish at sight the eatable
from the poisonous kinds; but there are ways of
deciding the question.”
“Tell us how.”
“In the autumn we cut mushrooms in slices and
dry them in the sun. They are excellent food for
winter. The poisonous mushrooms rot without drying.
The good ones keep.”
“Wrong. All mushrooms, good or bad indifferently,
keep or spoil according to their more or less
advanced state and according to the weather at the
time of preparation. This characteristic is of no
value whatever.”
.bn 320.png
.pn +1
“Worms attack good mushrooms,” Antoine here
interposed; “they do not attack bad ones, because
they poison them.”
“That characteristic is no better than the other
one. Worms attack all old mushrooms, bad as well
as good; for what would be death to us is harmless
to them. Their stomach is made so that they can
eat poison with impunity. Certain insects eat aconite,
digitalis, belladonna; they feast on what would
kill us.”
“They say,” remarked Jean, “that a piece of silver
put in the pot when the mushrooms are cooking
turns black if they are poisonous, and remains white
if they are good.”
“The saying is a foolish one, and to put it in
practice a folly. Silver does not change color any
more from bad than from good mushrooms.”
“There is nothing to do, then, but give up mushrooms.
That would be hard on me,” said Simon.
“No, no; I promise you, on the contrary, that you
will be able to use them more than you have done.
The only thing is to proceed advisedly.
“What is poisonous in mushrooms is not the flesh,
but the juice with which it is impregnated. Get rid
of that juice, and the injurious properties will disappear
immediately. This is accomplished by slicing
and cooking the mushrooms, either dried or
fresh, in boiling water with a handful of salt. They
are then drained in a colander and washed two or
three times in cold water. That done, they are prepared
in any way one chooses.
.bn 321.png
.pn +1
“If, on the contrary, mushrooms are prepared
without having first been cooked in boiling water,
we expose ourselves to the danger of a poisonous
juice.
“The cooking in boiling water to which salt has
been added is so efficacious that, in order to solve
this serious problem, certain persons have had the
courage to eat for whole months the most poisonous
mushrooms, prepared, however, in the way I have
just told you.”
“And what happened to them?” asked Simon.
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Poisonous Mushroom
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[Illustration: Poisonous Mushroom]
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“Nothing at all. It is true that these persons prepared
their poisonous mushrooms with the most
scrupulous care.”
“There was reason for it. According to you,
then, one could use all mushrooms without distinction?”
“Strictly speaking, yes. But that would be going
too far, much too far. There would be the fear of
incomplete preparation, insufficient cooking.
I only affirm that you must submit
mushrooms of good repute in the neighborhood
to the preliminary cooking in
boiling water. If, by chance, some poisonous
ones were included, the poison
would in this way be eliminated and no accident
would happen; I would bet my hand on that.”
“What you have just taught us, Maître Paul, will
be profited by, you may be sure. Are we ever quite
certain that there is nothing poisonous in what we
gather?”
.bn 322.png
.pn +1
Before saying good-by Simon approached Mother
Ambroisine and entered with her into more circumstantial
details of the cooking. He is so fond of
mushrooms, the worthy man!
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CHAPTER LXIV||IN THE WOODS
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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; but Emile, Jules,
and Claire were not satisfied: they wished to extend
their knowledge on these strange vegetables. So
their uncle took them one day to a beech wood near
the village.
The trees, several hundred years old and with
their branches meeting at a great height, formed an
arch of foliage through which, here and there, shone
a ray of sunlight. Their smooth trunks, with white
bark, gave the effect of enormous columns sustaining
the weight of an immense building full of shade
and silence. On the lofty summits crows cawed
while smoothing their feathers. Occasionally a redheaded
green woodpecker, surprised at its work,
which consists of pecking the wormy wood with its
beak to make the insects come out that it feeds on,
gave a cry of alarm and flew off like a dart. In the
midst of the moss with which the ground was carpeted
were here and there numbers of mushrooms.
Some were round, smooth, and white. Jules could
not admire them enough; he likened them in his imagination
to eggs laid in a mossy hollow by some
.bn 324.png
.pn +1
wandering hen. Others were glossy red, others
bright fawn-color, and still others brilliant yellow.
Some, just coming out of the ground, were enveloped
in a kind of bag that tears open as the mushroom
grows; some, more advanced, spread out like
an open umbrella. Finally, there were many that
had already begun to decay. In their fetid rottenness
swarmed innumerable grubs, which later would
become insects. After picking a number of the principal
kinds, the party sat down at the foot of a beech,
on the soft moss-carpet, and Uncle Paul spoke thus:
“A mushroom is the blossom of a plant that lives
under ground and is called by learned men mycelium.
This subterranean plant is composed of white, slender,
fragile threads, resembling in their entirety a
large cobweb. If you pull up a mushroom carefully
you will see at the base of its stalk, in the earth that
clings to it, numerous white threads of the mycelium.
Let us imagine a rosebush planted so as to leave
nothing but the roses above ground. The buried
bush will represent the subterranean mycelium; the
roses, open to the air, will represent the blossoms of
the mycelium, that is to say the mushrooms.”
“A rosebush,” objected Jules, “has stout branches
covered with leaves; the mushroom-plant, according
to what I see, has nothing of the sort. It is a kind
of moldiness that branches out in the ground in
white veins.”
“Those white veins, so delicate that one can
hardly touch them without breaking them, form the
subterranean plant, without leaves or roots. They
lengthen little by little in the ground to a pretty good
.bn 325.png
.pn +1
distance from the point of departure. Then, at a
favorable moment, they produce little swellings
which grow under ground, become mushrooms, and
burst open their bed of earth to expand in the air.
This structure explains to us why mushrooms grow
in groups. Each group, with the mycelium that
produces it, constitutes one and the same plant.”
“I have seen groups of mushrooms in a perfect
circle,” Claire remarked.
“If the ground is of uniform character and nowhere
hinders the propagation of the subterranean
vegetable in one direction rather than in another,
the mycelium spreads equally on all sides, and so
produces circular groups of mushrooms, which the
country people sometimes call witches’ circles.”
“Why witches’ circles?” asked Jules.
“The ignorant and superstitious think they see an
effect of witchcraft in this curious circular arrangement,
whereas it is but the natural result of the
uniformly equal development of the subterranean
plant.”
“Then there are no witches?” said Emile.
“No, my dear. There are rogues who abuse the
credulity of others; there are simpletons disposed to
listen to them; but no one has preternatural powers.”
“Since a mushroom is the blossom of a subterranean
plant, of the mycelium, as you call it, must it not
have stamens, pistils, ovaries?” Jules inquired.
“A mushroom is in its way the blossom of a kind
of vegetable, but its structure has nothing in common
with that of ordinary flowers. It is a structure
.bn 326.png
.pn +1
of a special sort, very complicated, very curious,
which I shall pass by in silence so as not to overcharge
your memory.
“The chief function of a flower, you know, is to
produce seeds. Well, the mushroom too produces
seeds, but so small, so different
from others, that they
have a special name,—spores.
Spores are the seed
of the mushroom, just as
acorns are the seed of the oak. That is worthy of
some further explanation.
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Mushrooms
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[Illustration: Mushrooms]
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.if-
“The mushrooms most familiar to us are composed
of a sort of dome supported by a stalk. This
dome is called the cap. The under side of the cap
takes various shapes, of which the principal are
these: Sometimes it is composed of gills which radiate
from the center to the border; sometimes it is
pierced by an infinity of little holes, which are the
orifices of as many tubes joined together in a common
mass; sometimes it is covered with fine points
like those of a cat’s tongue.
“Mushrooms that have the under side of the cap
formed of radiating gills are called agarics; those
pierced with little holes, boleti; those covered with
little points, hydnei. Agarics and boleti are the most
common.”
Here Uncle Paul took, one by one, the mushrooms
they had gathered and showed his nephews the gills
of the agarics, the holes of the boleti, and the points
of the hydnei.
.bn 327.png
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CHAPTER LXV||THE ORANGE-AGARIC
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“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. We will
take some mushrooms whose caps are not yet thoroughly
spread. We will place them this evening
on a sheet of white paper. During the night the
blossoming will be finished and the ripe seeds will
fall from the gills of the agarics and the tubes of the
boleti. To-morrow morning we shall find on the
paper an impalpable dust, red, rose, brown, according
to the kind of mushroom.
.if h
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Binocular Microscope
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[Illustration: Binocular Microscope]
.sp 2
.if-
“This dust is nothing but a mass of seeds, of
spores, so fine that they cannot be
seen separately without a microscope,
so numerous they cannot be
counted. There are millions and
millions of them.”
“A microscope,” interrupted
Emile. “Is that the instrument
with which you sometimes look at
things so small that the naked eye
can scarcely see them?”
“Yes. A microscope enlarges the objects seen
through it, and shows them to us in all their details
.bn 328.png
.pn +1
of structure, although they would be hidden from
the unaided eye by their smallness.”
“Will you show us through the microscope the
mushroom spores when I have collected them on a
sheet of paper?” asked Jules.
“I will show them to you. One spore is enough,
under favorable conditions of heat and moisture, to
germinate and develop into white filaments or mycelium
from which will spring at the right time numerous
mushrooms. How many mushrooms would
be produced if all the spores that
fall by myriads and myriads
from the gills of a single agaric
were to germinate? Here again
we have the story of the cod, the
louse, all the feeble creatures, in
short, that reproduce their kind
in such immense numbers.”
“To have mushrooms, then, as
many as we want, it is only necessary
to sow the spores?” Jules
again inquired.
.if h
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Spores
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[Illustration: Spores]
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.if-
“In that you are mistaken, my
dear child. Up to this time mushroom culture has
been impossible, because the care required by their
excessively delicate seeds is not understood by us,
or may even be beyond our power. Only one edible
mushroom is cultivated, and even in growing this
we use not the spores, but the mycelium.
“They call it the hot-bed mushroom. It is an
agaric, satiny white above and pale rose beneath.
In the old stone quarries near Paris they make beds
.bn 329.png
.pn +1
of horse manure and light earth. In these beds
they put pieces of mycelium known to horticulturists
under the name of mushroom-spawn. This spawn
ramifies, pushes out numerous filaments, and from
these finally spring the mushrooms.”
“Good to eat!”
“Excellent. Among the mushrooms we gathered
are those that I am going to acquaint you with.
“Look at this first of all. It is an agaric. The
upper surface of the cap is a beautiful orange-red;
the gills underneath are yellow. The stalk rises
from the bottom of a sort of white bag with torn
edges. This bag, called volva at first enveloped the
whole mushroom. In growing and pushing above
ground, the cap broke it. This kind, they say, is the
best of all, the most appreciated. It is called the
orange-agaric.
“This other agaric, likewise orange-red, and also
provided with a bag or volva at the base of the
stalk, is called the false orange-agaric. Would you
not, however, think it was the same kind?”
“I don’t see much difference, for my part,” responded
Claire.
“Nor I either,” said Emile.
“I see a difference,” Jules declared, “but it is
very slight. The second agaric has white gills,
while the first has yellow.”
“Jules has sharp eyes. I will add that in the
false orange-agaric the upper surface of the cap is
sown with shreds of white skin, debris of the torn
volva. The other one has not these shreds, or very
few.
.bn 330.png
.pn +1
“If one did not pay attention to these slight differences,
one would commit a very fatal error. The
first mushroom is a delicious viand; the second, or
false orange-agaric, is a deadly poison.”
“I am no longer surprised,” said Jules, “at your
telling Simon that it is impossible for us, without
long study, to distinguish the good from the bad
kinds. Here are two mushrooms almost as much
alike as two drops of water: one kills, the other is
excellent.”
“Not a year passes without its lamentable cases
of poisoning, from a confusion of the two kinds.
Remember carefully their characteristics, so as not
to expose yourself some day to a terrible mistake.”
“I will be very careful not to forget them,” Jules
promised. “Both orange-agarics are orange-red
and have a white volva or bag. The eatable
orange-agaric has yellow gills; the poisonous one,
white gills.”
“Besides,” added Emile, “the poisonous orange-agaric
has numerous shreds of white skin on the
cap.”
“Look at this other that I picked from the trunk
of a tree. It is a large, dark-red boletus. It has no
stalk. It fastens itself to old trunks by one of its
sides. It is called the tinder-agaric boletus, because
its flesh, cut in thin slices, dried in the sun,
and made flexible by hammering, makes tinder.”
“I did not dream that tinder came from a mushroom.”
said Jules.
“The truffle is the most important of eatable
mushrooms. It grows under ground, like the mycelium
.bn 331.png
.pn +1
that produces it. Its odor betrays its presence.
A very keen-scented animal, the pig, is led into the
wood. Enticed by the smell of the subterranean
mushroom, the pig roots with its snout at the spots
where the truffles are hidden. Then the pig is driven
away, but to console him they throw him a chestnut;
and finally the precious mushroom is dug up. In its
shape the truffle bears no resemblance to ordinary
mushrooms. It has a bulky round body, wrinkled,
and black flesh marbled with white.”
.bn 332.png
.pn +1
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CHAPTER LXVI||EARTHQUAKES
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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 o’clock he had
been awakened by the bellowing of his cattle, repeated
two or three times. Even Azor himself, the
good Azor, so peaceful in his stall when there was
nothing serious to disturb him, had bellowed mournfully.
Jacques had risen and lighted his lantern,
but had been unable to discover what caused the
trouble with the animals.
Mother Ambroisine, who slept with one eye open,
told a longer tale. She had heard the dishes rattling
on the kitchen dresser; some plates had even
rolled off and broken in falling to the ground.
Mother Ambroisine was thinking it was perhaps
some misdeed of the cat’s, when it seemed to her
that strong arms seized the bed and shook it twice
from head to foot and from foot to head. It was
over in the twinkling of an eye. The worthy
woman was so frightened that, throwing the covers
over her head, she commended her soul to God.
Mathieu and his son were away at the time: they
were returning home from the fair, and were making
the journey by night. The weather was fine—no
.bn 333.png
.pn +1
wind, and bright moonlight. They were chatting
about their affairs when a dull, deep noise was heard,
coming from under the ground. It sounded like the
roar of the big mill-dam. At the same moment they
staggered as if the ground had been giving way under
them. Then nothing more. The moon continued
to shine, the night was calm and serene. It
was so soon over that Mathieu and his son wondered
whether they had not dreamed it.
These were among the more serious incidents related.
Meanwhile there was passing from mouth to
mouth, moving some to incredulous smiles and others
to grave reflections, the terrible word “earthquake.”
In the evening Uncle Paul was surrounded by his
auditors, eager for some explanation of the great
news of the day.
“Is it true, Uncle,” asked Jules, “that the earth
sometimes trembles?”
“Nothing is truer, my dear child. Sometimes
here, sometimes elsewhere, suddenly there is a movement
of the ground. In our privileged countries we
are far from having any exact idea of these terrible
agitations of the earth. If once in a while a slight
trembling is felt, it is talked of for days as a curiosity;
then it is forgotten. Many tell to-day of the
events of the past night without attaching much importance
to them, not knowing that the force revealed
to us by a light movement of the earth can,
in its brutal power, bring about frightful disasters.
Jacques has told you of the bellowing of the cattle
and Azor’s outcry. Mother Ambroisine has described
.bn 334.png
.pn +1
to you her fright when her bed was shaken
twice. In all that there is nothing very terrifying;
but earthquakes are not always harmless. Alas, no;
and may God preserve us from ever undergoing the
sad experience!”
“Is an earthquake, then, very serious?” Jules
again inquired. “For my part, I thought it only
meant a few plates broken and some furniture displaced.”
“It seems to me,” said Claire, “that if the movement
were strong enough houses would fall down.
But Uncle is going to tell us about a violent earthquake.”
“Earthquakes are often preceded by subterranean
noises, a dull rumbling that swells, abates, swells
again, as if a storm were bursting in the depths of
the earth. At this rumbling, full of menacing mysteries,
every creature becomes quiet, mute with fear,
and every one turns pale. Warned by instinct, animals
are struck with stupor. Suddenly the earth
shivers, bulges up, subsides again, whirls, cracks
open, and discloses a yawning gulf.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Claire exclaimed. “And
what becomes of the people?”
“You will see what becomes of them in these terrible
catastrophes. Of all the earthquakes felt in
Europe, the most terrible was that which ravaged
Lisbon in 1775, on All Saints’ Day. No danger appeared
to menace the festal town, when suddenly
there burst from under-ground a rumbling like continuous
thunder. Then the ground, shaken violently
several times, rose up, sank down, and in a
.bn 335.png
.pn +1
moment the populous capital of Portugal was nothing
but a heap of ruins and dead bodies. The people
that were still left, seeking refuge from the fall
of the ruins, had retired to a large quay on the seashore.
All at once the quay was swallowed up in the
waters, dragging with it the crowd and the boats
and ships moored there. Not a victim, not a piece
of wreck came back to float on the surface. An abyss
had opened, swallowing up waters, quay, ships, people,
and, closing up again, kept them for ever. In
six minutes sixty thousand persons perished.
“While that was happening at Lisbon and the
high mountains of Portugal were shaking on their
bases, several towns of Africa—Morocco, Fez, Mequinez—were
overthrown. A village of ten thousand
souls was swallowed up with its entire population
in an abyss suddenly opened and suddenly
closed.”
“Never, Uncle, have I heard of such terrible
things,” declared Jules.
“And I laughed,” said Emile, “when Mother Ambroisine
told us of her fright. It was nothing to
laugh at. If it had been God’s will, our village might
last night have disappeared from the earth with us
all, as did that one in Africa.”
“Listen to this, too,” Uncle Paul continued. “In
February, 1783, in Southern Italy, convulsions began
that lasted four years. During the first year
alone nine hundred and forty-nine were counted.
The surface of the ground was wrinkled in moving
waves like the surface of a stormy sea, and on this
unstable ground people felt nauseated as if on the
.bn 336.png
.pn +1
deck of a vessel. Sea-sickness reigned on land.
At every undulation, the clouds, really immobile,
seemed to move bruskly, just as they do at sea
when we are on a vessel tossed by the winds. Trees
bowed in the terrestrial wave and swept the earth
with their tops.
“In two minutes the first shock overthrew the
greater part of towns, villages, and small boroughs
of Southern Italy, as well as of Sicily. The whole
surface of the country was thrown into confusion.
In several places the ground was creviced with fissures,
resembling on a large scale the cracks in a
pane of broken glass. Vast tracts of ground, with
their cultivated fields, their dwellings, vines, olive-trees,
slid down the mountain-sides and went
considerable distances, to settle finally on other sites.
Here, hills split in two; there, they were torn from
their places and transported to some other part.
Elsewhere, there was nothing to uphold the ground,
and it was engulfed in yawning abysses, taking with
it dwellings, trees, and animals, which were never
seen again; in still other places, deep funnels full of
moving sand opened, forming presently vast cavities
that were soon converted into lakes by the inrush
of subterranean waters. It is estimated that
more than two hundred lakes, ponds, and marshes
were thus suddenly produced.
“In certain places the ground, softened by waters
turned from their channels or brought from the interior
by the crevices, was converted into torrents of
mud that covered the plains or filled the valleys.
The tops of trees and the roofs of ruined farm buildings
.bn 337.png
.pn +1
were the only things to be seen above this sea
of mud.
“At intervals sudden quakes shook the ground to
a great depth. The shocks were so violent that
street pavements were torn from their beds and
leaped into the air. The masonry of wells flew out
from below the surface in one piece, like a small
tower thrown up from the earth. When the ground
rose and split open, houses, people, and animals
were instantly swallowed up; then, the ground subsiding
again, the crevice closed once more, and,
without leaving a vestige, everything disappeared,
crushed between the two walls of the abyss as they
drew together. Some time afterward, when, after
the disaster, excavations were made in order to recover
valuable lost objects, the workmen observed
that the buried buildings and all that they contained
were one compact mass, so violent had been the
pressure of this sort of vise formed by the two edges
of the closed-up crevice.
“The number of persons who perished in these
terrible circumstances is estimated at eighty thousand.
“Most of these victims were buried alive under
the ruins of their houses; others were consumed by
fires that sprang up in these ruins after each shock;
others, fleeing across the country, were swallowed up
in the abysses that opened under their feet.
“The sight of such calamities ought to have awakened
pity in the hearts of barbarians. And yet—who
would believe it?—except for a very few acts of
heroism, the conduct of the people was most infamous.
.bn 338.png
.pn +1
The Calabrian peasants ran to the towns, not
to give help, but to pillage. Without any concern
about the danger, they traversed the streets in the
midst of burning walls and clouds of dust, kicking
and robbing the victims even before the breath had
left their bodies.”
“Miserable creatures!” cried Jules. “Horrid
rascals! Ah, if I had only been there!”
“If you had been there, what would you have done,
my poor child? There were plenty there with as
good hearts and better fists than yours, but they
could do nothing.”
“Are those Calabrians very wicked?” asked
Emile.
“Wherever education has not been introduced
there are brutal natures that, in time of trouble,
spring up, no one knows whence, and frighten the
world with their atrocities. Another story will
teach you more of the Calabrian peasants.”
.bn 339.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch67
CHAPTER LXVII||SHALL WE KILL THEM BOTH?
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
UNCLE PAUL went up to his room and came
back with a book.
“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 occupied Calabria.
Our gunner belonged to it. Here is a letter he wrote
to his cousin:
“‘One day I was traveling in Calabria. It is a
country of bad people who love no one and have a
special spite against the French. It would take too
long to tell you why; enough that they mortally hate
us and one is sure of a bad time if one falls into their
hands.
“‘My companion was a young man. In these
mountains the roads are precipices; our horses could
hardly climb them. My comrade was in front. A
path that seemed to him shorter and more practicable
misled us. It was my fault. Ought I to have
put my trust in a man of twenty years? As long as
daylight lasted we tried to find our way through the
woods; but the more we tried the more bewildered
we got, and it was pitch dark when we reached a
dimly lighted house. We entered, not without suspicion,
but what could we do?
.bn 340.png
.pn +1
“‘There we found a charcoal-burner and all his
family at table, to which they immediately invited
us. My young man needed no urging. We sat
down, eating and drinking, or he at least, for I busied
myself examining the place and the countenances of
our hosts. They had the appearance of charcoal-burners,
but the house might have been taken for an
arsenal. It was full of guns, pistols, sabers, knives,
cutlasses. It all displeased me, and I saw well that
I on my part was equally displeasing to our entertainers.
“‘My comrade, on the contrary, made himself one
of the family; he laughed, chaffed with them, and,
with an imprudence that I ought to have foreseen,
told them at the very first whence we came, whither
we were going, who we were. Frenchmen, imagine
it! Amongst our most mortal enemies, alone, lost,
far from all human aid; and then, to add to our probable
ruin, he acted the rich man, promising these
people whatever they wished in payment and for the
hire of guides on the morrow. Finally, he spoke of
his valise, begging them to be very careful of it and
to put it at the head of his bed: he said he did not
wish any other bolster. Ah! youth, youth, how your
immaturity is to be pitied! Cousin, you would have
thought we were carrying the crown diamonds!’”
“That young man was certainly very imprudent,”
commented Jules. “Could he not hold his tongue,
seeing he was in the hands of wicked people?”
“Silence is very difficult for giddy, careless young
persons. I will go on:
“‘Supper finished, they left us. Our hosts slept
.bn 341.png
.pn +1
below, we in the upper room where we had eaten. A
loft seven or eight feet high, reached by a ladder, was
the bed that awaited us—a kind of nest that one got
into by crawling under joists laden with provisions
for a year. My comrade climbed up alone and was
soon asleep, his head on the precious valise; I determined
to watch, so made a good fire and sat down
by it.
“‘The night had almost passed, quietly enough,
and I began to feel reassured, when, just as it
seemed to me it must be near daylight, I heard our
host and his wife quarreling immediately under me,
and, putting my ear close to the fire-place that communicated
with the one below, I distinguished perfectly
this proposal of the husband: “Well, now,
let us see; shall we kill them both?” To which the
woman answered: “Yes.” And I heard nothing
more.
“‘What can I say? I remained scarcely breathing,
my body cold as marble. God! When I think
of it! We two all but unarmed against those twelve
or fifteen with so many weapons! And my comrade
dead with sleep and fatigue! To make a noise by
calling him, I dared not; to escape by myself, I could
not. The window was not far from the ground, but
beneath it two big dogs were howling like wolves.’”
“Poor gunner!” Emile exclaimed.
“And his comrade sleeping like a simpleton!”
Claire added.
“‘At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed
long, I heard some one on the stairs, and through the
cracks of the door I saw the father, a lamp in one
.bn 342.png
.pn +1
hand and one of his large knives in the other. He
was coming up, his wife following him. I placed
myself behind the door as he opened it; he put down
the lamp, and his wife came and took it; then he
entered, barefoot. From outside she said to him in
a low tone, shading the lamp with her hand:
“Gently, go gently!” When he came to the ladder,
he mounted, knife between his teeth, and reaching
the height of the bed on which lay this poor young
man, his throat uncovered, with one hand he grasped
his knife, and with the other—Ah! cousin—’”
“Enough, Uncle; this story frightens me!” cried
Claire.
“Wait—‘And with the other he seized a ham
that was hanging from the ceiling, cut off a slice, and
went off the way he had come. The door closed,
the lamp disappeared, and I was left alone with my
reflections.’”
“And then?” inquired Jules.
“And then, nothing more. ‘As soon as it was daylight,’
continued the gunner, ‘the whole family came
and awakened us with much noise, as we had requested
them. They brought food and served us a
very good breakfast, I assure you. Two capons
were part of it, one of which our hostess said we
must eat, and take the other with us. On seeing
them I understood the significance of those terrible
words: Shall we kill them both?’”
“The man and woman were discussing whether
they should kill both capons or only one for breakfast?”
asked Emile.
“That and nothing else,” replied his uncle.
.bn 343.png
.pn +1
“All the same, the gunner had a bad quarter of
an hour for his mistake.”
“Those charcoal-burners were not at all such bad
people as I thought at first,” said Jules.
“That is the point I wished to make. Calabria,
like all countries, has its good and its bad people.”
.bn 344.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch68
CHAPTER LXVIII||THE THERMOMETER
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“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 nothing
more serious is in question than the roasting of two
fowls. A shiver of fear seizes you when the man
climbs the ladder with the cutlass between his teeth;
the next minute you are laughing. That is a very
amusing story; but it has turned us aside from the
earthquakes. You have not told us yet the cause
of these terrible movements of the ground.”
“If that interests you,” replied his uncle, “let us
talk about it a little. I will tell you first that the
farther you descend into the earth, the hotter it
becomes. Excavations made by man for obtaining
various minerals give us valuable information on
this subject. The deeper they go, the hotter it is.
For every thirty meters of depth there is an increase
of one degree in temperature.”
“I don’t know very well what a degree is,” said
Jules.
“And I don’t know anything about it,” confessed
Emile.
“Let us begin with that; if not, it would be impossible
for you to understand. In my room you
.bn 345.png
.pn +1
have seen, on a little wooden board, a glass rod
pierced by a very fine canal and ending at the bottom
in a little bulb. In the bulb is a red liquid, which
ascends or descends in the canal of the tube according
to whether it is warmer or colder. That is
called a thermometer. In freezing water the red
liquid goes down to a point in the tube called zero;
in boiling water it goes up to a point marked 100.
The distance between these two points is divided
into one hundred equal parts called degrees.”[#]
“Why degrees?” asked Emile.
“By that it is meant that these divisions have a
certain resemblance to the degrees or steps of a
flight of stairs, or the rounds of a ladder. The red
liquid goes up or down from division to division just
as we mount or descend a flight of stairs step by
step. If it grows warmer, the red liquid moves and
little by little climbs the steps; if colder, it goes
down the ladder. Thus the heat can be estimated
according to the step or degree where the liquid
stops.
“It is freezing when the liquid goes down to zero;
the heat is that of boiling water when it goes up to
division 100. The intermediate steps or degrees indicate,
evidently, other states of heat, greater when
the degree is higher up on the ladder.
“The degree of heat of any body, as indicated by
the thermometer, is called its temperature. Thus we
say the temperature of freezing water is zero, that
of boiling water one hundred degrees.”
.pm fn-start
It is the centigrade thermometer that is here
described.—Translator.
.pm fn-end
.bn 346.png
.pn +1
“One morning,” said Emile, “when you sent me
to get something from your room, I put my hand on
the little bulb of the thermometer. The red liquid
began to go up, little by little.”
“It was the warmth of your hand that made it go
up.”
“I wanted to see how high the liquid would go, but
I had not patience to wait till the end.”
“I will tell you. At last the thermometer would
have marked at most 38 degrees, which is the temperature
of the human body.”
“And in the very hot days of summer what degree
does the thermometer mark?” asked Jules.
“In our region the greatest heat of summer is
from 25 to 35 degrees.”
“And in the hottest countries of the world?”
Claire inquired.
“In the hottest countries, Senegal, for example,
the temperature rises to 45 and 50 degrees. It is
twice as hot as our summer.”
.bn 347.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch69
CHAPTER LXIX||THE SUBTERRANEAN FURNACE
.sp 2
.dc 0.9 0.7
“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 summer. The
deepest excavation miners have ever made is in
Bohemia. It is inaccessible to-day. Landslides
have partly filled it. At the depth of 1151 meters
the thermometer indicated a perpetual heat of forty
degrees, almost the temperature of the hottest
regions in the world. And that, mind you, in winter
as well as summer. When mountainous Bohemia
was covered with ice and snow, it was only necessary
to go down to the bottom of the mine to pass
from the rigors of winter to the insupportable heat
of a Senegal summer. One shivered with cold at
the entrance and stifled with heat at the bottom.
“The same conditions, without exception, prevail
everywhere. The deeper one descends in the earth,
the hotter one finds the temperature. In deep mines
the heat is such that the most unobservant workman
is struck by it and wonders if he is not near some
immense furnace.”
“The interior of the earth is, then, really a stove?”
queried Jules.
“Much more than a stove, as you will see. The
.bn 348.png
.pn +1
name of artesian well is given to a cylindrical hole
which by means of strong iron bars, fitted end to
end, is made in the ground until some reservoir of
subterranean water, fed by the infiltrations of neighboring
streams or lakes, is reached. The water that
comes up from far under ground as the result of
such a boring reaches the surface at a temperature
equal to that of those depths; and thus we learn
about the distribution of heat in the bowels of the
earth. One of the most remarkable of these wells
is that of Grenelle, at Paris. It is 547 meters deep,
and the water in it is constantly at 28 degrees, a
temperature almost as high as that of the hottest
summer days. The water of the artesian well of
Mondorf, on the frontier of France and Luxemburg,
comes from a far greater depth, 700 meters. Its
temperature is 35 degrees. Artesian wells, of which
there are at present a considerable number, illustrate
the same principle as mines: for every thirty meters
of depth the heat increases one degree.”
“Then by digging wells deep enough we should at
last come to boiling water?”
“Certainly. The difficulty is to attain the desired
depth. To reach the temperature of boiling water
it would be necessary to bore about three quarters
of a league, which is impossible. However, a number
of natural springs are known which, as they
come from the ground, possess a high temperature,
sometimes reaching the boiling point. They are
called thermal springs, which means hot springs.
There prevails, then, at the depth from which they
come, a heat sufficient to make them tepid, or even
.bn 349.png
.pn +1
boiling hot. The most remarkable hot springs of
France are those of Chaudes-Aigues and Vic, in
Cantal. They are almost boiling.”
“Do these springs make streams that are different
from others?”
“Steaming streams, in which you can plunge an
egg for a moment and take it out cooked.”
“Then there are no little fish or crabs,” said
Emile.
“Certainly not, my dear. You understand that
if there were any they would be cooked through and
through.”
“That is true.”
“The little streams of boiling water in Auvergne
are nothing in comparison with what are seen in Iceland,
that large island situated at the extreme north
of Europe and covered with snow the greater part
of the year. It has numbers of springs throwing up
hot water, called in that country geysers. The most
powerful, or the Great Geyser, springs from a large
basin situated on the top of a hill formed by the
smooth white incrustations deposited by the foam
of the water. The interior of this basin is funnel-shaped
and terminates in tortuous conduits penetrating
to unknown depths.
“Each eruption of this volcano of boiling water
is announced by a trembling of the earth and dull
noises like distant detonations of some subterranean
artillery. Every moment the detonations become
stronger; the earth trembles, and, from the bottom
of the crater, the water rushes up in an impetuous
torrent and fills the basin, where, for a few moments,
.bn 350.png
.pn +1
we have what looks like a boiler heated by
some invisible furnace. In the midst of a whirlpool
of steam the water rises
in a boiling flood. Suddenly
the geyser musters
all its force: there is
a loud explosion, and a
column of water six meters
in diameter spouts
upward to the height
of sixty meters, and
falls again in steaming
showers after having expanded
in the shape
of an immense sheaf
crowned with white
vapor. This formidable outburst lasts only a
few moments. Soon the liquid sheaf sinks; the
water in the basin retires, to be swallowed up in the
depths of the crater, and is replaced by a column
of steam, furious and roaring, which spouts upward
with thunderous reverberations and, in its indomitable
force, hurls aloft huge masses of rock that have
fallen into the crater, or breaks them into tiny bits.
The whole neighborhood is veiled in these dense eddies
of steam. Finally calm is restored and the fury
of the geyser abates, but only to burst forth again
later and repeat the same program.”
.if h
.il fn=i340.jpg w=300px align=l
.ca
Giant Geyser, Yellowstone National Park
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Giant Geyser, Yellowstone National Park]
.sp 2
.if-
“That must be terrible and beautiful at the same
time,” commented Emile. “No doubt you look at
this furious fountain from a long distance, so as
not to be struck on the back by boiling showers.”
.bn 351.png
.pn +1
“What you have just told us, Uncle,” said Jules,
“shows plainly that there is great heat under
ground.”
“In admitting, as all these observations justify us
in doing, that the subterranean temperature increases
with the depth one degree for every thirty
meters, it is estimated that at three kilometers or
three quarters of a league down, the temperature
must be that of boiling water, that is to say 100
degrees. Five leagues down, the heat is that of
red-hot iron; at twelve leagues it is sufficient to
melt all known substances. At a greater depth the
temperature, apparently, is still higher. Accordingly
we are to imagine the earth is formed of a
globe of matter liquefied by fire and enveloped by
a thin crust of solid material that is upborne by
that central ocean of melted minerals.”
“You say,” said Claire, “a thin crust of solid
material; and yet, according to the calculations you
have just mentioned, the thickness of the solid material
must be about twelve leagues. Under that
would be the melted matter. It seems to me twelve
leagues make a good thickness, and we have nothing
to fear from the subterranean fire.”
“Twelve leagues are very little in relation to the
earth’s dimensions. The distance from the surface
of the earth to its center is 1600 leagues. Of this
distance about twelve leagues belong to the thickness
of the solid crust, all the rest to the molten globe.
On a ball two meters in diameter the solid crust
of the earth would be represented by a thickness of
half a finger’s breadth. Let us make a more simple
.bn 352.png
.pn +1
comparison, representing the earth by an egg. Well,
the egg-shell is the solid crust of the globe; its
liquid content is the central mass in fusion.”
“And we are separated from the immense subterranean
furnace only by that thin shell!” exclaimed
Jules. “That is not at all reassuring.”
“I agree, it is not without a certain emotion that
one hears for the first time what science tells us of
these intimate details of the earth’s structure; one
cannot think without fear of those burning abysses
that roll their waves of melted minerals a few
leagues under our feet. How can a covering, relatively
so light, resist the fluctuations of the central
liquid mass? This fragile crust, this shell of the
globe, will it not some time melt, become disjointed,
crumble, or at least move? The little it does move
makes continents tremble and the ground crack open
in frightful chasms.”
“Ah!” interposed Claire, “that is the cause of
earthquakes. The liquid that is inside is stirred,
and the shell moves.”
“It seems to me,” Jules remarked, “that this
shell, comparatively so thin, ought to tremble
oftener.”
“Perhaps not a day passes without the solid crust
of the earth experiencing some shock, sometimes at
one point, sometimes at another, beneath the bed
of the seas, as well as under the continents. However,
disastrous earthquakes are very rare, thanks
to the intervention of volcanoes.
“Volcanic orifices are, in fact, veritable safety-valves,
which put the interior of the globe in communication
.bn 353.png
.pn +1
with the exterior. By offering permanent
vents to the subterranean vapors that tend
to liberate themselves by overturning the earth, they
render earthquakes less frequent and less disastrous.
In volcanic countries every time the ground is
shaken by strong shocks, the earthquake ceases the
moment the volcano begins to throw up its fumes
and lava.”
“I well remember,” said Jules, “your account of
the eruption of Etna and the Catanian disaster. At
first I only saw in volcanoes terrible mountains
spreading devastation around them; now I begin to
see their great use, their necessity. Without their
air-holes, the earth would seldom be still.”
.bn 354.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch70
CHAPTER LXX||SHELLS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 beautiful colors, their
pleasing but sometimes odd shapes, diverted the
eye. Some were twisted like a spiral stair-case, others
widened out in large horns, still others opened
and closed like a snuff-box. Some were ornamented
with radiating ribs, knotty creases, or plates laid
one on another like the slates of a roof; some bristled
with points, spines, or jagged scales. Here were
some smooth as eggs, sometimes white, sometimes
spotted with red; others, near the rose-tinted opening,
had long points resembling wide-stretched fingers.
They came from all parts of the world. This
came from the land of the negroes, that from the Red
Sea, others from China, India, Japan. Truly, many
pleasant hours could be passed in examining them
one by one, especially if Uncle Paul were to tell you
about them.
One day Uncle Paul gave his nephews this pleasure:
he spread before them the riches of his drawer.
Jules and Claire looked at them with amazement;
Emile was never tired of putting the large shells to
his ear and listening to the continual hoo-hoo-hoo
.bn 355.png
.pn +1
that escapes from their depths and seems to repeat
the murmur of the sea.
.if h
.il fn=i345a.jpg w=150px align=r
.ca
Cassis
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Cassis]
.sp 2
.if-
“This one with the red and lace-like opening comes
from India. It is called a helmet. Some are so
large that two of them would be as
much as Emile could carry. In
some islands they are so abundant
that they are used instead of
stones and are burnt in kilns to
make lime.”
“I would not burn them for
lime,” said Jules, “if I found such
beautiful shells. See how red the
opening is, how beautifully the edges are pleated.”
“And then what a loud murmur it makes,” added
Emile. “Is it true, Uncle, that it is the noise of the
sea echoed by the shell?”
.if h
.il fn=i345b.jpg w=150px align=l
.ca
Spiny Mollusk
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Spiny Mollusk]
.sp 2
.if-
“I do not deny that it resembles a little the murmur
of waves heard at a distance;
but you must not think that the
shell keeps in its folds an echo of
the noise of the waves. It is simply
the effect of the air going and coming
through the tortuous cavity.
“This other belongs to France.
It is common on the shores of the
Mediterranean and belongs to the
genus cassis.”
“It goes hoo-hoo, like the helmet,”
Emile remarked.
“All those that are rather large
and have a spiral cavity do the same.
.bn 356.png
.pn +1
“Here is another which, like the preceding, is
found in the Mediterranean. It is the spiny mollusk.
The creature that inhabits it produces a violet glair,
from which the ancients derived, for
their costly stuffs, a magnificent color
called purple.”
.if h
.il fn=i346a.jpg w=200px align=l
.ca
Paludinidæ
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Paludinidæ]
.sp 2
.if-
“How are shells made?” asked Claire.
“Shells are the dwellings of creatures
called mollusks, the same as the spiral
snail’s shell is the house of the horny
little animal that eats your young flowering
plants.”
“Then the snail’s house is a shell, the same as the
beautiful ones you have shown us,” Jules observed.
“Yes, my child. It is in the sea that we find, in
greatest number, the largest and most beautiful
shells. They are called sea-shells. To these belong
the helmet-shell, cassidula, and spiny mollusk. But
fresh waters, that is to say streams, rivers, ponds,
lakes, have them too. The smallest ditch in our
country has shells of good shape but somber, earthy
in color. They are called fresh-water shells.”
“I have seen some in the water resembling large,
pointed, spiral snails,” said Jules. “They have a
sort of cap to close the opening.”
“They are Paludinidæ.”
“I remember another ditch shell,”
said Claire. “It is round, flat, and as
large as a ten or even twenty-sou
piece.”
.if h
.il fn=i346b.jpg w=200px align=r
.ca
Planorbinæ
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Planorbinæ]
.sp 2
.if-
“That is one of the Planorbinæ. Finally, there
are shells that are always found on land and for
.bn 357.png
.pn +1
that reason are called land-shells. Such is the spiral
snail.”
“I have seen very pretty snails,” Jules remarked,
“almost as pretty as the shells in this drawer. In
the woods you see yellow ones with several black
bands wound round them in regular order.”
“The creature we call the spiral snail—isn’t it a
slug that finds an empty shell and lives in it?” asked
Emile.
“No, my friend; a slug remains always a slug
without becoming a snail; that is to say, it never has
a shell. The snail, on the contrary, is born with
a tiny shell that grows little by little as the snail
grows. The empty shells you find in the country
have had their inhabitants, which are now dead and
turned to dust, only their houses remaining.”
“A slug and a snail without its shell are very much
alike.”
“Both are mollusks. There are mollusks that do
not make shells, the slug for example; others that
do make them, such as the snails, the Paludinidæ,
and the cassididæ.”
“And of what does the snail make its house?”
“Of its own substance, my little friend; it sweats
the materials for its house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you make your teeth, so white, shiny, and
all in a row? From time to time a new one pushes
through, without your giving it any thought. It does
it by itself. These beautiful teeth are of very hard
stone. Where does that stone come from? From
your own substance, it is clear. Our gums sweat
.bn 358.png
.pn +1
stone which fashions itself into teeth. So the snail’s
house is built. The little creature sweats the stone
that shapes itself into a graceful shell.”
“But to arrange stones one on another and make
houses of them you need masons. The snail’s house
is made without masons.”
“When I say it is done by itself, I do not mean that
the stone has the faculty of making itself into a shell.
You never see rubble piling itself unaided into a wall.
God, the Father of all things, willed that the stone
should arrange itself in a mother-of-pearl palace to
serve as a dwelling for the poor animal, brother to
the slug, and it is accomplished according to His will.
In like manner He told the stone to grow up into
beautiful teeth from the depths of the rosy gums of
little boys and girls, and it is done as He willed.”
“I begin to feel rather friendly toward the snail,
the voracious animal that eats our flowers,” said
Jules.
“I do not care to make you friendly with it. Let
us make war on it since it ravages our gardens; it is
our right; but do not let us disdain to learn from it,
for it has many beautiful things to teach us. To-day
I will tell you of its eyes and nose.”
.bn 359.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch71
CHAPTER LXXI||THE SPIRAL SNAIL
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“WHEN the snail crawls, it bears aloft, as you
know, four horns.”
.ni
“Horns that come out and go in at will,” added
Jules.
.pi
“Horns that the animal turns every way,” said
Emile, “when you put the shell on the live coals.
Then the snail sings be-be-be-eou-eou.”
“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 shrinks, and the air that escapes
by little puffs produces that dying wail.
“In one of La Fontaine’s fables, where there are
so many good things about animals, he tells us that
the lion, wounded by a horned animal,
.pm verse-start
“Straight banished from his realm, ’t is said,
All sorts of beasts with horns—
Rams, bulls, goats, stags, and unicorns.
Such brutes all promptly fled.
A hare, the shadow of his ears perceiving,
Could hardly help believing
That some vile spy for horns would take them,
And food for accusation make them.
Adieu, said he, my neighbor cricket;
I take my foreign ticket.
My ears, should I stay here,
.bn 360.png
.pn +1
Will turn to horns, I fear;
And were they shorter than a bird’s,
I fear the effect of words.
These horns! the cricket answered; why,
God made them ears; who can deny?
Yes, said the coward, still they’ll make them horns,
And horns, perhaps, of unicorns!
In vain shall I protest.[#]
.pm verse-end
.pm fn-start
The translation is that of Elizur Wright, Jr.,
published by James Miller, New York, 1879.
.pm fn-end
“This hare evidently exaggerated things. Its
ears have remained ears, to all observers. We do
not know whether the snail exiled himself in these
circumstances; man is almost unanimous in regarding
as horns what the snail bears on its forehead.
‘You call those horns!’ the cricket would have exclaimed,
being better advised than man; ‘you must
take me for a fool.’”
“Then they are not horns?” asked Jules.
“No, my dear. They are at once hands, eyes,
nose, and a cane for the blind. They are called tentacles.
There are two pairs of unequal length. The
upper pair is the longer and more remarkable.
“Right at the end of each long tentacle you see a
little black point. It is an eye as complete as that
of the horse and ox, in spite of its minute dimensions.
What is necessary for making an eye, you
are far from suspecting. It is so complicated I will
not try to tell you. And yet it is all to be found
in that little black point that is scarcely visible.
That is not all: beside the eye is a nose, that is
to say an organ especially sensitive to odors. The
.bn 361.png
.pn +1
snail sees and smells with the tips of its long tentacles.”
“I have noticed that if you bring anything near
the snail’s long horns, the animal draws them in.”
.if h
.il fn=i351.jpg w=500px
.ca
Elephant
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Elephant]
.sp 2
.if-
“This combination of nose and eye can retreat, advance,
go to meet an object, and catch odors from all
sides. To find a similar nose, you must go from a
snail to an elephant, whose trunk is an exceptionally
long nose. But how much superior the snail’s is to
the elephant’s! Sensitive to odors and light, eye
and nose at the same time, it can retire within itself
like the finger of a glove, disappear by reëntering
the animal’s body, or come out from under the skin
and lengthen itself like a telescope.”
“I have often seen how the snail pulls his horns
in,” observed Emile. “They fold back inward and
seem to bury themselves under the skin. When anything
annoys it, the animal puts its nose and eyes
into its pocket.”
“Precisely. To protect ourselves from too strong
a light or an unpleasant odor, we shut our pupils
and stop up our nose. The snail, if the light troubles
.bn 362.png
.pn +1
or some smell displeases it, sheathes eyes and nose in
their covering; it puts them into its pocket, as Emile
says.”
“It is an ingenious way,” Claire remarked.
“You said, too,” interposed Jules, “that the
horns served it as a blindman’s cane.”
“The animal is blind when it has drawn in its
upper tentacles, partly or wholly; it then has only
the two lower ones, which explore objects by the
touch better than does the cane of a blind man, for
they are very sensitive. The two upper tentacles,
besides their functions of eye and nose, also play
the part of blindman’s cane, or, better still, that of a
finger that touches and recognizes objects. You see,
little Emile, one does not know everything about a
snail when one knows its wail on the fire.”
“I see. Who of us would have suspected that
those horns are eyes, nose, blindman’s cane, fingers,
all at the same time?”
.bn 363.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch72
CHAPTER LXXII||MOTHER-OF-PEARL AND PEARLS
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.65
“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 penknife with
the mother-of-pearl handle.”
“That is plain enough. Mother-of-pearl, that
pretty substance that shines with all the colors of
the rainbow, comes from certain shells. We use for
delicate ornamentation what was once the dwelling
of a glairy animal, near relation to the oyster.
Truly, this dwelling is a veritable palace in richness.
It shines with all imaginable tints, as if the rainbow
had deposited its colors there.
“This is the shell that furnishes the most beautiful
mother-of-pearl. It is called the meleagrina
margaritifera. Outside it is wrinkled and blackish-green;
inside it is smoother than polished marble,
richer in color than the rainbow. All tints are found
there, bright, but soft and changeable, according to
the point of view.”
“That superb shell is the house of a miserable,
slimy animal! In fairy tales the fairies themselves
have none to equal it. Oh! how beautiful, how beautiful
it is!”
“Every one has his portion in this world. The
.bn 364.png
.pn +1
slimy animal has for his a splendid palace of mother-of-pearl.”
“Where does the meleagrina live?”
“In the seas that wash the shores of Arabia.”
.if h
.il fn=i354.jpg w=200px align=l
.ca
Meleagrina (avicula) margaritifera
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Meleagrina (avicula) margaritifera]
.sp 2
.if-
“Is Arabia very far away?” inquired
Emile.
“Very far, my dear. Why do you
ask?”
“Because I should like to pick up
a lot of these beautiful shells.”
“Don’t dream of such a thing.
It is too far away, and, besides, they are not to be
gathered by every one that wants them. To get the
meleagrina men have to dive to the bottom of the sea,
and some of them never come up again.”
“And there are people who dare to dive to the bottom
of the sea just to get shells?” asked Claire.
“Plenty. So profitable, too, is the trade that we
should be badly received by the first-comers if we
took a notion to go and fish with them.”
“Then those shells are very precious?”
“You shall judge for yourself. First the inner
layer of the shell, sawed into sheets and tablets, is
the mother-of-pearl that we use for fine ornamentation.
Jules’ penknife-handle is covered with a sheet
of mother-of-pearl that was part of the inside of a
pearl-shell. But that is the least part of what the
precious shell produces. There are pearls as well.”
“But pearls are not very dear. With a few sous I
bought a whole boxful, to embroider you a purse.”
“Let us make a distinction: there are pearls and
pearls. The pearls you mention are little pieces of
.bn 365.png
.pn +1
colored glass pierced with a hole. Their price is
very moderate. The pearls of the meleagrina are
globules of the richest and finest mother-of-pearl.
If they are unusually large, they attain the fabulous
price of the diamond, up to hundreds of thousands
and millions of francs.”
“I don’t know those pearls.”
.if h
.il fn=i355.jpg w=200px align=r
.ca
Oyster Shell
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Oyster Shell]
.sp 2
.if-
“God keep you from ever knowing them, for in becoming
interested in pearls one
sometimes loses common sense
and honor. It is well, though,
to know how they are produced.
“Between the two parts of
the shell lives an animal like
the oyster. It is a mass of
slime in which you would find
it difficult to recognize an animal.
It digests, however, and breathes, and is sensitive
to pain, so sensitive that a grain of dust, a mere
nothing, renders existence painful to it. What does
the animal do when it feels itself tickled by some foreign
substance? It begins to sweat mother-of-pearl
around the place that itches. This mother-of-pearl
piles up in a little smooth ball, and there you have
a pearl made by the sick, slimy animal. If it is of
any considerable size, it will cost a fine bag of
crowns, and the person who wears it around her neck
will be very proud of it.
“But before getting to the neck, it must be fished
for. The fishermen are in a boat. They descend
into the sea, one after another, with the aid of a rope
.bn 366.png
.pn +1
to which is tied a large stone that drags them rapidly
to the bottom. The man about to dive seizes the
weighted rope with his right hand and the toes of
his right foot; with his left hand he closes his nostrils;
to his left foot is fastened a bag-shaped net.
The stone is thrown into the sea. The man sinks
like lead. Hastily he fills the net with shells, and
then pulls the rope to give the signal for ascent.
Those in the boat pull him up. Half-suffocated, the
diver reaches the surface with his fishing. The efforts
he has made to suspend respiration are so painful
that sometimes blood gushes from his mouth and
nose. Sometimes, the diver comes up with a leg
gone; sometimes he never comes up. A shark has
swallowed him.
.if h
.il fn=i356.jpg w=500px
.ca
Shark
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Shark]
.sp 2
.if-
“Some of those pearls that shine in a jeweler’s
windows cost much more than a fine bag of crowns:
they may have cost a man’s life.”
“If Arabia were at the end of the village, I would
not go pearl-fishing,” declared Emile.
“To open the shells, they are exposed to the sun
until the animals are dead. Then men rummage in
the pile, which smells horribly, and get the pearls.
There is nothing more to do except pierce them with
a hole.”
.bn 367.png
.pn +1
“One day,” said Jules, “when they were cleaning
the big mill-race I found some shells that shone inside
like mother-of-pearl.”
“We have in our streams and ditches shells in two
parts of a greenish black. They are called fresh-water
mussels. Their inside is mother-of-pearl.
Some, very large and living by preference in mountain
streams, even produce pearls. But these pearls
are far from having the luster and consequently the
price of those of the meleagrina.”
.bn 368.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch73
CHAPTER LXXIII||THE SEA
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“DO all those beautiful shells you have in the
drawer come from the sea?” asked Emile.
.ni
“They come from the sea.”
.pi
“Is the sea very large?”
“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 locomotive.”
“And what is to be seen at sea?”
“Overhead, the sky as here; all around, a large,
blue, circular expanse, and beyond that nothing.
One travels leagues and leagues, and yet is always
in the middle of that blue circle of waters, as if one
had not advanced. The rounded form of the earth,
and consequently of the seas covering the greater
part of it, is the cause of this appearance. The eye
can take in only a small extent of the sea, an extent
bounded by a circular line on which the dome of the
sky appears to rest; and as the circle of the waters
is ever being renewed while keeping the same appearance
as one advances, it seems as if one remained
stationary in the center of the circle where
the blue of the sky merges into the blue of the sea.
However, by dint of this continued advance one
finally perceives a little gray smoke on the line that
.bn 369.png
.pn +1
bounds the view. It is land beginning to show. Another
half-day’s journey, and the little gray smoke
will have become rocks on the coast or high mountains
in the interior.”
“The sea is larger than the earth, the geography
says,” remarked Jules.
“If you divide the surface of the terrestrial globe
into four equal parts, land will occupy about one of
these parts, and the sea, taken all together, the other
three.”
“What is under the sea?”
“Under the sea there is ground, the same as under
the waters of a lake or stream. Under-sea ground
is uneven, just as dry land is uneven. In certain
parts it is hollowed out into deep chasms that can
scarcely be sounded; in others it is cut up with mountain-chains,
the highest points of which come up
above the level of the water and form islands; in
still others, it extends in vast plains or rises up in
plateaus. If dry, it would not differ from the continents.”
“Then the depth is not the same everywhere?”
“In no wise. To measure the depth of the water,
a plummet attached to one end of a very long cord is
cast into the sea; the length of line unrolled by the
plummet in its fall indicates the depth of the water.
“The greatest depth of the Mediterranean appears
to be between Africa and Greece. In these parts, in
order to touch bottom, the lead unwinds 4000 or
5000 meters of line. This depth equals the height of
Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe.”
“So if Mont Blanc were set down in this hollow,”
.bn 370.png
.pn +1
was Claire’s comment, “its summit would only just
reach the surface of the water.”
“There are deeper places than that. In the Atlantic,
south of the banks of Newfoundland, one of
the best spots for cod-fishing, the lead shows about
8000 meters. The highest mountains in the world,
in Central Asia, are 8840 meters high.”
“Those mountains would come up above the surface
of the water in the place you spoke of, and
would form islands 850 meters in height.”
“Finally, in the seas about the South Pole there
are places where the lead shows 14,000 or 15,000
meters of depth, or nearly 4 leagues. Nowhere has
the dry land any such altitudes.
“Between these fearful chasms and the shore
where the water is no deeper than the thickness of
one’s finger, all the intermediate degrees may be
found, sometimes varying gradually, sometimes suddenly,
according to the configuration of the ground
underneath. On one shore the sea increases in depth
with frightful rapidity. That shore is, then, the top
of an escarpment of which the sea washes the base.
On another it increases little by little, and one must
go a long distance to attain a depth of a few meters.
There the ocean bed is a plain, sloping almost imperceptibly,
in continuation of the terrestrial plain.
“The average depth of the ocean appears to be
from six to seven kilometers; that is to say, if all the
submarine irregularities were to disappear and give
place to a level bed, like the bottom of a basin made
by man, the seas, while preserving on the surface
.bn 371.png
.pn +1
their present extent, would have a uniform layer of
water of from 6000 to 7000 meters in depth.”
“I get rather bewildered with all these kilometers,”
complained Emile. “Never mind; I begin to
understand that there is a great deal of water in
the sea.”
“Much more than you could ever imagine. You
know the Rhone, the largest river in France; you
have seen it at flood, when its muddy waters form a
sheet from one bank to the other as far as the eye
can reach. It is estimated that in this condition it
pours into the sea about five million liters of water
a second. Well, if it always preserved that majestic
fulness, this large river could not, in twenty
years, fill the thousandth part of the ocean basin.
Does that make you understand any better how immense
the sea is?”
“My poor head is dizzy at the mere thought of it.
What color are the waters of the sea? Are they
yellow and muddy like the Rhone?”
“Never, except at the mouths of rivers. Seen in
a small quantity, the water looks colorless; seen in a
great mass, it appears of its natural color, greenish
blue. The sea, then, is blue with a greenish tinge,
darker in the open sea, clearer near the coasts. But
this coloring changes a great deal, according to the
brightness of the sky. Under a bright sun the calm
sea is now pale blue, now dark indigo; under a
stormy sky it becomes bottle-green and almost
black.”
.bn 372.png
.pn +1
.if h
.il fn=i362.jpg w=500px
.ca
“The waters of the great deep”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: “The waters of the great deep”]
.sp 2
.if-
.bn 373.png
.pn +1
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch74
CHAPTER LXXIV||WAVES\_\_\_SALT\_\_\_SEAWEEDS
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
“WHERE do the waves come from?” asked
Jules. “The sea is very terrible, they say,
when it is angry.”
“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 monstrous backs, then let it plunge
into the liquid valley that intervenes. Oh! how
small and weak one feels on those four planks,
mounting and plunging at the will of the waves! If
the nutshell springs a leak under the furious blows
of the billows, may the good God have pity on us!
The shattered boat would disappear in fathomless
depths.”
“In the chasm you told us about?” Claire asked.
“In those chasms from which no one returns.
The shattered boat would be swallowed up in the
sea, and nothing of you would be left but a remembrance,
if there were people left on the earth who
loved you.”
“So the sea ought always to be calm,” said Jules.
“It would be a pity, my child, if the sea were always
at rest. This calm would be incompatible with
the salubrity of the seas, which must be violently
stirred up to keep them free from taint and to dissolve
.bn 374.png
.pn +1
the air necessary to their animal and vegetable
population. For the ocean of waters, as for the atmosphere
or ocean of air, there is need of a salutary
agitation—of tempests that churn up, renew, and
vivify the waters.
“The wind disturbs the surface of the ocean. If
it comes in gusts, it creates waves that leap with
foaming crest and break against one another. If
it is strong and continuous, it chases the waters in
long swells, in waves or surges that advance from
the open in parallel lines, succeed one another with
a majestic uniformity, and one after another rush
booming on to the shore. These movements, however
tumultuous they may be, affect only the surface
of the sea; thirty meters down the water is calm,
even in the most violent storms.
“In our seas the height of the biggest waves is not
more than two or three meters; but in some parts of
the South Sea the waves, in exceptional weather,
rise to ten or twelve meters. They are veritable
chains of moving hills with broad and deep valleys
between. Whipped by the wind, their summits
throw up clouds of foam and roll up in formidable
volume with a force sufficient to shatter the largest
vessels under their weight.
“The power of the waves borders on the prodigious.
There, where the shore, rising vertically
from the water, presents itself fully to the assaults
of the sea, the shock is so violent that the earth trembles
under one’s feet. The most solid dikes are demolished
and swept away; enormous blocks are torn
.bn 375.png
.pn +1
off, dragged along the ground, sometimes thrown
over jetties, where they roll like mere pebbles.
“It is to the continual action of waves that cliffs
are due, that is to say the vertical escarpments serving
in some places as shore for the sea. Such escarpments
are seen on the coasts of the English
Channel, both in France and in England. Unceasingly
the ocean undermines them, causes pieces to
fall down which it triturates into pebbles, and makes
its way so much farther inland. History has preserved
the memory of towers, dwellings, even villages,
that have had to be abandoned little by little
on account of similar landslides, and that to-day have
entirely disappeared beneath the waves.”
“Stirred up like that, the waters of the sea are not
likely to become putrid,” remarked Jules.
“The movement of the waves alone would not suffice
to insure the incorruptibility of sea-water. Another
cause of salubrity comes in here. The waters
of the sea hold in solution numerous substances that
give it an extremely disagreeable taste, but prevent
its corruption.”
“Then you cannot drink sea-water?” Emile asked.
“No, not even if you were pressed with the greatest
thirst.”
“And what taste has sea-water?”
“A taste at once bitter and salt, offensive to the
palate and causing nausea. That taste comes from
the dissolved substances. The most abundant is ordinary
salt, the salt we use for seasoning our food.”
“Salt, however,” objected Jules, “has no disagreeable
.bn 376.png
.pn +1
taste, although one cannot drink a glass of
salt water.”
“Doubtless; but in the waters of the sea it is accompanied
by many other dissolved substances
whose taste is very disagreeable. The degree of salt
varies in different seas. A liter of water in the
Mediterranean contains 44 grams of saline substances;
a liter of water in the Atlantic Ocean contains
only 32.
“An attempt has been made to estimate, approximately,
the total quantity of salt contained in the
ocean. Were the ocean dried up and all its saline
ingredients left at the bottom, they would suffice to
cover the whole surface of the earth with a uniform
layer ten meters thick.”
“Oh, what a lot of salt!” cried Emile. “We
should never see the end of it, however much we
salted our food. Then salt is obtained from the
sea?”
“Certainly. A low, level stretch of seashore is
selected, basins are dug, shallow but of considerable
extent; these are called salt marshes. Then the sea-water
is admitted to these basins. When they are
full, the communication with the sea is closed. The
work on salt marshes is done in the summer. The
heat of the sun causes the water to evaporate little
by little, and the salt remains in a crystalline crust
that is removed with rakes. The accumulated salt
is piled up in a big heap to let it drain.”
“If we should put a plate of salt water in the sun,
would that be doing in a small way what is done in
the salt marshes?” asked Jules.
.bn 377.png
.pn +1
“Exactly: the water would disappear, evaporated
by the sun, and the salt would remain in the plate.”
“There are lots of fish in the sea, I know,” said
Claire, “small, large, and monstrous. The sardine,
cod, anchovy, tunny-fish, and ever so many more
come to us from the sea. There are also mollusks, as
you call them, also animals that cover themselves
with a shell; then enormous crabs with claws bigger
than a man’s fist; and a lot of other creatures that I
don’t know. What do they all live on?”
“First, they eat one another a good deal. The
weakest becomes the prey of a stronger one, which
in its turn finds its master and becomes food for it.
But it is plain that if the inhabitants of the sea had
no other resource than devouring one another, sooner
or later nourishment would fail them and they would
perish.
.if h
.il fn=i367.jpg w=200px align=r
.ca
Seaweed
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Seaweed]
.sp 2
.if-
“Therefore, in this matter of nutrition, things are
ordered in the sea much as they are on land. Plants
furnish alimentary matter. Certain species feed on
the plant, others devour those
that eat the plant; so that, directly
or indirectly, vegetation
really nourishes them all.”
“I understand,” said Jules.
“A sheep browses the grass, a
wolf eats the sheep, and so it is
the grass that nourishes the
wolf. There are, then, plants in the sea?”
“In great abundance. Our prairies are not more
grassy than the bottom of the sea. Only, marine
plants differ much from land ones. They never
.bn 378.png
.pn +1
have blossoms, never anything that can be likened to
leaves, never any roots. They attach themselves to
rocks by a stickiness at their base, without being able
to draw nourishment from them. They feed on
water and not on the soil. Some resemble sticky
thongs, folded ribbons, long manes; others take the
form of little tufted buds, soft top-knots, wavy
plumes; still others are slashed in strips, rolled in
spirals, or shaped like coarse, slimy threads. Some
are olive-green, or pale rose-color; others are honey-yellow,
or bright red. These odd plants are called
seaweeds.”
.bn 379.png
.pn +1
.pb
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.h2 id=ch75
CHAPTER LXXV||RUNNING WATERS
.sp 2
.dc 0.0 0.7
“I HAVE been told,” said Emile, “that the Rhone
empties its waters into the sea.”
.ni
“The Rhone does run into the sea,” returned his
uncle. “It pours into it every second five million
liters of water.”
.pi
“Receiving so much water continually, does not
the sea end by overflowing, like a basin, when it is
too full?”
“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 ones. And that is
only a very small part of the streams that flow into
the sea. All the rivers in the world join it, absolutely
all. The Amazon, in South America, is 1400
leagues long, and ten leagues wide at its mouth.
What an immense quantity of water it must furnish!
“Imagine that all the streams in the world, small
as well as large, the tiniest brooks no less than the
enormous rivers, flow unceasingly into the sea. You
know the little brook with the crabs. In certain
places Emile can jump across it; scarcely anywhere
is the water over his knees. Well, the brook goes to
the sea exactly as the Amazon does; every second
it casts its few liters of water into it; that is all it
.bn 380.png
.pn +1
can do. But it does not dare, tiny little stream, to
make the voyage alone and go and find the sea, the
immense sea, all by itself. It meets company on the
way, joins its thread of clear water to stronger
streams which become rivers by joining their forces;
the sea-going-river receives tributary streams, and
the sea, in receiving the river, drinks the tiny brook.”
“All running waters,” said Jules, “brooks, torrents,
streams, rivers, run into the sea without a
break, and that takes place all over the world, so
that every second the sea receives incalculable volumes
of water. So I come back to Emile’s question:
How is it that, continually receiving so much water,
the sea does not overflow?”
“If, when full, a reservoir receives from a spring
just as much as it lets out through some opening,
can this reservoir overflow, even when water is always
coming in?”
“Certainly not: losing as much as it receives, it
must always keep the same level.”
“It is the same with the sea. It loses just as much
as it gains, and therefore its level always remains
the same. Brooks, torrents, streams, rivers, all run
into the sea; but brooks, torrents, streams, and rivers
also come from the sea. They carry back to the
immense reservoir what they took from it, and not
a drop more.”
“If the crab brook comes from the sea,” interposed
Emile, “as you say, its water ought to be salt;
but I know very well it is not, in the least.”
“Certainly it is not salt; but the brook does not
come out of the sea as the water of a ditch comes
.bn 381.png
.pn +1
from a reservoir. In coming from the sea, before
becoming what it is, the brook has first passed
through the air as clouds.”
“As clouds?”
“As clouds, my little friend. Let us recall something
I told you a while ago.
“The heat of the sun causes water to evaporate;
it reduces it to something invisible, to vapor that is
dissipated in the air. Seas present a surface three
times that of the dry land. Over these immensities
there is constantly taking place an enormous
evaporation, raising into the air a part of the waters
of the sea. The vapor thus formed becomes clouds;
the clouds are borne in all directions, letting down
snow and rain; this rain and melted snow penetrate
the ground, filter down and give birth to springs,
which gradually, by their union, become brooks,
streams, and rivers.”
“I see why the water of brooks is not salt,” said
Jules, “although it comes from the sea. When you
put salt water in a plate in the sun, only the water
goes away; the salt remains. The vapor that rises
from the sea is not salt, because the salt does not go
with it when it forms. So streams fed by snow and
rain that fall from the clouds cannot be salt.”
“What you have just told us is very remarkable,
Uncle,” observed Claire. “All water-courses, rivers,
streams, torrents, brooks, come from and return
to the sea.”
“They come from the sea, an inexhaustible reservoir
that covers with its waters a surface three times
larger than that of all the continents joined together;
.bn 382.png
.pn +1
from the sea, whose abysses go down at some
places to the depth of 14 kilometers, and receive unceasingly
the tribute of all the water-courses of the
world, without ever being taxed beyond their capacity.
The enormous surface of the sea furnishes
the air with vapor which turns into clouds; later
these clouds dissolve in rain and, chased by the wind,
travel like immense watering-pots over the ground,
rendering it fertile. In their turn, rain and snow,
precipitated by the clouds, give birth to the rivers
that carry their waters to the sea. In that way a
continual current is effected which, starting from the
sea, returns to the sea, after having traveled through
the atmosphere in the form of clouds, watered the
earth as rain, and crossed continents as rivers.
“The sea is the common reservoir of the waters.
Rivers, springs, fountains, every little brooklet, all
come from and all return to it. The water of a dewdrop,
the water that circulates in the sap of plants,
the water that forms beads of perspiration on our
foreheads, all come from the sea and are on their
way back to it. However small the little drop, do
not fear that it will lose its way. If the arid sand
drinks it up, the sun will know how to draw it out
again and send it to rejoin the vapor in the atmosphere
and, sooner or later, to reënter the ocean-basin.
Nothing is lost, nothing escapes the eye of
God, who has measured the oceans in the hollow of
His hand, and knows the number of their drops of
water.”
.bn 383.png
.pn +1
.pb
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.h2 id=ch76
CHAPTER LXXVI||THE SWARM
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.65
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 see what it was.
Jacques was gravely tapping with a key on the watering
can: pom! pom! pom! pom! Mother Ambroisine
was busily beating a copper saucepan with a
small stone: pom! pom! pom! pom!
Have our two good servants lost their heads, that
they are giving themselves up, with the most serious
air in the world, to this charivari? Without suspending
their singular occupation, they exchange a
few words. “They are going toward the currant-bush,”
says Jacques. “They look as if they were
going away,” answers Mother Ambroisine; and the
pom! pom! pom! pom! is resumed.
Just then Uncle Paul and his nephews and niece
come up. One glance is enough to explain everything
to Uncle Paul. Over the garden there is a
kind of red smoke flying, which sometimes rises and
sometimes sinks, sometimes scatters and sometimes
comes together in a compact mass. A monotonous
whirring of wings proceeds from the midst of the red
smoke. Jacques and Mother Ambroisine, still tapping,
follow the cloud. Uncle Paul looks on, greatly
.bn 384.png
.pn +1
preoccupied. Emile, Jules, and Claire look at each
other, surprised at what is going on.
The little cloud descends, it approaches the currant-bush,
as Jacques had foreseen, passes around
it, examines it, chooses a branch. And now pom!
pom! pom! pom! louder than ever. On the branch
selected a round mass is formed, visibly increasing
while the cloud, less and less compact, whirls around.
Jacques and Mother Ambroisine stop tapping.
Soon there hangs from the branch of the currant-bush
a large bunch, from which the last comers of the
living cloud depart to return an instant later. All
is over; one can now approach.
Emile, who suspects it is bees, would like to return
to the house. His old misadventure with the hive
has left him with lively remembrances. To reassure
him his uncle takes him by the hand. Emile bravely
approaches the currant-bush. What risk can he run
with his uncle? Jules and Claire come close also;
it is worth the trouble.
Now, on the currant-bush hangs a bunch of bees, all
close together. Some belated ones come from here
and there, choose a good place, and cling on to the
preceding ones. The branch bends under the burden,
for there are several thousands on it. The first
arrivals, doubtless the most robust, since they will
have to support the whole load, have seized the
branch with the claws of their forefeet; others have
come and fastened themselves to the hind feet of the
first bees, and in their turn have served as suspension
points to a third rank; then, gradually, to a
fourth, fifth, sixth, and more still, meantime diminishing
.bn 385.png
.pn +1
in number, until finally they are all clinging
there by their hands, as one might say. The children
stand in wonder before the bunch of bees, whose
red down and lustrous wings shine in the sun; but
they prudently keep at a distance.
“Do we not run the risk of being stung by getting
so near?” Jules asked.
“In their present condition bees rarely make use
of their sting. If you foolishly went and tormented
them, I would not answer for their conduct; but leave
them alone, and you can watch them at your ease,
without any fear. They have other cares now than
thinking of stinging little curious boys!”
“And what cares? They look very peaceful; one
would say they were all asleep.”
“The grave cares of a people who have no country
and seek to create one for themselves.”
“Bees have a country, then?”
“They have a hive, which amounts to the same
thing for them.”
“Then they are looking for a hive to live in?”
“They are looking for a hive.”
“And where do these homeless bees come
from?”
“They come from the old hive in the garden.”
“They might have stayed there, instead of going
out to seek their fortunes.”
“They could not. The population of the hive increased,
and there was not room enough for all. So
the most adventurous, under the guidance of a queen,
expatriated themselves to found a colony elsewhere.
The emigrating troop is called a swarm.”
.bn 386.png
.pn +1
“The queen who leads the swarm—she must be
there in the common bunch?”
“She is. It is she who, alighting on the currant-bush,
determined the halt of the entire company.”
These words, country, queen, emigrants, colony,
had impressed the children’s imaginations; they
were astonished to hear the terms of human politics
applied to bees. Questions came one after another,
but Uncle Paul turned a deaf ear.
“Wait until the swarm is gathered into the hive,
and I will tell you at length the splendid story of
the bees. At present I will only answer Claire’s
question as to why Jacques and Mother Ambroisine
tapped on the watering-pot and the saucepan.
“If the swarm had flown off into the country, it
would have been lost to us. It was necessary to induce
it to alight on a tree in the garden and there
form itself into a bunch. It has always been thought
that this result could be obtained by making a noise.
Thus the sound of thunder is imitated and, as it is
said, the bees, afraid of the perils of an approaching
storm, quickly seek refuge. I do not believe bees
are silly enough to fear a storm because of this tapping
on an old pot. They alight where they please,
when they please, and not far from the old hive,
provided the place suits them.”
Jacques, with a saw in one hand and a hammer in
the other, called to Uncle Paul. With some new
boards he was going to make a house for the swarm.
By evening the hive was ready. At the bottom were
three little holes for the bees to go in and out, and
inside some pegs for holding the future honey-combs.
.bn 387.png
.pn +1
A large flag-stone had been placed against the wall
for the hive to stand on. At night-fall they went to
the currant-bush. The bunch of bees was put into
the hive, and a few shakes detached it from the
branch. Finally the hive was put in place on its
support.
The next morning Jules watched to see what the
bees were doing. The house had suited them.
They were to be seen coming, one by one, out of the
little doors of the hive, rubbing themselves a moment
in the sun on the flag-stone, and then flying
away to the flowers in the garden. They were at
work. The colony was founded. At a grand council
they had decided matters during the night.
.bn 388.png
.pn +1
.pb
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CHAPTER LXXVII||WAX
.sp 2
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IT was not necessary to remind Uncle Paul of his
promise. He took advantage of the first leisure
moment to tell the children the story of the bees.
“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 bread, masons
houses, carpenters furniture, tailors clothes; in
short, there are artisans for every occupation. In
like manner, in the social economy of the beehive,
there are various divisions; namely, that of the mothers,
that of the fathers, and that of the workers.
“For the first, there is only one bee in each hive.
This bee, mother of the whole population, is called
the queen. She is distinguished from the workers
by a large body and the absence of working implements.
Her business is to lay eggs. She has as
many as twelve hundred at a time in her body, and
others keep on forming as fast as the first are laid.
What a formidable business is the queen’s! But
then, what respectful attentions, what tender care
the other bees show to their common mother! They
feed the noble mother by the mouthful; they give
her of the best, for she has not time to gather for
herself, and, to tell the truth, would not know how
.bn 389.png
.pn +1
to do it if she had. To lay and lay is her one and
only function.
.if h
.il fn=i379a.jpg w=150px align=r
.ca
Drone
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Drone]
.sp 2
.if-
“The business of father falls to six or eight hundred
idlers called drones. They are larger than the
workers and smaller than the queen. Their large
bulging eyes join together on the
top of the head. They have no
sting. Only the queen and the
workers have the right to carry the
poisoned stiletto. The drones are
deprived of this weapon. One asks, what use are
they? One day they form a retinue of honor
to the queen, who takes a fancy to fly through
the air; then hardly anything more is heard of them.
They perish miserably in the open, or, if they return
to the hive, are coldly received by the workers, who
look at them unkindly for exhausting the provisions
without ever adding to them. At first they treat
them to some smart blows to show them that idlers
are not wanted in a working society; and if they fail
to understand, a resolution is taken. One fine morning
they kill every one of them. The bodies are
swept out of the hive, and that’s the end of it.
.if h
.il fn=i379b.jpg w=150px align=l
.ca
Worker
.ca-
.if-
.if t
.sp 2
[Illustration: Worker]
.sp 2
.if-
“Now come the workers, about twenty or thirty
thousand bees to one queen. These are
called working-bees. They are the
ones you see in the garden flying from
one flower to another, gathering the
harvest. Other workers, a little older
and consequently more experienced, remain in the
hive to look after the housekeeping and to distribute
nourishment to the nurslings hatched from the eggs
.bn 390.png
.pn +1
laid by the queen. There are, then, two bodies of
workers to be distinguished: the wax-bees, younger,
which make wax and gather the materials for honey;
the nurses, older, which stay at home to bring up the
family. These two kinds of workers are not mutually
exclusive. When young, full of ardor, adventurous,
the bee follows the trade of wax-maker. It
goes to the fields, seeking viands, visits the flowers,
or sometimes is forced to assert itself and unsheath
its sting, to put to flight some evil-intentioned aggressor;
it sweats wax to make the storehouse and
the little rooms where the brood of young ones is
kept. Growing older, it gains experience, but loses
its first ardor. Then it stays at home, turns nurse,
and occupies itself with the delicate task of rearing
the young.”
This preamble of Uncle Paul’s, defining the three
industrial classes of the bees, appeared to interest
the children greatly, and they were surprised to find
that insects have such marvelously elaborate social
laws. At the very first opportunity Jules began
questioning his uncle. The impatient child wanted
to know everything at once.
“You say the wax-bees make wax. I thought they
found it ready-made in flowers.”
“They do not find it ready-made. They make it,
sweat it, that is the word, as the oyster sweats the
stone of his shell, as the meleagrina sweats the substance
of its mother-of-pearl and its pearls.
“If you look closely at a bee’s stomach, you will
see it is composed of several pieces or rings fitting
into each other. The stomach of all insects has,
.bn 391.png
.pn +1
moreover, the same formation. This arrangement
of several parts fitted endwise is found in the horns
or antennæ, as well as in the legs, of all insects without
exception. It is precisely to this division into
separate pieces fitted endwise that the word insect
alludes, its meaning being cut in pieces. Is not the
body of an insect composed, in fact, of a series of
pieces placed end to end?
“Let us come back to the bee’s stomach. In the
fold separating one ring from the next there is
found, underneath, in the middle of the stomach, the
wax-producing mechanism. There, little by little,
the waxy matter oozes out, just as with us sweat
oozes through the skin. This matter accumulates in
a thin layer which the insect detaches by rubbing the
stomach with its legs. There are eight of these wax-producers.
When one is idle, another is working;
so that the bee always has some layer of wax at its
disposal.”
“And what does the bee do with its wax?”
“It builds cells, that is to say storehouses, where
the honey is preserved, and little rooms where the
young bees in the form of larvæ are raised.”
“It builds its house, then,” put in Emile, “with
the layers of wax taken from the folds of its stomach.
And there, you see, the bee shows a very original
and inventive mind. It is as if, in order to build a
house, we should rub our sides so as to get from them
the blocks of cut stone we needed.”
“The snail,” concluded Uncle Paul, “has already
accustomed us to these original ideas of animals. It
sweats the stone for its shell.”
.bn 392.png
.pn +1
.pb
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CHAPTER LXXVIII||THE CELLS
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“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 and arranged with perfect
regularity. In geometrical terms, each would
be called a hexagonal prism, or a prism with six
facets.
“Do not be surprised at this introduction of terms
belonging to the beautiful and severe science of form—of
geometry, in short. Bees are geometricians of
consummate skill. Their constructions have required
the exercise of the highest intelligence. All
the power of human reason was necessary to follow,
step by step, the insect’s science. I will return presently
to this fine subject, a very difficult one, but I
will try to make it intelligible to you.
“The cells are placed horizontally, back to back
and end to end, in pairs, with the closed ends joining.
Furthermore, they are arranged side by side in
greater or less number, and they touch each other by
their flat faces, each one of which serves as partition
wall for two contiguous cells. The two layers of
cells, back to back at their closed ends, constitute
what is called a comb or honey-comb. On one side
of this comb are found all the entrances to the cells
.bn 393.png
.pn +1
of the corresponding layer; on the other side the
cells of the second layer open. Finally, the honey-comb
is suspended vertically in the hive, with half its
openings to the right and half to the left. It adheres
by its upper edge to the roof of the hive, or to
the bars that cross it inside.
“One comb is not enough when the population is
numerous; others are constructed like the first. The
various combs, ranged parallel to one another, leave
free intervening spaces. These are the streets, the
public squares, the thoroughfares, on which the
openings of the two layers of cells belonging to neighboring
combs give, as the doors of our houses open
on the right and left of a street. There the bees
circulate, going from one door to another to deposit
their honey in the cells used as storehouses, or to
distribute nourishment to the young larvæ lodged
one by one in other cells. In these same public
places they assemble when necessary, hold consultations,
and deliberate on the affairs of the community.
There, for example, among the nurses going from
door to door to see whether the larvæ need feeding,
and the wax-bees rubbing themselves vehemently to
extract the wax and begin to build, is plotted the extermination
of the drones; there, when the birth of
a new queen menaces the hive with civil war, the
project of emigration ripens. There—But let us
not anticipate. Let us return to the cells.”
“I am longing to know the whole of the strange
story of the bees,” Jules broke in.
“Patience! First of all let us see how the cells
are constructed. The bee that feels that it is supplied
.bn 394.png
.pn +1
with the materials for making wax rubs itself
and extracts a sheet of wax from the folds of its
rings. With the little layer of wax between its teeth,
that is to say between its two mandibles, it squeezes
through the press of its comrades. ‘Let me pass,’
it seems to say; ‘see, I have something to work with.’
The crowd makes way. The bee takes its place in
the middle of the workyard. The wax is kneaded
between its mandibles, pounded to pieces, then flattened
out into a ribbon, pounded again, and once
more kneaded into a compact mass. At the same
time it is impregnated with a kind of saliva that
gives it flexibility. When the material is at the
proper stage, the bee applies it bit by bit. To cut
off the surplus, the mandibles serve as scissors; the
antennæ, in continual motion, serve it as probe and
measuring-compasses; they feel the wall of wax to
judge of its thickness; they plunge into the cavity to
find out its depth. What exquisite touch in this pair
of living compasses, to bring to successful completion
a construction so delicate and regular! Moreover,
if the worker is a novice, master-bees are there
to watch it with an experienced eye, to seize on the
slightest fault at once and hasten to remedy it. The
maladroit worker modestly steps aside and watches
in order to learn. The trick learned, it sets to work
again. With thousands of wax-bees working together,
a comb two or three decimeters wide is often
a day’s work.”
“You told us,” said Claire, “that the cells are especially
remarkable for their geometrical arrangement.”
.bn 395.png
.pn +1
“I am just coming to that magnificent topic, but I
shall treat it briefly, I warn you. You are far from
being able to follow yet in its superior beauties the
architecture of the bees. Yes, my dear Jules, the
wax house of a poor insect, to be well understood,
demands knowledge that very few persons possess.
Ah, you may study ever so long before you are able
fully to understand this marvel! For the present,
here is what I will tell you.
“The cells serve, some as store-rooms for the
honey, others as nests for the little ones. They are
made of wax, a material that the bees cannot procure
in indefinite quantities. They must wait until the
stomach sweats a little layer of it, and it forms very
slowly, at the expense of the insect’s very substance.
The bee builds with the materials of its own body, it
impoverishes itself in sweating the wherewithal to
construct the cells. You can judge from that how
precious a thing wax is to the bees, and with what
strict economy they must use it.
“And yet the innumerable family must be lodged,
honey store-rooms must multiply to supply the wants
of the community. Moreover, it is necessary that
these store-rooms and nurseries take up as little
room as possible, so as not to encumber the hive, and
to permit free circulation to the twenty or thirty
thousand inhabitants of the city. In fine, one of the
hardest problems is presented to the bees: they must
make the greatest possible number of cells in the
least space and with the least wax possible. Well,
friend Jules, do you think you could solve the bees’
problem?”
.bn 396.png
.pn +1
“Alas! Uncle, I hardly understand the statement
of it.”
“To economize the wax, a very simple way suggests
itself at the outset: it is to make the partitions
of the cells very thin. You may be quite sure the
bees are equal to this elementary requirement.
They make the wax walls scarcely as thick as a sheet
of paper. But that is not enough: it is necessary
above all to take the form into consideration and to
seek the most economical shape. Let us try. What
shape shall we give the cells to satisfy the conditions
of economy in space and wax?
“First of all let us suppose them to be round. Let
us trace on paper some circles of equal size and
touching one another. Between three of these contiguous
circles there will always be an unoccupied
space. The round form will not do, then, for the
cells, since there will always be a waste of space, or
empty intervals.
“Let us make them square. We will trace equal
squares on the paper. In going about it properly we
can arrange the squares side by side without leaving
any empty spaces between them. Look at the inlaid
floor of this room, composed of little square red
bricks. These bricks leave no intervening spaces;
they touch on every side. The square form, therefore,
suits the first condition, namely: to utilize all
the space.
“But here is where another difficulty arises.
Cells fashioned on the square model would not hold
enough honey for the quantity of wax used in constructing
.bn 397.png
.pn +1
them. In order to increase their capacity,
you must increase as much as possible the number
of their facets. I will not try to demonstrate to you
this beautiful truth; it is beyond your intelligence.
Geometry affirms it; let us consider it a fact.
“Starting from that, the choice is soon made.
Among all the regular figures that can be placed side
by side without leaving an unoccupied space, you
must choose that which has the greatest number of
sides, for that is the one that will hold the most honey
for the same quantity of wax used.
“Geometry teaches that the only regular figures
that can be arranged without waste of space are: the
three-sided figure, or triangle; the four-sided, or
square; and the six-sided, or hexagon. That is all:
no other regular figures touch all around so as to
leave no empty spaces between them.
“So it is, then, in the hexagonal form, or form
with six sides, that the cells can occupy, collectively,
the least space, use the least wax, and hold the most
honey. Bees, knowing these things better than any
one else, make hexagonal cells, never any other
kind.”
“Then bees have reason,” remarked Claire, “like
ours; even superior, if they can solve such problems?”
“If bees constructed their cells after a premeditated,
considered, calculated plan, it would be something
alarming, my dear child: animals would rival
man. Bees are profound geometricians because
they work, unconsciously, under the inspiration of
.bn 398.png
.pn +1
the sublime Geometrician. Let us stop this talk,
which I fear you have not wholly understood; but,
at any rate, I have opened your eyes to one of the
greatest wonders of this world.”
.bn 399.png
.pn +1
.pb
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CHAPTER LXXIX||HONEY
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“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 about the nectar,
that sweet liquor that oozes out at the bottom of the
corolla to entice the little winged people and make
them shake the anthers on the stigma. This nectar
is what the bee wants. It is its great feast, the great
feast also of the little ones and the queen-mother;
it is the prime ingredient of honey. How carry
home a liquid so that others may enjoy it? The bee
possesses neither pitcher, jar, pot, nor anything of
the sort. I am wrong: like the ant that carries the
plant-lice’s milk to the workers, it is provided with a
natural can, stomach, paunch, or crop.
“The bee enters a flower, plunges to the bottom
of the corolla a long and flexible trunk, a kind of
tongue that laps the sweet liquor. Droplet by droplet,
drawn from this flower and that, the crop is filled.
The bee at the same time nibbles a few grains of
pollen. Moreover, it proposes to carry a good load
of it to the hive. It has special utensils for this
work: first, the down of its body, then the brushes
and baskets that its legs supply. The down and
the brushes are used for harvesting; the baskets
for carrying.
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“First the bee rolls delightedly among the stamens
to cover itself with pollen. Then it passes and re-passes
over its velvety body the extremities of its
hind legs, where is found a square piece bristling
on the inside with short and rough hairs which serve
as a brush. The grains of pollen scattered over the
down of the insect are thus gathered together into
a little pellet, which the intermediary legs seize in
order to place it in one or other of the baskets.
They call by this name a hollow edged with hair
on the outside of the hind legs, a little above the
brushes. It is there the pellets of pollen are piled
up as fast as the brushes gather them on the powdery
down. The load does not fall, because it is
held by the hairs that edge the basket; it is also
stuck against the bottom. The queen and the drones
have not these working implements. Utensils are
useless to those who do not work.”
“The little yellow masses one sees on the hind
legs of bees visiting the flowers are loads of pollen
contained in the baskets?” asked Jules.
“Exactly. The bee has lapped so much sweet
from the corollas, has brushed its pollen-powdered
sides so often, that finally the crop is full and the
baskets are running over. It is time to go back to
the hive, time for a flight made heavy with so much
treasure.
“Let us take advantage of the time used in the
return journey to inform ourselves about the origin
of honey. The bee carries with it a sugary liquor
in its crop, two balls of pollen in its baskets; but
all that is not yet honey. Real honey the bee prepares
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with the ingredients that we have just seen it
gather; it cooks it, lets it simmer in its crop. Its
little stomach is better than a real pot for carrying:
it is an admirable alembic, in which the liquid that
has been lapped up and the grains of pollen that
have been nibbled are worked by digestion and converted
into a delicious marmalade, which is honey.
This skilful cooking finished, the content of the crop
is honey.
“The bee arrives at the hive. If by good fortune
the queen-mother is encountered, the workman does
reverence to her and offers her, from mouth to
mouth, a sip of honey, the first from its crop. Then
it seeks an empty cell, inserts its head into the storeroom,
projects its tongue, and spits out the contents
of its stomach; and there you have real honey
disgorged by the bee.”
“Is it all disgorged?” Emile asked.
“Not all. The crop’s contents are usually divided
into three parts: one for the nurses that remain in
the hive to do the housework; a second for the little
ones still in the nest; a third kept by the bee that
has prepared the honey. Must it not have food in
order to work well?”
“Then bees feed on honey?”
“Without a doubt. You imagined perhaps that
bees made honey expressly for man. Undeceive
yourself: bees make honey for themselves and not
for us. We plunder their riches.”
“What becomes of the little balls of pollen?” inquired
Jules.
“The pollen enters into the making of honey, and
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serves as nourishment for the bees. The working
bee, on its return from harvesting, puts its hind
legs into a cell where there is neither larva nor
honey, and with the end of its middle legs it detaches
the pellets and pushes them to the bottom. In repeating
its trips it ends by filling both the cell in
which the honey is disgorged and that in which the
pollen is stored. The nurses draw on these provisions
when they go from cell to cell, distributing
small portions to the little ones; thence also they
get their own food; in fact, the whole population
finds its resources there when bad weather comes.
“Flowers do not last all the year, and, moreover,
there are days of rest, rainy days when the bees
cannot go out. It is necessary, therefore, to have
pollen and honey in reserve, and to have a good
supply. So, when flowers are plenty and the harvest
exceeds immediate requirements, the workers
gather honey and pollen untiringly and store it in
cells, which they close, as soon as full, with a cover
of wax.
“These are reserve supplies, safeguards for the
future in case of scarcity. The wax cover is religiously
respected; it would be a state crime to
touch it prematurely. In time of want the seals are
removed and each one draws from the open comb,
but with restraint and sobriety. The comb exhausted,
they break the seals of another.”
“How are young bees fed?” was Jules’s next
question.
“When the cells destined to serve as nests are
prepared in sufficient number by the wax-bees, the
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queen-mother goes from one to another, dragging
with much effort her fruitful womb. The nurses
form a respectful retinue. One egg, one only, is
laid in each cell. In a few days—from three to six—there
comes from this egg a larva, a little white
worm, without legs, bent like a comma. Now begins
the nurses’ delicate work.
“They must every day, and several times a day,
distribute nourishment to the little worms, not honey
or pollen in its natural state, but a preparation of
increasing strength such as delicate stomachs need at
first. It is, in the beginning, a liquid paste, almost
tasteless; then something sweeter; and finally pure
honey, nourishment at its full strength. Do we offer
a slice of beef to a crying baby? No, but milk
first and then pap. Bees do the same: they have
honey, strong food, for the strong; and weaker nourishment,
tasteless pap, for the weak. How do they
prepare these more or less substantial foods? It
would be hard to say. Perhaps they mix pollen and
honey in different proportions.
“In six days the larvæ, called brood-comb, have
attained their development. Then, like the larvæ of
other insects, they retire from the world to undergo
metamorphosis. In order to protect its suffering
flesh at the critical moment of its transfiguration,
each larva lines the inside of its cell with silk, and
the working-bees close the cell with a cover of wax.
In the silk-lined case the skin is cast off and the
passage to the state of nymph accomplished.
Twelve days later the nymph awakes from the deep
sleep of the second birth; it shakes itself, tears its
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narrow swaddling-clothes, and comes forth a bee.
The wax cover is gnawed by the inclosed insect as
well as by the working-bees lending a ready hand
to the resuscitated; and the hive counts one more
citizen. The new-born bee makes its toilet a little,
dries its wings, polishes its body, and is off to work.
It knows its trade without having had to learn it:
wax-bee in its youth, nurse in its old age.”
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CHAPTER LXXX||THE QUEEN BEE
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“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, that of a thimble.
They are fastened to the edge of the combs and are
called royal cells.”
“When she lays in a large or small cell,” asked
Jules, “does the queen know whether the egg is that
of a queen or of a working-bee?”
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Queen Bee
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[Illustration: Queen Bee]
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“She does not know, she does not need to know.
There is no difference between the queen-eggs and
working-bee-eggs. Its treatment alone decides the
issue for the egg. Treated in a certain manner, the
young larva becomes a queen, on whom depends the
future prosperity of the hive; treated in another
way, it becomes one of the working
people and is furnished with brushes
and baskets. Bees make their queens
at will; the first egg laid would suffice
to fill the royal functions worthily,
if treated with that end in view. And
what does not treatment, or education, accomplish
with us in our tender years? It does not make us
kings or peasants, but honest people, which is better;
and scoundrels, which is worse.
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“It need not be said that the bees’ pedagogic
methods are not the same as ours. Man, as much
mind as matter, if not more, turns his attention above
all to the generous impulses of the heart, the noble
aspirations of the soul. With bees education is
purely animal, and is governed by the dictates of the
belly. The kind of food makes either the queen or
the working-bee. For the larvæ that are to discharge
the functions of royalty the nurses prepare a
special pap, a royal dish of which only they know
the secret. Whoever eats of it is consecrated queen.
“This strengthening nourishment brings about a
greater development than usual; for that reason, as
I told you, the larvæ destined for royalty are lodged
in spacious cells. For these noble cradles wax is
used with prodigality. No more hexagonal, parsimonious
forms, no thin partitions; a large and sumptuously
thick thimble. Economy is silent where
queens are concerned.”
“It is, then, without the actual queen’s knowledge
that bees make other queens?”
“Yes, my friend. The queen is excessively jealous,
she cannot endure in the hive any bee whose
presence may bring the slightest diminution to her
royal prerogatives. Woe to the pretenders that
should get in her way! ‘Ah! you come to supplant
me, to steal from me the love of my subjects!’ Ah,
this! Ah, that! It would be something horrible,
my children. Read the history of mankind, and you
will see what disasters crowned heads, brought to
bay, can inflict upon nations. But the working-bees
are strong-minded, they know that nothing lasts in
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this world, not even queens. They treat the reigning
sovereign with the greatest respect, without losing
sight of the future, which demands other queens.
They must have them to perpetuate the race; they
will have them, whether or no. To this end the
royal pap is served to the larvæ in the large cells.
“Now, in the spring, when the working-bees and
drones are already hatched, a loud rustling is heard
in the royal cells. They are the young queens trying
to get out of their wax prisons. The nurses and
wax-bees are there, standing guard in a dense battalion.
They keep the young queens in their cells
by force; to prevent their getting out, they reinforce
the wax inclosures, they mend the broken covers.
‘It is not time for you to show yourselves,’ they seem
to say; ‘there is danger!’ And very respectfully
they resort to violence. Impatient, the young queens
renew their rustling.
“The queen-mother has heard them. She hastens
up in a passion. She stamps with rage on the royal
cells, she sends pieces of the wax covers flying and,
dragging the pretenders from their cells, she pitilessly
tears them to pieces. Several succumb under
her blows; but the people surround her, encircle
her closely, and little by little draw her away from
the scene of carnage. The future is saved: there are
still some queens left.
“In the meantime wrath is excited and civil war
breaks out. Some lean to the old queen, others to
the young ones. In this conflict of opinions disorder
and tumult succeed to peaceful activity. The hive is
filled with menacing buzzings, the well-filled storehouses
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are given over to pillage. There is an orgy
of feasting with no thought of the morrow. Dagger-thrusts
are exchanged. The queen decides on a master-stroke:
she abandons the ungrateful country, the
country that she founded and that now raises up
rivals against her. ‘Let them that love me follow
me!’ And behold her proudly rushing out of the
hive, never to enter it again. Her partizans fly away
with her. The emigrating troop forms a swarm,
which goes forth to found a new colony elsewhere.
“To restore order, the working-bees that were
away during the tumult come and join the bees left
in the hive. Two young queens set up their rights.
Which of them shall reign? A duel to the death
shall decide it. They come out of their cells.
Hardly have they caught sight of each other when
they join in shock of battle, rear upright, seize with
their mandibles each an antenna of the other, and
hold themselves head to head, breast to breast. In
this position, each would only have to bend the end
of its stomach a little to plunge its poisoned sting
into its rival’s body. But that would be a double
death, and their instinct forbids them a mode of assault
in which both would perish. They separate
and retire. But the people gathered around them
prevent their getting away: one of them must succumb.
The two queens return to the attack. The
more skilful one, at a moment when the other is off
guard, jumps on its rival’s back, seizes it where
the wing joins the body, and stings it in the side.
The victim stretches its legs and dies. All is over.
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Royal unity is restored, and the hive proceeds to
resume its accustomed order and work.”
“The bees are very naughty to force the queens
to kill one another until there is only one left,” commented
Emile.
“It is necessary, my little friend; their instinct
demands it. Otherwise civil war would rage unceasingly
in the hive. But this hard necessity does not
make them forget for one moment the respect due to
royal dignity. What is to prevent their getting rid
of the superfluous queens themselves, even as they
so unceremoniously get rid of the drones? But this
they are very careful not to do. What one of their
number would dare to draw the sword against their
sovereigns, even when they are a serious encumbrance?
The saving of life not being in their power,
they save honor by letting the pretenders fight it
out among themselves.
“There is always the possibility that the queen,
at a time when she is reigning alone and supreme,
may perish by accident or die of old age. The bees
press respectfully around the deceased; they brush
her tenderly, offer her honey as if to revive her;
turn her over, feel her lovingly, and treat her with
all the regard they gave to her when alive. It takes
several days for them to understand, at last, that she
is dead, quite dead, and that all their attentions are
useless. Then there is general mourning. Every
evening for two or three days a lugubrious humming,
a sort of funeral dirge, is heard in the hive.
“The mourning over, they think about replacing
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the queen. A young larva is chosen from those in
the common cells. It was born to be a wax-bee, but
circumstances are going to confer royalty upon it.
The working-bees begin by destroying the cells
adjacent to the one occupied by the sacred larva, the
queen that is to be by unanimous consent. The rearing
of royalty requires more space. This being secured,
the remaining cell is enlarged and shaped like
a thimble, as willed by the high destiny of the nursling
it contains. For several days the larva is fed
with royal paste, that sugary pap that makes queens,
and the miracle is accomplished. The queen is dead,
long live the queen!”
“The story of the bees is the best you have told
us,” declared Jules.
“I think so too,” his uncle assented; “that is why
I kept it till the last.”
“What—the last?” cried Jules.
“You are not going to tell us any more stories?”
asked Claire.
“Never, never?” Emile put in.
“As many as you wish, my dear children, but
later. The grain is ripe, and the harvest will take
up my time. Let us embrace, and finish for the
present.”
Since Uncle Paul, occupied with his duties in the
harvest-field, no longer tells stories in the evening,
Emile has gone back to his Noah’s Ark. He found
the hind and the elephant moldy! From the time
of the story of the ants the child had suspended his
visits.
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FINIS
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.it Transcriber’s Notes:
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.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a\
predominant form was found in this book.
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.it Text in italics is enclosed in underscores (_italics_).
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