Read Ebook: Chambers's Elementary Science Readers Book I by Various

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Ebook has 403 lines and 31624 words, and 9 pages

'No, not exactly.'

'So I did. But it was not made last Saturday.'

'Perhaps on Friday,' said Dora.

Harry and Dora looked well at it, turned it over, rubbed their fingers on it, and said they did not know.

'I think it must be a sort of rock, or stone,' said Harry, 'only very smooth and thin.'

SLATE.

PART 2.

should laughed high?-er thought laugh?-ing pur?-pose prop?-er-ly please set?-tled hap?-pened deal dead weighted through heaved brok?-en

'Yes, many, dear. But there are none near.' Then she laughed a little. 'But if you like to go just outside the door you will see rows and rows of slates.'

'Look at the house,' she said, 'look higher!'

'Your slates are made smooth on purpose. Besides, they are made of better slate--older slate. The older the slate is the better it is.'

'No one knows. It is a long story, and no one can tell it properly. Shall I tell you as much as I know?'

'Yes, do, please, mother!' and the two settled themselves at her feet.

'Dead fish, perhaps, and shells, and sand and mud that had been brought by rivers into the sea. These things lay on the top of the mud and weighed it down.

CHALK.

PART 1.

a-cross? morn?-ing chalk?-ing picked piece teach?-er black?-board spread?-ing wheat col?-ours fetch laughed earth brown moist through

'Chalking this bit of land, you see. You know what chalk is, do you?'

'Teacher writes on the blackboard with chalk,' they said.

'Yes, you are right. It is used for many things,' and he went on spreading it over the field.

'No chalk, no wheat!' said Joe.

'Father put no chalk on our field, and we had such a heap of wheat!'

'Look at the field below, what a nice brown it is! That will grow anything, but this is all colours--black, red, yellow, and green.

'Then you don't buy chalk at a shop?' said Harry.

Joe laughed.

'No; it comes out of the ground.'

'This is like the slate story,' said Dora.

Harry nodded.

'I don't know how, but it does. If it lies here for a year or more, the earth will turn brown, and we can grow wheat in it. Besides, chalk holds water, and so it will keep the ground moist up here.'

'Well, when it rains, the water will not run away through the earth, but will stay in the lumps of chalk. Are you going? Good-bye, then.'

CHALK.

PART 2.

eve?-ning brought vin?-e-gar bub?-ble air stirred poured grains hun?-dreds smiled crowds threads catch died dropped mixed

Fizz and bubble, bubble and fizz!

When the stir came to an end, the chalk was not there!

'Part of it has gone off in gas,' their father said. 'The rest is lime, and it is mixed with the vinegar.'

'You can't see gas. It is like air. All those bubbles were made by the gas. It went out of the cup into the air.

'Now, get a cup of water. Come along! Where is your chalk?'

Father poured it into the sink, and showed Harry and Dora, at the bottom of the cup, a great many tiny grains.

'Shells!' said Dora, trying to see them better.

'Were live things ever in them?' asked Harry, and put a finger into the cup to fish some out.

'And now the mud is dry, and we call it chalk!'

THE MOUSE.

an?-i-mal noise mouse cheese har?-vest stalk should four tail nib?-ble young beasts squeak hours leaves catch

'But mice live indoors, do they not, and eat cheese, and run about in the walls, and make holes?'

'I have heard them at grandmother's,' said Harry. 'Do they ever live out of doors?'

'Ah, that is not our mouse! He had a long tail.'

'Has he a short tail or long tail?' asked Harry.

'Long. I must tell you about a man who used to go out in the night in wild places to see what birds and beasts were doing when most of us were in bed.

'Don't they squeak?'

'Yes; and he often heard them go on for hours making a kind of singing.

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