THE
FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE
By
ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY,
AUTHOR OF 'A SHORT HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE,'
'BOTANICAL TABLES FOR YOUNG STUDENTS,' ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
"For they remember yet the tales we told them
Around the hearth, off fairies, long ago,
When they loved still in fancy to behold them
Quick dancing eartnward in the feathery snow.
"But now the young and fresh imagination
Finds traces of their presence everywhere,
And peoples with a new ana bright creation
The clear blue chambers, of the sunny air."
Folk Lorr.
SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.
LONDON:
EDWARD STANFORD, 55, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
1883.
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PREFACE.
The Ten Lectures of which this volume is composed were delivered last spring, in St. John's
Wood, to a large audience of children and their friends, and at their conclusion I was asked by many of
those present to publish them for a child's reading book.
At first I hesitated, feeling that written words can never produce the same effect as viva-voce
the majority of my juvenile hearers were evidently so deeply interested that I am
delivery. But
encouraged to think that the present work may be a source of pleasure to a wider circle of young
people, and at the same time awaken in them a love of nature and of the study of science.
The Lectures have been entirely rewritten from the short notes used when they were delivered.
With the exception of the first of the series, none of them have any pretensions to originality, their
object being merely to explain well-known natural facts in simple and pleasant language. Throughout
the whole book I have availed myself freely of the leading popular works on science, but have found it
impossible to give special references, as nearly all the matter I have dealt with has long been the
common property of scientific teachers.
I am much indebted to Mr. J. Cooper for the zeal and assiduity he has shown in carrying out my
suggestions for illustrations. All the engravings, with one exception, were executed under his
superintendence.
ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY.
Christmas, 1878.
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ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LECTURE I. THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. HOW TO ENTER IT; HOW TO USE IT; AND HOW
TO ENJOY IT..........................................................................................................................................................................3
LECTURE II. SUNBEAMS AND THE WORK THEY DO. ..............................................................................13
LECTURE III. THE AERIAL OCEAN IN WHICH WE LIVE.........................................................................23
LECTURE IV. A DROP OF WATER ON ITS TRAVELS.................................................................................32
LECTURE V. THE TWO GREAT SCULPTORS — WATER AND ICE. .......................................................42
LECTURE VI. THE VOICES OF NATURE AND HOW WE HEAR THEM. ................................................53
LECTURE VII. THE LIFE OF A PRIMROSE. ..................................................................................................63
LECTURE VIII. THE HISTORY OF A PIECE OF COAL. ..............................................................................71
LECTURE IX. BEES IN THE HIVE. ...................................................................................................................82
LECTURE X. BEES AND FLOWERS. ................................................................................................................89
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THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE
LECTURE I.
THE
FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE.
HOW TO ENTER IT; HOW TO USE IT; AND HOW TO ENJOY IT.
Have promised to introduce you
today to the fairy-land of science, —
a some what bold promise, seeing
that most of you probably look up
on science as a bundle of dry facts,
while fairy-land is all that is beautiful, and full of poetry and imagination. But I thoroughly believe
myself, and hope to prove to you, that science is full of beautiful pictures, of real poetry, and of
wonderworking fairies; and what is more. I promise you they shall be true fairies, whom you will love
just as much when you are old and greyheaded as when you are young; for you will be able to call them
up wherever you wander by land or by sea, through meadow or through wood, through water or
through air; and though they themselves will always remain invisible, yet you will see their wonderful
power at work everywhere around you.
Let us first see for a moment what kind of tales science has to tell, and how far they are equal to
the old fairy tales we all know so well. Who does not remember the tale of the "Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood," and how under the spell of the angry fairy the maiden pricked herself with the spindle and slept
a hundred years? How the horses in the stall, the dogs in the court-yard, the doves on the roof, the cook
who was boxing the scullery boy's ears in the kitchen, and the king and queen with all their courtiers in
the hall remained spell-bound, while a thick hedge grew up all round the castle and all within was still
as death. But when the hundred years had passed the valiant prince came, the thorny hedge opened
before him bearing beautiful flowers; and he, entering the castle, reached the room where the princess
lay, and with one sweet kiss raised her and all around her to life again.
Can science bring any tale to match this? Tell me, is there anything in this world more busy and
active than water, as it rushes along in the swift brook, or dashes over the stones, or spouts up in the
fountain, or trickles down from the roof, or shakes itself into ripples on the surface of the pond as the
wind blows over it? But have you never seen this water spell-bound and motionless? Look out of the
window some cold frosty morning in winter, at the little brook which yesterday was flowing gently past
the house, and see how still it lies, with the stones over which it was dashing now held tightly in its icy
grasp. Notice the wind-ripples on the pond; they have become fixed and motionless. Look up at the
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ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY
roof of the house. There, instead of living doves merely charmed to sleep, we have running water
caught in the very act of falling and turned into transparent icicles, decorating the eaves with a beautiful
crystal fringe. On every tree and bush you will catch the water-drops napping, in the form of tiny
crystals; while the fountain looks like a tree of glass with long down-hanging pointed leaves. Even the
damp of your own breath lies rigid and still on the window-pane frozen into delicate patterns like fernleaves
of ice.
All this water was yesterday flowing busily, or falling drop by drop, or floating invisibly in the
air; now it is all caught and spell-bound — by whom? By the enchantments of the frost-giant who holds
it fast in his grip and will not let it go.
But wait awhile, the deliverer is coming. In a few weeks or days, or it may be in a few hours,
the brave sun will shine down; the dull-grey, leaden sky will melt before him, as the hedge gave way
before the prince in the fairy tale, and when the sunbeam gently kisses the frozen water it will be set
free. Then the brook will flow rippling on again; the frost-drops will be shaken down from the trees, the
icicles fall from the roof, the moisture trickle down the window-pane, and in the bright, warm sunshine
all will be alive again.
Is not this a fairy tale of nature? and such as these it is which science tells.
Again, who has not heard of Catskin, who came out of a hollow tree, bringing a walnut
containing three beautiful dresses — the first glowing as the sun, the second pale and beautiful as the
moon, the third spangled like the star-lit sky, and each so fine and delicate that all three could be
packed in a nut? But science can tell of shells so tiny that a whole group of them will lie on the point of
a pin, and many thousands be packed into a walnut-shell; and each one of these tiny structures is not
the mere dress but the home of a living animal. It is a tiny, tiny shell-palace made of the most delicate
lacework, each pattern being more beautiful than the last; and what is more, the minute creature that
lives in it has built it out of the foam of the sea, though he himself appears to be merely a drop of jelly.
Lastly, anyone who has read the' Wonderful Travellers' must recollect the man whose sight was
so keen that he could hit the eye of a fly sitting on a tree two miles away. But tell me, can you see gas
before it is lighted, even when it is coming out of the gas-jet close to your eyes? Yet, if you learn to use
that wonderful instrument the spectro-scope, it will enable you to tell one kind of gas from another,
even when they are both ninety-one millions of miles away on the face of the sun; nay more, it will
read for you the nature of the different gases in the far distant stars, billions of miles away, and actually
tell you whether you could find there any of the same metals which we have on the earth.
We might find hundreds of such fairy tales in the domain of science, but these three will serve
as examples, and we must pass on to make the acquaintance of the science-fairies themselves, and see
if they are as real as our old friends.
Tell me, why do you love fairy-land? what is its charm? Is it not that things happen so suddenly
so mysteriously, and without man having anything to do with it? In fairy-land, flowers blow, houses
spring up like Aladdin's palace in a single night, and people are carried hundreds of miles in an instant
by the touch of a fairy wand.
And then this land is not some distant country to which we can never hope to travel. It is here in
the midst of us, only our eyes must be opened or we cannot see it. Ariel and Puck did not live in some
unknown region. On the contrary, Ariel's song is
"Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly,
After summer, merrily."
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