Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ The elephant is the children's delight. Draped in purple and gold he walks with the tread of an emperor before a conquered army. All the other wild beasts are in cages, but he, the largest and strongest of them all, a three-ton mountain of an animal, is led by his keeper as if he were a big, good-natured dog. And oh, if there is a baby elephant the children just about go crazy. ”

“ It is the maples that first light up our woods with these flickering fires. No country of the old world has trees that make such a wonderful color show as our maples. Their leaves are never of one tint, but are mottled and shaded, from lemon yellow to orange, flame-red and crimson. You know the thin-leafed red maple sifts sunlight. To look up through one, in the fall, is like looking through a splendid stained glass window of a church.
The oaks show no yellow, and the leaves are of a strong solid color. ”

“ A baby elephant is as solemn as an Indian papoose. But in his own clumsy way he is very playful. He plays hide-and-seek between his mother's legs, and pulls her foolish little tail with his trunk. When anything alarms him, he gets right under her and shuffles along that way. And when she crosses a stream he climbs on her back until he learns to swim. In one thing he doesn't get over being a baby until he is a grandfather. He spends half his life cutting new teeth. An elephant has twenty-four grinding teeth in all, but he cuts and uses only four at a time. ”

“ It tosses the tree tops, whirls the dust, carries vapor clouds to make rain, scatters seeds. It turns the long arms of windmills and sends sailing vessels flying over the water. It waits for nobody. It says how-do-you-do and good-by, and is gone. There isn't a bit of use to get out of humor with it, if it blows our hats off and turns umbrellas wrong side out. ”

“ On frosty nights the nuts drop with soft patterings. Squirrels slip, brown and gray shadows, over the bright carpets, laying in their winter stores. The song birds take their last meals of seeds and cocoon babies and fly southward.
October is the time to study the fruits of forest trees. Many of the trees—the willows, poplars, elms and red maples drop their seeds in the spring. The rock maple keeps its seed until frost, and so do all the nut trees and the wild orchard fruits. All the maple seeds have two thin, flat green wings, like a thumb screw, an inch or more across. ”

“ Winds that break off great limbs of trees and almost blow you off your feet, will merely rock these babies in their cradles. And under the blankets of leaves and snow, the fallen seeds will lie asleep, as snugly as Johnny Bear in his cave. The first warm days of spring they will wake up, yawn so wide that they will split their shells, stretch their leaf-arms up to the sun, and dig their root-toes into the soft earth. ”

“ The sea-anemone not only looks like the flower of that name, but it has something that reminds us of the vine called the Virginia Creeper. The anemone is fastened to a rock by a sucking disc. It holds on with this sucker a great deal tighter than the vine clings to a wall it is climbing, with its little sucker feet. If you try to pull a sea-anemone up, you might think it has a strong root running down into the rock. But it has only a sucker foot for clinging. Sea-anemones have been known to move, but as a rule they spend their lives contentedly, fastened to rocks near which they are born. ”

“ African bull elephants are so fierce the lion tucks his tail between his legs and slinks away, when he hears one trumpeting. The tiger sometimes attacks the smaller East Indian elephant, and often gets the worst of it.
African explorers and travellers say a charging bull elephant is a grand and terrible sight. He blows his mighty trumpet in a blast that can be heard for miles, lowers his head with its six foot tusks, and tosses his trunk up out of danger. He knows how easily that precious member, all delicate muscles and nerves, might be injured by claw or spear. ”

“ Out of doors, nature is always purifying air. She does it by having plants and animals live together. Plants make oxygen and use up the carbonic acid gas that is poisonous to breathing animals. In the sea fishes and water plants help each other, in the same way. They get air out of the water. Seeds and worms and beetles get air out of the earth. If you plant seeds too deep, or pack the earth too hard above them, they will rot. ”

“ The water will not spill, the air below holds it up. Turn back to Air in this book and find out what air weighs.
Just as fish and sea plants may live at the bottom of the ocean of water, so land animals and plants live at the bottom of the ocean of air. The top of this ocean of air is level, too. Do you think the air on a mountain peak would be as deep or as heavy as the air in a low valley? A glass full of water has no color. But an ocean full of water looks blue. We cannot see air itself, but we can see the color of it. When it is forty miles deep air looks blue, too. ”

“ Baby elephants are scarce. Even in her home on African plains, or in the East Indian jungle, a mother elephant has a baby only once in ten or fifteen years, so there are never more than a few babies at a time in a big herd of a hundred or more elephants. It's a great event when one is born in captivity. Such a baby! He weighs two hundred pounds at birth, is nearly three feet high and has a funny little trunk about as long as your twelve-inch ruler. And you never saw such a baby for growing! At the age of one year he weighs a half a ton. ”

“ There is no hurry about anything. The autumn trees often take three or four weeks of Indian summer to strip their boughs for winter. The leaves drift down, silently, like great colored butterflies. Wholetroupes of them dance in little gusts of wind. ”

“ The part that is gone is oxygen. If you had shut a live fly in the glass it would have died as quickly as the flame. Animals and fire cannot live without oxygen. By breathing air in you burn up oxygen. It would not take you very long to use up all the oxygen in a small room. Then, if you couldn't get any fresh air at all you would "go out" like the burning paper, and the fly in the glass.
Beside using up the oxygen in the air, when you breathe in, you make a poisonous gas when you breathe out. Fire does thesame thing. ”

“ He can push a cannon across a bog, carry a load over a mountain, and help sportsmen hunt and kill tigers. East Indian rulers all have troops of elephants to use in warfare, and to ride in royal processions. In Siam, the white elephant is a sacred animal and has a place on the national flag.
How old and wise the elephant in the menagerie looks. It is very comical to see such a heavy, clumsy animal stand on his hind legs or his head, dance to music, blow a horn, beat a drum, ring a bell or fire a gun. ”

“ About sunrise the whole herd takes a bath. They go on a shuffling run to the nearest "ole swimmin'" hole. Into the water they go up to their eyes. They frolic like so many school boys, shouting at the tops of their—trumpets, slapping and splashing water over each other. The babies ride on their mother's backs, slide off and learn to swim. Often a herd plays in the water for an hour. ”

“ Smoke from a fire of dry hard wood, from anthracite coal or from a gas flame is chiefly a column of hot air. Often it cannot be seen. There is very little solid matter in it. The thick, black smoke from locomotives, factories and house chimneys is made by burning soft coal in a wasteful way. If you will turn back and read the little story of how gas is made, you will understand the changes that take place when coal is heated. In making gas, the coal is not burned but is roasted in an airless retort or oven. The heat sets the coal gas free. ”

“ Often there are so many algae plants on the gray net surface of a lichen, that they turn it to a soft sage green color, very bright and moist. The algae being green, collect food from the sun and air and feed the lichen, and the lichen covers the algae with a network of gray thread cells to keep it from getting too dry.
Nature makes many partnerships between plants and animals that can help each other. Bees and butterflies help the flowers grow seeds. Men help plants to grow, and make friends of horses and dogs. ”

“ Elephants hate flies. The flies and stinging insects of hot countries are large and thick and tough as is the elephant's hide they manage to get into the folds and creases and sting him. He fights his tormentors with shower and dust baths and fly brushes. When they drive him frantic he rushes into the water to wash them off. There he finds a friend. It is the long-legged water crane who stands on the elephant's back and picks out the flies to eat. Sometimes this feathered friend and a baby elephant may both be seen riding on Mama Elephant's back. ”

“ When the sucker foot idea once got into the two families of living things, Mother Nature seemed to say:
"Now all of you children who can use it, may have this little sucker foot."The oyster and the clam both have a sucker foot. The oyster uses his to fasten himself to something, as the anemone does, and stays there. But the clam uses his foot for travelling. So, the oyster, lying in one position, gets a shell that looks lop-sided, but the clam's shell has both valves alike. People who live by themselves, in one place, get one-sided, too. ”

“ Earth is solid, water is fluid, air a gas. But there is water and air in the earth, earth and air in the water, and earth dust and water vapor in the air. They all need each other, and plants and animals need all three. Air is the freest and sets everything else in motion.Wind, or air in motion, is a great worker and wonder-worker. ”

“ But, low down as it is in the scale of life, like the jelly fish, the anemone has learned how to move. So, it begins to foretell the wonderful animals that are coming, that can swim in the water, fly in the air, and finally run about on the land. ”

“ Your breath is warm so it goes up to the ceiling. The air made by a gas flame, a heat register or radiator goes up, too. All this warm air has been used by fire and by people. The oxygen has been burned out of it, and carbonic acid has been put into it. It would not feed a fire or a pair of lungs, and it becomes even poisonous. This is bad air. It will go out of doors if you help it, and be purified.
Beside helping to keep people well, to know about air may help them at any time to put out a fire. Fire cannot burn without oxygen, so it can be smothered. ”

“ When a tiger springs, the bull catches him on the tusks, tosses him twenty feet in the air, gives him a swinging blow with the trunk as he comes down that stuns him, then pins him to the earth with the tusks, or tramples him under his three tons of weight. It is said that every pair of tusks brought out of Africa has cost one or more human lives.Usually a herd marches to the feeding ground unmolested. ”

“ This use of a sucker foot by the sea-anemone and the vine, is one of the many cases in which nature gets hold of a good idea and uses it over and over again. And she uses the sucker foot for plants and animals just as she uses the seed or egg for ferns and fishes, butternuts and butterflies. She gave the sea-anemone a sucker foot because he can get along best by clinging to a rock, and she gave the vine sucker feet to climb rocks and trees with. ”

“ They finally settle down on a rock, and grow into these beautiful flower-like animals that are found in the gardens under the great waters of the world. You can see that the anemone, which is so much higher a type than the sponge, at the same time repeats the habits of the sponge in first being a free, swimming animal, and then settling down in one spot. The anemone, however, can move about a little while, but the sponge cannot. After it once settles down the sponge must stay there for life. The anemone can move only a few inches a day ”

“ Some animals will give up, if disturbed too often. So will some plants. The clovers are like spiders. They try, try again to grow seeds. If left alone they ripen their seeds from the first blossoms and the plant dies. But if clover is cut when in blossom, but before the seeds ripen, it will spring up and blossom again, and even the third time. Farmers can cut two and even three crops of clover from one field, in a single season. Then, if he lets the seed ripen, the alfalfa and some clovers, will re-seed the field, or spring up from the roots the next season. ”

“ The flimsiest fence of reeds, bamboo or barbed wire will usually keep a herd of hungry elephants out of a sugar or yam field, or will keep them prisoners inside a stockade. As for a mouse, very likely the elephant thinks it a big insect that will run up his trunk. He throws the trunk up out of danger, bellows with rage and trembles with fear.
The huge African elephant is very wild, hard to tame and teach, and is of uncertain temper. Even the cows have tusks. A good specimen is not often seen in a menagerie. ”

“ A green plant can take raw material like earth, air and water and, with the aid of sunlight, make its own food. Algae are found in oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes and warm springs, everywhere. Some of them are very beautiful, in a great variety of forms and colors. The very commonest algae that you can all find, almost everywhere, is the green scum that forms on quiet ponds and swamps. Scum is all broken up into single plants, or knots andstrings of cells, and can be easily separated and studied under a microscope. ”

“ For more than a hundred years it has been understood that we could save a lot of money if we burned our smoke, and at the same time make this world a sweeter, cleaner, healthier place to live in. Coal gas is poisonous to breathe, and carbon dust is bad for the throat, nose and lungs. ”

“ Each of these rooms is also connected with the stomach in the middle, and with those parts which, as you see, look like the petals of a flower, when the anemone is spread out, waiting for its food. Each of these "petals" is hollow like the fingers of a glove. The anemone not only lives surrounded by water on the outside, but it is full of water on the inside. Water is to the anemone what blood is to you; it circulates all through the anemone, and the anemone makes its petal-like fingers stand up by filling them with water. ”

“ Old hunters in Africa and India say members of a herd look alike as do members of a human family. Some herds are made up of animals that are large and strong and bright minded. In other herds the animals are smaller, weaker and more stupid. In East India the natives speak of elephants as low caste and high caste, and say there is as much difference as there is between breeds of dogs and horses. And no hunter will go after a "rogue" elephant. A "rogue" is a tramp elephant. For some reason he has left his herd, or been driven out. ”

“ His neck is so short and thick that it is very little use for turning, although he can toss his head up and down like a bull.
For such an e-nor-mous animal the elephant is wonderfully active. He can shuffle along, in his clumsy way, nearly as fast as a horse can run. East Indian elephants climb steep mountains as pack animals, and are very sure-footed. All elephants are good swimmers and hard fighters if attacked. They can charge the enemy like cavalry horses. Their tusks are terrible weapons, and no other animal living has such a wonderful tool-chest as the elephant's trunk. ”

“ You can easily prove that all these nuts, and the English walnut, are very near relations by cracking them. All of them have two fat, wrinkled seed-leaves, joined through a hole in the middle of a thin partition wall. The leaves are not twin nuts. They are just the two parts of one seed. You know beans and pease seed have two leaves that split when the plant begins to grow. So has the acorn, the chestnut, the buckeye, and the seeds of all plants with net-veined leaves. The forest nuts are the only ones that build partition walls between their seed leaves that the writer ever found. ”