Chambers's Elementary Science Readers: Book IVarious
Science
Chambers's Elementary Science Readers: Book I
Various
Science -- Readers
6. 'Next she looked about for some old wood, and found it in a tree,
perhaps, or post, or bit of fence. She rubbed away at it with her jaws
till she got some of it off in powder.
7. 'She made this powder into a paste with a sort of gum which came out
of her mouth, and off she went with it to her room.'
8. 'What did she do with it?'
'She spread it out in sheets of thin brown paper, and with these she
made a comb like a bee's.'
[Illustration: Wasp's Nest.]
'She made paper of it.'
'Only a bee's is made of wax. I know that!' said Harry.
9. 'She put many layers of paper on the top to keep the rain out, and
pillars under it to hold it up. Then she laid an egg in each cell. When
the eggs were hatched'----
'Little wasps came flying out,' said Dora.
'No; little grubs came crawling out!
10. 'The wasp was now more busy than ever. She fed each baby in turn,
and as they all grew bigger she had to get more and more food for them.'
THE SUNFLOWER
blue
buzz'-ing
set'-tled
watched
sun'-flow-er
course
warmth
in-stead'
star'-ing
spar-row
stopped
crowd
cush'-ion
mid'-dle
gar'-den
know
1. It was very hot, the sky was blue, and the air was full of the
humming and buzzing of bees and flies. A white butterfly flitted by, but
soon went away over the garden-wall.
2. Bee after bee, and fly after fly, settled on the sunflowers and
hunted for honey. Dora and Harry watched for a long time.
3. 'The sunflower is like a little sun,' said Dora.
'And it loves the sun,' said her mother, who was snipping off dead roses
close by; 'it always turns to look at it. See, its face is towards the
sun now. And if you look again before sunset you will find the flower
turned to it still.'
4. 'How strange!' said Dora.
[Illustration: Sunflower.]
'And it has such a strong stalk,' said Harry. 'You would not think that
it could turn round. It must be alive!'
'Of course it is alive!'
'But, I mean, it must feel, or why should it turn and turn to get the
light and warmth?'
5. 'How ragged all the stalks and leaves are!' said Dora. 'I wish they
would make themselves tidy instead of always staring at the sun. Why are
there so many holes in the leaves?'
6. 'Grubs have been eating them. Our friend Mr Sparrow must have been
away lately!'
7. Here mother stopped snipping at her rose-trees, and came up to one of
the sunflowers.
8. 'There is something I want you to see,' she said. 'You think this is
one big flower, but it is really a crowd of little flowers. Look! Can
you think of another flower that is something like it?'
9. Harry and Dora shook their heads.
'It is very small,' mother went on, 'with a cushion in the middle like
this, and rays standing out all round like these.'
10. 'Does it grow on a tree?'
'No.'
'In this garden?'
'No.'
'In the fields?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, I know!' cried Harry. 'It is the daisy.'
MERRY WORKERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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