“Fairy-Land of Science” and “Life and Her Children,” while Camille Flammarion has made doubly eloquent to us the midnight skies. It seems almost invidious to name a few out of the many authors who have written not merely technical books for study, but popular works on natural science, to be read on sea-shore and road-side, on a bench in the garden, or lying under orchard trees, or sitting in the woods with a brook purling at our feet. McCook has made many insects our daily friends and teachers. Thompson, Mrs. Treat, and Olive T. Miller have made the birds not only the guests of our maples, but of our hearts. The parent and teacher need no longer complain that they cannot find the information clearly given needed for replies to multitudinous hourly “whys” and “hows”: the present age is prodigal to its children. The Nature Readers have been written to direct the minds of our youth in their first studies to the pleasant ways of Natural Science. Their main object has been to cultivate the faculty of observation, awaken enthusiasm, and direct taste in noble lines. The present volume is designed to open the way for severer studies in geology, astronomy, and biology. THE AUTHOR. NOTE. Natural Science is so placed in the fore-front of the studies of the present age that no apology is needed for pressing it upon the schools. To object to this pursuit is simply to write oneself a laggard behind the times. We can do little that is better for our children than to teach them that the world is law-full to the core. Two methods of study are ardently advocated by those who instruct in natural science. The one demands practical personal investigation,--nothing but investigation,--deprecates the use of text-books, and insists upon the object only. Another, perhaps a lazier fashion, is to ignore the object and relegate the pupil only to the text-books. But _in medio tutissimus ibis_ holds here. The child should indeed observe, and, if it can, discover; but let us by no means deprive it of the inheritance of the ages. Why should we set the fortunate child of the nineteenth century in the condition of the child of the first or fourteenth centuries? Let us give the pupil the benefit of the best that has been discovered and detailed. And what benefit shall he derive from such study? Let us quote from the Report of the British Royal Education Committee: “If the object of education is the fitting of pupils for those duties they will be called on to perform, then instruction in science is second only in importance to instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. No subject is better calculated to awaken the interest and intelligence of pupils than the study of Natural Science.” CONTENTS. LESSON PAGE I. EARTH-BUILDING 1 II. THE FIRST CONTINENT 9