[Illustration: Pike's Peak, Colorado]
EARTH and SKY EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW
EASY STUDIES OF THE EARTH AND THE STARS FOR ANY TIME AND PLACE
BY
JULIA ELLEN ROGERS
AUTHOR OF "THE TREE BOOK," "THE SHELL BOOK," "KEY TO THE NATURE LIBRARY," "TREES EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW."
ILLUSTRATED BY THIRTY-ONE PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1910
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A number of the photographs in this volume are used by permission of the American Museum of Natural History. The star maps and drawings of the constellations are by Mrs. Jerome B. Thomas. The poem by Longfellow, quoted in part, is with the permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
_PART I. THE EARTH_
PAGE
THE GREAT STONE BOOK 3
THE FOSSIL FISH 6
THE CRUST OF THE EARTH 9
WHAT IS THE EARTH MADE OF? 14
THE FIRST DRY LAND 22
A STUDY OF GRANITE 27
METAMORPHIC ROCKS 31
THE AIR IN MOTION 35
THE WORK OF THE WIND 44
RAIN IN SUMMER, _by Henry W. Longfellow_ 50
WHAT BECOMES OF THE RAIN? 51
THE SOIL IN FIELDS AND GARDENS 58
THE WORK OF EARTHWORMS 63
QUIET FORCES THAT DESTROY ROCKS 68
HOW ROCKS ARE MADE 72
GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH A RIVER 78
THE WAYS OF RIVERS 84
THE STORY OF A POND 90
THE RIDDLE OF THE LOST ROCKS 93
THE QUESTION ANSWERED 96
GLACIERS AMONG THE ALPS 98
THE GREAT ICE SHEET 104
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know by Rogers
- 2: Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know by Rogers
- 3: And high and dry on the sides of mountains
- 4: The fossil fish was once alive
- 5: Water crept down in the loose upper layers
- 6: Is exerted by the weight of the crust
- 7: Rolls and cookies on those pantry shelves
- 8: And aluminum in various combinations
- 9: Joined with calcium it forms the mineral calcite
- 10: It lost more heat and its crust became thicker
- 11: The geologist may walk along the Laurentian Hills
- 12: The crystals of feldspar have smooth faces
- 13: The feldspar and mica fragments form clay
- 14: So the metamorphic rocks differ
- 15: Chief among which are nitrogen and oxygen
- 16: Near the Equator they are practically east winds
- 17: Near the Tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn
- 18: These polar winds are not so important to sea commerce
- 19: The uprooting of scattered trees often loosens tons of rock
- 20: Hard packed material called loess
- 21: Some running off through rivulets to the sea
- 22: The spring fills a little basin
- 23: Samples of sandy and clay soils
- 24: And cranberries that demand muck just old humus
- 25: The earthworm is a creature of the dark
- 26: The earthworms repeat their work
- 27: Now the wind blows away these crumbling particles
- 28: Mosses and lichens do a mighty work
- 29: That comes through limestone rocks
- 30: Most of the stratified and sedimentary rocks
- 31: Which hurried toward it in small rivulets
- 32: Crumbles and dissolves into muddy water
- 33: And sediment falls to the bottom
- 34: And carrying away quantities of sediment
- 35: The local rainfall is very slight
- 36: With a team hitched to a scraper
- 37: The outcrop of near by hillsides
- 38: The belief of Professor Agassiz was not accepted at once
- 39: Three ice streams joined produce two top moraines
- 40: The glacier that lodged it there
- 41: Long ago Greenland better deserved its name
- 42: Ground by the great glacial mill
- 43: In such situations the deposits of nitre were found
- 44: And the surprised prospector stood at the door of a cavern
- 45: But the grandest of all is the Mammoth Cave
- 46: Some are walled with black gypsum
- 47: Thus the great delta is formed
- 48: The Mississippi delta measures 14
- 49: The molten globe bulged at its equator
- 50: On this granite lie stratified rocks
- 51: Each made of vertical basalt columns
- 52: Both plants and animals sprang
- 53: Seaweeds belong to the very lowest forms of plants
- 54: Limy cylinders like organ pipes
- 55: Extinct trilobites were the first crustaceans
- 56: For lime is readily soluble in water
- 57: Or absorbed by percolating water
- 58: But the earliest fossils are very incomplete specimens
- 59: The Devonian sea was smaller than the Silurian
- 60: Soft coal is older than lignite
- 61: And thus changed bituminous coal into anthracite
- 62: In the course of ages this peat became coal
- 63: Forests of tree ferns and horsetails and giant club mosses
- 64: We may consider it a giant meteor
- 65: Furnishing the raw material for coke
- 66: And the product is Bessemer steel
- 67: Strange crocodile like reptiles
- 68: This Archeopteryx is the reptilian ancestor of birds
- 69: From these reptilian ancestors birds and mammals have sprung
- 70: Was a Quaternary inhabitant of Europe and America
- 71: The least in size and weight is the Shetland pony
- 72: The story has been read backward by geologists
- 73: Under the Quaternary lie the Tertiary rocks
- 74: They hunted the clumsy mammoth successfully
- 75: Isolated on the tops of almost inaccessible mesas
- 76: Knows ten of the fifteen brightest stars
- 77: You will see Venus as big as life
- 78: The Pole star is nothing like ninety degrees from the Dipper
- 79: Another name for Alcor is Saidak
- 80: And will look like a dipper long
- 81: I will tell you how to find Capella
- 82: The body of the eagle is Altair
- 83: Deneb will then be in the tail of the Swan
- 84: I wish Aldebaran meant red eye
- 85: Sometimes the moon comes near the Pleiades
- 86: If you had that seventy five cent planisphere
- 87: Pollux is now brighter than Castor
- 88: Draw a long line from Regulus through Arcturus to Antares
- 89: I hope you will see Fomalhaut before Christmas
- 90: And we can never see them unless we travel far south
- 91: This gives a list of eighty eight constellations
- 92: The most interesting are AURIGA