Chambers's Elementary Science Readers Part 4

PART 1.

a-cross'

morn'-ing chalk'-ing picked piece teach'-er black'-board spread'-ing wheat col'-ours fetch laughed earth brown moist through

1. A few days after this, Dora and Harry were going across the fields.

They saw a horse and cart standing, and a man taking white stones out of the cart and putting them over the ground.

2. 'Why, it is Joe!' they cried, as they came nearer. 'Good-morning, Joe. What are you doing?'

'Chalking this bit of land, you see. You know what chalk is, do you?'

3. Harry and Dora picked up a piece or two.

'Teacher writes on the blackboard with chalk,' they said.

'Yes, you are right. It is used for many things,' and he went on spreading it over the field.

4. 'But what is it wanted here for, Joe?'

'No chalk, no wheat!' said Joe.

'Father put no chalk on our field, and we had such a heap of wheat!'

5. 'Yours is good land. This up here has never been used for farming. It had little old trees on it, you know, and they were cut down and their roots dug out of the ground; and now, look at it! It is poor soil.'

6. 'How do you know it is poor?'

'Look at the field below, what a nice brown it is! That will grow anything, but this is all colours--black, red, yellow, and green.

7. 'I have been a long way to fetch this chalk: I started off with old Dobbin this morning before it was light, and got it out of the chalk-pit.'

8. 'When we were fast asleep!' said Dora.

'Then you don't buy chalk at a shop?' said Harry.

Joe laughed.

'No; it comes out of the ground.'

'This is like the slate story,' said Dora.

Harry nodded.

9. 'But, Joe, I want to know how the chalk makes the ground good.'

'I don't know how, but it does. If it lies here for a year or more, the earth will turn brown, and we can grow wheat in it. Besides, chalk holds water, and so it will keep the ground moist up here.'

10. 'How?'

'Well, when it rains, the water will not run away through the earth, but will stay in the lumps of chalk. Are you going? Good-bye, then.'

CHALK.

PART 2.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Fizz and bubble, bubble and fizz.']

eve'-ning brought vin'-e-gar bub'-ble air stirred poured grains hun'-dreds smiled crowds threads catch died dropped mixed

1. The children had much to say that evening about Joe and the field.

They had brought home a lump of chalk.

2. 'I will show you something,' said father, and he got a cup of vinegar, crushed a little of the chalk, and dropped it into the cup.

Fizz and bubble, bubble and fizz!

3. What was going on?

When the stir came to an end, the chalk was not there!

'Part of it has gone off in gas,' their father said. 'The rest is lime, and it is mixed with the vinegar.'

4. 'We did not see any gas,' said Harry.

'You can't see gas. It is like air. All those bubbles were made by the gas. It went out of the cup into the air.

'Now, get a cup of water. Come along! Where is your chalk?'

5. Father rubbed some of it into the water, and stirred it up. The water now looked like milk.

Father poured it into the sink, and showed Harry and Dora, at the bottom of the cup, a great many tiny grains.

6. 'Those little round things,' he said, 'are sh.e.l.ls.'

'Sh.e.l.ls!' said Dora, trying to see them better.

'Were live things ever in them?' asked Harry, and put a finger into the cup to fish some out.

7. 'Yes, long, long ago. That bit of chalk had hundreds and hundreds of sh.e.l.ls in it. Now, mother, it is your turn! I have had mine. What do you know about chalk?'

8. Mother smiled and began: 'There was once a very deep sea, full of live things, little and big. And on the top of the water were crowds of tiny things in sh.e.l.ls, that put out long arms like threads to catch their food.

9. 'When they died they all dropped to the bottom of the sea, and lay there. The sh.e.l.ls were so very little that they made a sort of mud when they were mixed with the water.