Jump to content

Page:How and Why Library 147.jpg

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.

wonderful story, in little easy words of one syllable, just as you learned to read when you began with the primer:

"It is a c-a-t."

Only, when we read the Book of Nature we can't begin with the cat; she's away up in a higher grade, with the fish and the birds and boys and girls. She has a backbone; and these little animals in the pond menagerie haven't any bones at all!

Your big brother or sister who goes to high school, can tell you more about the amoeba and other simple forms of life. Or, if you have a very fine microscope, he can show them to you. You may find amoeba on the dead leaves in the bottom of pools, or in the home or school aquarium, or on the roots of duck weed and other small water plants. You can also put some hay or straw in a glass jar filled with water, let it stand a few days in a warm room, and get specimens of another kind of one-celled animals. Then you can watch them through the microscope. See Amoeba, page 64; Biology, page 212; Protoplasm, page 1554; Protozoa, page 1554; Infusoria, page 925.