than the atoms of iron. The iron has so little Heat motion, that cohesion can hold its atoms tight and firm, and we call the iron hard and solid. The water atoms have so much Heat motion, that cohesion can hardly hold them in its grip, and the atoms roll over each other so loosely that we call water a liquid. I place these bottles in this ice and salt. The water atoms are chilled, and begin to huddle together. The motion of Heat will keep the atoms apart as long as it can, but as the atoms grow colder, - that is, as they lose their heat, they lose their motion, and press closer together, till you may say the Heat motion is gone entirely. The dancing water atoms cling together hard and stiff, and the water now takes up less room in the bottles than it did at first. Almost everything, when freezing, becomes smaller, and stays smaller till it is warmed again; but this is not the case with water, luckily for the fish; for if the ice remained smaller, it would sink to the bottom, warm water would rise, be frozen and sink in its turn, till the lake or river was frozen solid; but 'no,' say the water atoms, 'we know better! We draw together close and hard, till we freeze, and then, crack! we stretch out on every side. We grow larger and lighter, and make a warm roof for everything below.' Now, your Majesty, while I have been talking, the ice atoms in the bottles have been stretching and pressing out. We will have more room,' say they. You can't have it,' answer the rigid iron atoms, piled on each other half an inch thick. Which is the strongest? There go the bottles, broken from top to bottom! And now, Mr. Traveller, what do you think of the soft water atoms, that can break iron ?"

"Your Royal Highness," cried my Lord High Fiddlestick, much delighted, "do you remember how two weeks ago the Pink Page forgot to turn off the water? Just what has happened now in these bottles happened then in the pipes. The water froze; the ice atoms tried to stretch themselves; the pipes would not stretch, and were broken as the bottles are. When a thaw came, it was nothing but dribble and leak all over the palace; and your Majesty will recollect that the Queen's pink satin gown, which the Dame of the Slippers had carelessly left in the Powder Closet, was quite ruined.”

"The Pink Page deserves to be hung, and you too, since you knew all about it," growled the King.

"Your Majesty, I should like to show you some more atom-work," said the Lord High Fiddlestick, in a flurry.

"If flooding the palace is atom-work, I should say I had seen enough," grumbled the King; but the Lord High Fiddlestick pretended not to hear, and took out from a refrigerator a large block of ice.

"Your Majesty," he said, "here, as you see, is a block of ice. In front of it I place a glass, and before the glass a white screen. Here I have what is called an electric lamp. I am going to send a warm beam from this lamp through the ice, as I have not a sunbeam handy. If anything happens in the ice, it will be reflected in this glass; but this is a peculiar glass; whatever is reflected in it will be made larger, and its image cast on the screen so that you can all see it."

"Likely story!" growled the traveller, "as if anything worth seeing could happen in that piece of ice."

"We know," continued the Lord High Fiddlestick, "that the ice atoms came close together, but we do not know whether they scrambled together, and are now lying head and shoulders, or came in order; but we can take down the block of ice, and find of what it is built, as we could take down a house. I send a beam through the ice. The light passes through. But there was Heat in the beam. He has found work to do, and he stays among the ice atoms. He is going from atom to atom, and urging them apart. They are all in motion, and the solid block is coming down in water, — melting, as you would say. We are taking down the ice now; look on the

screen! "

The King and the courtiers looked. "Oh! la!" screamed everybody. The sour little traveller had determined not to look; but he was so curious to know why everybody cried Oh! la! that he could not help turning his head, and what he saw is shown upon the next page.

"Very fine," remarked the King; "but handsome is that handsome does! I should think better of these stars and sprays if they had not flooded my palace."

My Lord High Fiddlestick knew better than to remind the King, that, if the Pink Page had been as orderly as the ice atoms, the palace would not have been flooded. Instead, he brought out a little furnace filled with live coals, on which stood a tea-kettle, filled with boiling water.

"Your Majesty has seen," he said, "that water atoms can break iron, and

are, in fact, giants in disguise.' We have seen, also, that they are orderly giants, and, at the word of command, fall into stars and sprays, as the soldiers of your Majesty's regiments fall into line. Now we have the water atoms and our old friend Heat here in this furnace. He is at his usual work, — fighting with cohesion, and pushing the water atoms apart. Cohesion presses down with all its weight, but Heat is quite strong enough to lift it. Then the

كلمة

The water needs now

water atoms spring apart in fine steam particles. much more room than it did in the beginning. The water atoms are greatly heated, that is, they are in furious motion, and are stretching and pushing for more room; and once more we see here that Heat is Force. This water, which would yield to the finger when cold, is now strong. It whirls, and spins, and presses so hard, that, if there were no spout through which it could escape, and the cover of the kettle were fitted tight, it would burst the kettle. These atoms, your Majesty, will push and drag tons. They will saw, and grind, and punch, and plane stone and iron. They —” "Yes," cut in the traveller, "but what could your wonderful water atoms do without the fire?"

"Just so," answered my Lord High Fiddlestick with a benevolent smile. "Just what I was coming at. We can hear now the roaring of the wheels and hammers in his Majesty's iron-mill near by. What is making that noise? Force, you say. He is twisting, and turning, and rolling, and pounding iron, and every time he turns a wheel, or brings down a hammer, he dies, 'poor fellow!' So we go there to mourn over him, and we find, as I said before, Heat in the wheels, and in the instruments with which Force worked, and in all the places where he has been. You know that Force can take more shapes than one, and you begin to suspect, since Heat always comes where Force disappears, that Heat is only one of his shapes. You ask,' Why, where did Force come from?' 'From the steam,' says somebody. But what is steam? Why, water atoms, pulled apart from each other, and set in violent motion. But why does this water not keep still, like other water? Because it is heated. Getting heat is getting motion.

heat of the fire! Yes.

"But all this motion and strength of the wheels comes from the motion of the water, and all this strength and motion of the water comes from the Why, then, all this force comes from Heat! and, Mr. Traveller, your friend Force only gave you one of his names. His proper name is Heat, Motion, Heat; and when he has done his work, he does not die, but only slips back into his old shape of Heat again."

"My Lord," exclaimed the King, waking suddenly from a nap, I am delighted! I have learned a great deal; but it is always necessary to think of what we learn, or our ideas will be jumbled in our brains, like fruit in a pudding."

So the King and the courtiers went away, stretching and yawning, to think over what they had learned from the Lord High Fiddlestick.

Louise E. Chollet.

IT

THE PETERKINS AT THE MENAGERIE.

T was a sad blow to the Peterkin family when they found Solomon John had nothing to say in the book which he tried once to write.

"I think it must happen often," said Elizabeth Eliza; "for everybody does not write a book, and this must be the reason."

"It is singular," said Mr. Peterkin. "To be wise enough to write a book, one must read books; and yet how can we read them until somebody is wise enough to write them?"

But nobody answered Mr. Peterkin.

"We ought to see more things," said Solomon John.

"We ought to go to the menagerie," said the little boys.

"Yes," said Mrs. Peterkin, "we might learn something at the menagerie." "There is a giraffe at the menagerie," said the little boys.

"Well, my sons," said Mr. Peterkin, leaving the breakfast-table, "let every one learn something about the giraffe this morning, and we will go and see him in the afternoon!"

So the family all separated, and spent their morning trying to learn about the giraffe.

Mrs. Peterkin sat and thought. Agamemnon borrowed a book. And the rest went out and asked questions.

In the afternoon, all the family came together in the entry, ready to go to the menagerie, the little boys in their india-rubber boots.

"The giraffe," said Mr. Peterkin, "is the same as the camelopard. Can any one tell me more about him?”

"The camel is sometimes called the ship of the desert," said one of the little boys.

"But this is the camelopard," interrupted Solomon John; "it is quite a different thing."

"Let Agamemnon speak first," said Mr. Peterkin; "he was a week in college, and ought to know."

"The fore legs of the camelopard," began Agamemnon, "are much longer than the hinder, which are very short."

"It must look like a rabbit," said Mrs. Peterkin.

"Yes, mamma," they all said.

"But, then," said Solomon John, "I think the fore legs of the rabbit are short, and the hinder ones long."

"We can easily see," said Mr. Peterkin; we can go and look at our own rabbits."

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Yes," cried the little boys, "let us all go and see our rabbits."

So they went to the rabbit-hutch, at the very end of the garden, — Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin, Agamemnon and Elizabeth Eliza, Solomon John and the little boys in their india-rubber boots.

"You are right,” said Mrs. Peterkin, "their hind legs are long. How very singular an animal must look made the other way!"