By the way—speaking of the timekeepers in the sky—don't forget to look up the lives of the great astronomers mentioned in this chapter. You will find, among other things, how Galileo, when only eighteen years of age, helped to give us our clocks and watches by counting his pulse-beats while watching a hanging lamp swing back and forth in the Cathedral of Pisa; how he found out who "The Man in the Moon" really is and what the "Milky Way" is made of; how he invented the wonderful glass for playing hide and seek among the worlds, and with it found four moons in one night!
Yes, and how do you suppose he found that the sun is going round and round like a top, just as the earth does? It was the simplest thing! You'll see!
Old Father Science may be said to be a Santa Claus who keeps a curiosity-shop. His pack is not only full of curious things but he is always "springing surprises on us," as our High School Boy puts it. For example, one of the most curious as well as picturesque evidences that great stretches of land sink under the sea from time to time is furnished by the English swallows. Like many other wealthy people, they spend their winters in Algiers, and they find their way over the Mediterranean, not by any lands they can see between coast and coast—for there are none—but by lands that used to be there, thousands upon thousands of years ago.
But how do the swallows know? They don't. Is it instinct? No. (Whatever instinct is!) Then why do they do it? Look it up and you'll see.[6] Yes, and you'll see that we have habits that we get in the same way; our habits of bowing, for example, because it's the custom, although few people know how it originated.
[6] "Colin Clout's Calendar," by Grant Allen.
CHAPTER II
(FEBRUARY)
Up rose the wild old Winter King
And shook his beard of snow;
"I hear the first young harebell ring,