This is an excellent puzzle to put to a bright child. The curious answer, found in the article Taste, is that vanilla, like onions and some other substances which we think have strong flavors, really has no taste at all. We smell them as we eat them, and therefore we imagine we taste them. This you can prove to a child by blindfolding it, while its nose is firmly closed, holding a slice of onion and a slice of apple near its open mouth, and touching its tongue first with one and then with the other.
What is a beaver’s favourite food?
Of all unlikely things—water-lilies! This, and other things that will delight children, you will find in the article Beaver, by Richard Lydekker, the famous naturalist.
Why is it harder to guess the width of a river than to guess the width of a field as wide?
The article Vision will tell you.
Why are new-born babies’ eyes often slate-blue, for a time?
The article Eye will tell you.
Why is not spiders’ silk manufactured?
Unfortunately, although the silk is of the finest quality, quite equal to the silkworm’s, the spiders are such fierce cannibals that each one would have to be kept in a separate box, and this would make the silk too costly. The article Spiders, by R. I. Pocock, superintendent of the London Zoological Gardens, also tells you how spiders make their way through the air to islands in the sea; how the wolf-spider builds a nest with a hinged door, and how the common pond-spider builds his thimble-shaped house under water and fills it with air by swimming down to it, time after time, on each trip taking down a tiny bubble of air.
Why do not animals that sleep all through the winter starve to death?