Uncle George poured some red ink into a saucer, and dipped the corner of a lump of sugar into it. The red ink ran up into the sugar until it was red all over. Next he took a bundle of very small glass tubes, and dipped the ends of them in the ink. The ink ran up the tubes, filling them to the top.
“Inside every plant,” Uncle George went on, “there are thousands of long tiny tubes, up which the water travels. In fact the veins of a leaf are just bundles of tubes, something like the bundle I hold in my hand.”
Questions and Exercises.
1. Why do branches wither quickly when cut from the tree? How would you keep them from withering quickly? 2. Place two small panes of clean glass close together. Dip the corner of them in coloured water, and watch what happens. 3. Why do we never see the silky root-hairs when we dig or pull a plant out of the ground?
III.—THE WEASEL AND THE OTTER.
It was Frank who wanted to follow the stream far up towards the hills. He wished to see where it began, for he had heard that its source was in several small streams many miles away.
Uncle George agreed to take the children as far up the stream as they could walk, without being tired. Soon they were far up above the wood, and the fields, and the pond.
Frank was not in the least sorry when his uncle sat down on a large stone by the side of the stream.
“We shall not go much farther,” said Uncle George. “Some other day we will. But tell me what you think of the country round about you.”
“It is very wild and lonely,” said Tom. “There are no fields of corn; nothing but green hills and moorland. Yet it is very grand.”