CHAPTER LXIII

SOME QUESTIONS CHILDREN SOMETIMES ASK, AND SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK CHILDREN A child gains a great part of its knowledge by asking questions, and he should be encouraged to ask them. But parents often find the child’s questions, even those about the objects he sees every day, so difficult to answer, that he is told “not to bother.” With the new Encyclopaedia Britannica at hand, there is hardly any intelligent question that cannot be answered after a glance at the Index and at the page to which it refers the reader. Again, there is no better way at once of amusing and instructing the child than to ask him questions and help him find his way to the answers. Here are a few questions: some of the kind that a child might ask, and some that may be put to a child. The Britannica supplies interesting answers to all of them, and some of these answers are given here. _What makes people snore?_ The answer, found at once by referring to “snoring” in the Index, is that the cause is breathing through the mouth, which makes the soft palate vibrate. When the child is told this, it should also be told what the Britannica says about mouth-breathing being a dangerous habit for children to form, as it often leads to sore throats. _How does one ant tell another to go to work?_ By patting it with its feelers. The article ANT, by Professor Carpenter, will supply you with stories to tell children as fascinating as any fairy tale. _What makes the colours of sunset?_ Dust. If it were not for the dust floating in the air, we should lose not only the brilliant sunsets but the glorious cloud scenery as well, and there would be no twilight. Furthermore, all the moisture in the air, which now condenses on the particles of floating dust, would settle on our clothes and on the walls of our rooms. You will find many other curious facts in the article DUST, by John Aitken, who invented the machine for counting the particles of dust in the atmosphere. _How does the brightness of moonlight compare with that of sunlight?_ Most people would guess that sunlight is twenty, or, at most, fifty times as strong; yet it is really half a million times stronger. The article MOON, by Dr. Simon Newcomb, is full of such curious information and of delightful pictures. _Why did the Israelites in bondage need straw to put in their bricks, although we do not use it in ours?_ The article BRICK tells you that their bricks were made of Nile mud, which would not bind without something to hold it together. _When sea-water freezes, does the salt go into the ice?_ Only one-fifth of it, the article ICE says. _Are you sure you like the taste of vanilla?_ 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?_ Because they live on the fat they have put on during the summer, as the article HIBERNATION explains. _Why could not the Norsemen who visited America in the 11th century found permanent settlements?_ The natives were hostile and the Norsemen had no firearms. The wonderful story of the first voyages to America is told in the article VINLAND. _How can you tell how far away a flash of lightning is?_ Sound travels so much more slowly than light does, that if the flash is a mile away you see it five seconds before you hear the report; so by counting the seconds you can measure the distance. The Index, under “Lightning: distance” refers you to the article SOUND, by Professor Poynting. _Why does your hair stand on end when you are frightened?_ The article SKIN, by Professor Parsons, will tell you about this curious action of the muscles. _Why do we count by tens?_ Because people began by counting on their fingers and thumbs, and when they got to ten they had to begin again. Some tribes used to make twenty their basis for counting, adding in their toes. The article ARITHMETIC tells you this; and a newspaper critic said of this article that he was amazed to find it one of the most readable things in the Britannica. The truth is that there are no subjects that are dull in themselves. There is a dull way of treating them, and there is also the Britannica way, which is to show you _how things came to be as they are_. That is why children are delighted when “Britannica time” comes, the hour when the parent sits down by the bookcase and tells them true stories out of the volumes and shows them the exquisite pictures. _Are men or women oftener stammerers?_ The article STAMMERING, which tells you that men are much oftener afflicted than women, is one that all parents should read. If a child’s speech is carefully watched, the first trouble of this kind may sometimes be checked before it becomes a habit. _Why does a room look smaller with red than with violet wall-paper?_ Read the article VISION and you will understand this and many other curious facts about the way our eyes do their work. Furthermore, you will be reminded that slight defects in a child’s sight should be noticed and treated by an oculist before permanent harm has been done. _Why is winter colder than summer?_ Simply because the sun’s rays, coming aslant instead of from overhead, travel through more miles of air and are thus robbed of much of their heat before they reach us. The polar regions actually get more hours of sunlight in a year than we get in the United States, more even than there are at the equator, but the sun is never high above the horizon at the poles. _Can a snake cross a frozen pond?_ No, nor move on any other smooth surface, as the article SNAKES shows. _How long was Abraham Lincoln at school?_ Less than a year in all, as shown by the article LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, by J. G. Nicolay (Lincoln’s private secretary) and C. C. Whinery. But although he could not get much teaching, he read over and over again every book he could get hold of. Here are a few questions without the answers; but the numbers after each question show the volume and page of the Britannica where each answer can be found: _What makes blood clot?_ (Vol. 4, p. 81.) _Are there any red-haired human races?_ (Vol. 12, p. 823.) _Why does a cut apple turn brown?_ (Vol. 21, p. 756.) _What makes negroes black?_ (Vol. 25, p. 190.) _Are men or women oftener colour-blind?_ (Vol. 28, p. 139.) _Why do stars twinkle?_ (Vol. 23, p. 29.) _What happens in your throat when you sob?_ (Vol. 23, p. 195.) _What change in water, as it freezes, makes ice float?_ (Vol. 14, p. 227). _Why is the shadow cast by an electric light sharper-edged than the shadow cast by the sun?_ (Vol. 24, p. 758). _Why does fright make people faint?_ (Vol. 27, p. 942). _What makes the beautiful “ice-flowers” on a frosted window-pane?_ (Vol. 14, p. 226). _How do trappers prepare valuable fur-skins so as to preserve them until they get to market?_ The skins are simply dried in the air, as stated in the article _Fur_, which was written by the head of a great wholesale fur business. _How does the amount of air in a room spoiled by an ordinary gas-burner, or a small reading-lamp, compare with the amount spoiled by a man’s breathing?_ The gas burner or the lamp spoils four times as much air, as shown in the article VENTILATION. _What part of your weight is blood?_ One-twentieth. (Vol. 27, p. 939). _What domestic animal is oftenest born with only one eye?_ The pig. (Vol. 18, p. 743). _Which covers the more space, the United States (without Alaska) or Europe?_ Europe. (Vol. 27, p. 612, and Vol. 9, p. 907.) _If you looked at the moon all night every night, how soon would you have seen all its surface?_ Never. Four-tenths of it can never be seen from the earth. (Vol. 18, p. 803.) _What was the great difference between the destruction of Pompeii and that of Herculaneum?_ Pompeii was covered by ashes and Herculaneum by mud. (Vol. 22, p. 50, and Vol. 13, p. 342.) _Why do not high mountains, where more snow falls than melts, keep growing higher?_ Because pressure forces the snow, changed into ice, to descend in the form of glaciers, as explained in the article GLACIER. _Who wrote to George Washington, on behalf of a number of officers in the United States army, asking him to make himself king of the United States?_ Col. Lewis Nicola. The article WASHINGTON, GEORGE, by Professor MacDonald of Brown University, gives you the words of Washington’s indignant reply. _How deep has anyone ever dived in diver’s dress?_ The article DIVERS tells you: 210 feet. _In baseball, how is a fielding-record calculated?_ To get the fielder’s average, you divide the number of chances he has made the most of by the total number of chances he has had. (Vol. 3, p. 461.) _How tall must a giant be?_ Seven feet, to be properly called a giant. (Vol. 18, p. 741). _Where were the first lighthouses built?_ In lower Egypt, as stated in the article LIGHTHOUSE, which describes all the great lighthouses and gives pictures of the towers and of the wonderful lamps. _When ships are going through the Panama Canal, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, will they be heading to the eastward or to the westward?_ Oddly enough, to the eastward; for the Isthmus curves so, just where the canal line lies, that the Pacific end is much to the eastward of the Atlantic end. You can see this plainly on the detailed map in the article PANAMA CANAL. _Why does a tame rabbit die if it is held erect for half an hour?_ Because the muscles of its abdomen are so weak that they cannot act as a belt, as our muscles do, and all the rabbit’s blood settles below the heart. (Vol. 27, p. 942.) _For what price was Manhattan Island bought from the Indians in 1626?_ For $24 worth of goods, as shown in the article NEW YORK. _Why do people, when they are in the polar regions, seldom catch cold?_ Because colds are caused by microbes and there are very few microbes in places so far from any masses of people, as you can see from the article CLIMATE. _If North America were spread out on the surface of the moon, what share of the moon’s surface would it cover?_ About four-sevenths. (Vol. 18, p. 805, and Vol. 19, p. 764.) _Which is the greater: the highest mountain’s height or the deepest sea’s depth?_ The sea’s depth, which is 31,614 feet; while Mt. Everest is 29,002 feet high. (Vol. 19, p. 973, and Vol. 10, p. 7.) _Of what use are the hairs on a caterpillar?_ Like the bristles on a dog-collar, they keep an enemy from biting him. (Vol. 6, p. 733.) _Why do you twist yourself into an uncomfortable position when you have a pain?_ Because instinct teaches you that discomfort will help you by partially taking your attention away from the pain. (Vol. 22, p. 587.) _What warm-blooded creature has the longest average life?_ Man, except possibly the whale; but not the elephant, as is generally believed. The article LONGEVITY tells how long all kinds of animals live. _What mistake about American history is caused in our minds by the celebration of the Fourth of July?_ The belief that the Declaration of Independence was signed on the 4th of July. Congress did not order it to be engrossed for signature until July 19th. The article INDEPENDENCE, DECLARATION OF, also shows that the most important day was July 2nd, when Congress adopted the Resolution of Independence. If you look up the answers to these questions, in the Britannica, you will incidentally learn, from the articles to which you turn, a great many things that will be of practical use to you in every-day life. For whether you turn to the volumes because you want only a single fact, or because you want to learn all about some important subject—or even because you merely want to pass a pleasant hour—you always get from them far more than you had hoped to find.