Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children

h terrible things as volcan

e uses, doubt not, than we know as yet, or ever s

s and sundry curious things, from

brave Spaniard who, when his fellows wanted materials for gunpowder, had himself lowered in a basket down the crater of a South American vo

herefore I advise you to make good use of it, for you are responsible for it. But you yourself are not your body, or your brain, but something else, which we call your soul, your spirit, your life. And that "you yourself" would remain just the same if it were taken out of your body, and put into the body of a bee, or of a lion, or any other body; or into no body at all. At least so I believe; and so, I am happy to say, nine hu

all the thoughts, and feelings, and recollections which have passed through his brain; and that as his brain changes, he himself must change, and become another person, and then another person again, continually. But do you not agree with them: but keep

though they are very clever people, they are wrong there. I never saw any broth in Scotland, as far as I know, but what whinst

te of all cooks; and she knows how to pound, and soak, and stew whinstones so delicately, that she can make them sauce and seasoning for meat, vegetables, puddings, and almost everyt

are. And you would think it stranger still if

roll and slide over each other on the top of the lava, crashing and clanging as they grind together with a horrid noise. Of course that stream, like all streams, runs towards the lower grounds. It slides down glens, and fills them up; down the beds of streams, driving off the water in hissing steam; and sometimes (as it did in Iceland a few years ago) falls over some cliff, turning what had been a water-fall into a fire-fall, and filling up the pool below with blocks of lava suddenly cooled, with a clang and roar like that of chains shaken or brazen vessels beaten, which is heard miles and miles away. Of course, woe to the crops and gardens which stand in its way. It crawls over them all and eats them up. It shoves down houses; it sets woods on fire, and sends the steam and gas out of

e, such as they were, think that St. Agatha had saved them. The lava stream came straight down upon the town wall. Another foot, and it would have touched it, and have begun shoving it down with a force compared with which all the battering-rams that you ever read of in ancient histories would be child's toys. But lo and behold! when the lava stream got within a few inches of the wall it stopped, and began to rear itself upright and build itself into a wall beside the wall. It rose and rose, till I believe in one place it overtopped the wall and began to curl over in a crest. All expected that it would fall over into the town at last: but no, there it stopped, and cooled, and hardened, and left the town unhurt. All t

heat, perhaps for miles around. And there is good reason to believe that the fossil fish which we so often find in rocks, perfect in every bone, lying sometimes in heaps, and twisted (as I have seen them) as if they had died suddenly and violently, were killed in this very way, either by heat f

e done, at the great river of rough black blocks streaming away far and wide over the land, you would think it the most hideous and the most useless thing you ever saw. And yet, my dear child, there is One who told men

lcanic soils (as they are called), that is, soil which has at first been lava or ashes, are generally the richest soils in the world-that, for instance (as some one told me the other day), there is soil in the beautiful island of Madeira so thin that you cannot dig more than two or three inches down without coming to the solid rock of lava, or what is harder even, obsidian (which is the black glass which volcanos sometimes make, and which the old Mexicans used to chip int

y year, which would, if it could be kept on land, make food for men and animals, plants and trees. So, in order to supply the continual waste of this upper world, Madam How is continually melting up the under world, and pouring it out of the volcanos like manure, to renew the face of the earth. In these lava rocks and ashes which she sends up there are certain substances, without which men cannot live-without which a stalk of corn or grass cannot grow. Without potash, without magnesia, both of which are i

ers, which we call rain, and with that alone, century after century, and age after age, she digs the lava stream down, atom by atom, and silts it over the country round in rich manure. So that if Mada

that it rises into the sky and is wafted by the wind across the seas. So, in the year 1783, ashes from the Skaptar

d found that it was stuck fast by something on the ledge outside, and, when he thrust it open, found the ledge covered deep in soft red dust; and he instantly said, like a wise man as he was, "The volcano of St. Vincent must have broken out, and these are the ashes from it." Then he ran down stairs and quieted the poor negroes, telling them not to be afraid, for the end of the world was not coming just yet. But still the dust went on falling till the whole island, I am told, was covered an inch thick; and the same thing happened in the other islands round. People thought-and they had reason to think from what had often happened elsewhere-that though the dus

little more than the alphabet myself; but if the very letters of Madam How's book, and the mere A, B, AB, of it, which I am trying to teach you, are so wonderful and so

ave it out. I would sooner answer one question of

he soil here? And if there is, where did they c

ver (as far as I know) volcanos in Scotland or in England. Madam How has more than one string to her bow, or two strings either; so when she pours out her lavas, she does not always pour them out in the open air. Sometimes she pours them out at the bottom of the sea, as she did in the north of Ireland and the south-west of Scotland, when she made the Giant's Causeway, and Fingal's Cave in Staffa too, at the bottom of the old chalk ocean, ages and ages since. Sometimes she squirts them out between the layers of rock, or into cracks which the earthquakes have made, in what are called trap dykes, of which there are plenty to be seen in Scotland, and in Wales likewise. And then she lifts the earth up from the bottom of the sea, and sets the rain to wash away all the soft rocks, till the hard lava stands out in great hills upon the surface of the ground. Then t

ges, like Arthur's Seat, or the Sidlaws, or the Ochils. Think what these black bare lumps of whinstone are, and what they do. Remember they are mines-not gold mines, but something richer still-food mines, which Madam How thrust into the inside of the earth, ages and ages since, as molten lava rock, and then cooled them and lifted them up, and pared them away with her ice-plough and her rain-spade, and spread the stuff of them ov

tten in their grand old tongue. Remember that Lady Why made them, as she has made the Scotch, by first preparing a country for them, which wou

taken up by the roots of a clover plant, and became an atom of vegetable matter once more. And then how, perhaps, a rabbit came by, and ate the clover, and the grain of mineral became part of the rabbit; and then how a hawk killed that rabbit, and ate it, and so the grain became part of the hawk; and how the farmer shot the hawk, and it fell perchance into a stream, and was carried down into the sea; and when its body decayed, the little grain sank through the water, and was mingled with the mud at the bottom of the sea. But do its wanderings stop there? Not so, my child. Nothing upon this earth, as I told you once before, continues in one stay. That grain of mineral might stay at the bottom of the sea a thousand or ten thousand years, and yet the time would come when Madam How would set to work on it again. Slowly, perhaps, she would sink that mud so deep, and cover it up with so many fresh beds of mud, or sand, or lime, that under the

into Stone-Stone into Soil-Soil into Plant-Plant into Animal-Animal into Soil-Soil into Stone

born in Time must change in Time, and die in Time, t

baseless fabr

d towers, the g

ples, the grea

which inherit,

unsubstantial

t a rack

nd Space; but you, child, your Soul, and Life, and Self, she did not make; and over you she has no power. For you were not, like your body, created in Time and Space; and you will end