Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales

The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the rivers; the water comes down from the mountains; the vapours rise from the water to the clouds, and rain begins to fall. Who does it all? – The sun. The seeds swell, and let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass begin to grow. Who has done that? – The sun.

The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken; the gnats are hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs, when it is warm. Who has done it all? – The sun.

The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in its place comes colder air, – and there is a wind. Who has done that? – The sun.

The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter, – and the lightning flashes. Who has made that fire? – The sun.

The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up; animals find their food, men eat their fill, and gather food and fuel for the winter; they build themselves houses, railways, cities. Who has prepared it all? – The sun.

A man has built himself a house. What has he made it of? Of timbers. The timbers were cut out of trees, but the trees are made to grow by the sun.

The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the wood to grow? – The sun.

Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them grow? – The sun. Man eats meat. Who has made the animals, the birds to grow? – The grass. But the grass is made to grow by the sun.

A man builds himself a house from brick and lime. The bricks and the lime are burnt by wood. The wood has been prepared by the sun.

Everything that men need, that is for their use, – all that is prepared by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat. The reason that men need bread is because the sun has produced it, and because there is much sun's heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it.

The reason that wood and logs are needed is because there is much heat in them. He who buys wood for the winter, buys sun's heat; and in the winter he burns the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat into his room.

When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what motion it may be, – it all comes from heat, either directly from the sun's heat, or from the heat which the sun has prepared in the coal, the wood, the bread, and the grass.

Horses and oxen pull, men work, – who moves them? – Heat. Where does the heat come from? – From the food. And the food has been prepared by the sun.

Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who moves them? – Wind and water. And who drives the wind? – Heat. And who drives the water? – Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works, – it is moved by steam. And who makes steam? – Wood. And in the wood is the sun's heat.

Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are from the sun.

STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY

THE OWL AND THE HARE

It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.

A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur. An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a young owl said to him:

"Why do you not catch the hare?"

The old owl said:

"He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the woods."

But the young owl said:

"I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a tree."

The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready to push into the tree. The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to the tree, and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted forward and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the hare's back.

The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's talons had grown into the hare's back.

HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS

I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me. It was the shepherd boy who was shouting. He was running through the field, and pointing to something.

I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was full-grown, and the other a whelp. The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old wolf was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response to our cries came peasants with dogs.

The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view.

Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf had leaped out from the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off.

The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The old wolf let the whelp carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him.

Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and himself take the lamb.

HARES AND WOLVES

The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye and the grass, and the threshing-floor hares eat the grain in the granary. Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through the snow. The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes, and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but God has made a hare timid, and his timidity saves him.

A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up, and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward, gets frightened at something, and runs back on his track. He hears something again, and he leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track. Again something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one side. When it is daylight, he lies down.

In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's cunning. But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of everything.

THE SCENT

Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose, tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man's eyes see better, another man's see worse. One hears from a distance, and another is deaf. One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance, while another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive it. One can tell a thing by the touch, and another cannot tell by touch what is wood and what paper. One will take a substance in his mouth and will find it sweet, while another will swallow it without making out whether it is bitter or sweet.

Just so the different senses differ in strength in the animals. But with all the animals the sense of smell is stronger than in man.

When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it, listens to the noise that it makes, now and then smells at it, or tastes it; but, above all, a man has to feel a thing, to recognize it.

But nearly all animals more than anything else need to smell a thing. A horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do not know a thing until they smell it.

When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts, – it clears its nose so as to scent better, and does not stop being afraid until it has smelled the object well.

A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when it sees him, it does not recognize him and begins to bark, until it smells him and finds out that that which has looked so terrible is its master.

Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar in the slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is going on. But an ox or a cow need only find a spot where there is ox blood, and smell it, and it will understand and will roar and strike with its feet, and cannot be driven off the spot.

An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to milk the cow. The cow snorted, – she discovered that it was not her mistress, and would not give him any milk. The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat and kerchief, – and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw open the coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped giving milk.

When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run on the track itself, but to one side, about twenty paces from it. When an inexperienced hunter wants to show the dog the scent, and sticks its nose on the track, it will always jump to one side. The track itself smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one side, and then only discovers in what direction the scent grows stronger, and so follows the animal. The dog does precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do we make out what is being said. Or, if anything we are looking at is too close, we step back and only then make it out.

Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other by means of their scent.

The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies directly to the flower that it wants to reach; a worm crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a flea, a mosquito scents a man a hundred thousand of its steps away.

If the particles which separate from a substance and enter our noses are small, how small must be those particles that reach the organ of smell of the insects!

TOUCH AND SIGHT

Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch a small ball with them, so that it may roll between the two fingers, and shut your eyes. You will think that there are two balls. Open your eyes, – and you will see that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but the eyes correct you.

Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror, – you will think that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it. Touch it with a finger, – and you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes have deceived you, but the fingers correct you.

THE SILKWORM

I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My grandfather had planted them. In the fall I was given a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised to hatch them and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so small that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They are smaller than the tiniest pin-head. They are quite dead; only when you crush them do they crack.

The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I had almost forgotten about them.

One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and noticed the buds swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where the sun beat down, the leaves were out. I thought of the silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home and gave them more room. The majority of the eggs were no longer dark gray, as before, but some were light gray, while others were lighter still, with a milky shade.

The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that some of the worms had hatched out, while other eggs were quite swollen. Evidently they felt in their shells that their food was ripening.

The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that it was hard to see them. I looked at them through a magnifying-glass, and saw that in the eggs they lay curled up in rings, and when they came out they straightened themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put on my table, and began to fix a place for the worms, as I had been taught to do.

While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled their food and started to crawl toward it. I pushed it away, and began to entice the worms to a leaf, and they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across pencils, scissors, and papers. Then I cut off a piece of paper, stuck holes through it with a penknife, placed the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down on the worms. The worms crawled through the holes, climbed on the leaf, and started to eat.

When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece of paper with a leaf on them, and all crawled through the holes and began to eat. The worms gathered on each leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when they had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and looked for more food. Then I put on them new sheets of perforated paper with mulberry leaves upon them, and they crawled over to the new food.

They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf, they climbed about the shelf, and came to its very edge, but they never fell down, though they are blind. The moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a web from its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself to it and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and watches, and if it wants to get down farther, it does so, and if not, it pulls itself up by its web.

For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I had to give them more and more leaves. When a new leaf was brought, and they transferred themselves to it, they made a noise as though a rain were falling on leaves, – that was when they began to eat the new leaf.

Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had grown very large and began to eat ten times as much as ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they would fall asleep, and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and stopped eating and stirring.

The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I knew that worms moulted several times, because they grew up and found it close in their old hide, and so put on a new one.

My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening my friend called out:

"It has begun to undress itself, – come!"

I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck with its old hide to the paper, had torn a hole at the mouth, thrust forth its head, and was writhing and working to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I watched it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and I wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail, but soon saw that I had done something foolish. Under my nail there was something liquid, and the worm died. At first I thought that it was blood, but later I learned that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt disturbed the new shirt, for, though the worm crawled out, it soon died.

The other worms I did not touch. All of them came out of their shirts in the same manner; only a few died, and nearly all came out safely, though they struggled hard for a long time.

After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat more voraciously, and more leaves were devoured. Four days later they again fell asleep, and again crawled out of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was now consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an inch in length. Six days later they fell asleep once more, and once more came out in new skins, and now were very large and fat, and we had barely time to get leaves ready for them.

On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely and climbed up the shelves and rods. I gathered them in and gave them fresh leaves, but they turned their heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up into larvæ, they stop eating and climb upward.

I left them alone, and began to watch what they would do.

The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered about, crawled in all directions, and began to draw out single threads in various directions. I watched one of them. It went into a corner, put forth about six threads each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over in a horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a silk web which began to cover it all over. Toward evening it was covered by it as though in a mist; the worm could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the worm could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in silk, and still it spun out more.

Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down. Later I learned how much web it had spun in those three days. If the whole web were to be unravelled, it would be more than half a mile in length, seldom less. And if we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its head in these three days in order to let out all the web, it will appear that in these three days the worm tosses its head 300,000 times. Consequently, it makes one turn a second, without stopping. But after the work, when we took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found inside the worms all dried up and white, looking like pieces of wax.

I knew that from these larvæ with their white, waxen bodies would come butterflies; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. None the less I went to look at them on the twentieth day, to see what had become of them.

On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change. Nothing was to be seen, and I was beginning to think that something was wrong, when suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and moist. I thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to throw it away. But then I thought that perhaps it began that way, and so I watched to see what would happen. And, indeed, something began to move at the wet end. For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The whiskers moved. Then I noticed a leg sticking out through the hole, then another, and the legs scrambled to get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more, and I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out, the back jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out and stopped. When it dried it was white; it straightened its wings, flew away, circled around, and alighted on the window.

Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid eggs in a row, and stuck them fast. The eggs were yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid eggs. I collected five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more worms, and had more silk spun.

STORIES FROM BOTANY

THE APPLE-TREE

I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds. Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood. The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together, there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they were all wild.

The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed through the body.

Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.

Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches, leaves, and flowers.

THE OLD POPLAR

For five years our garden was neglected. I hired labourers with axes and shovels, and myself began to work with them in the garden. We cut out and chopped out all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the superfluous trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew ranker than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar grows out from the roots, and it cannot be dug out, but the roots have to be chopped out underground.

Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two men's embraces in circumference. About it there was a clearing, and this was all overgrown with poplar shoots. I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to look more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the old poplar, because I thought that all those young trees came from its roots, and were draining it of its sap. When we cut out these young poplars, I felt sorry as I saw them chop out the sap-filled roots underground, and as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been cut down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its might, and did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt, they had to live, since they clung so much to life. But it was necessary to cut them down, and so I did it. Only later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they ought not to have been cut down.

I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away from the old poplar, but it turned out quite differently. When I was cutting them down, the old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried up completely. The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.

That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its children.

THE BIRD-CHERRY

A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry grew not as a bush, but as a tree, about six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. You could smell it from a distance. I should not have cut it down, but one of the labourers (to whom I had before given the order to cut down the bird-cherry) had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed under the axe whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot be helped, – apparently such is its fate," I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop it with the peasant.

It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop. It is a pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther into the tree.

I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking only of felling it as quickly as possible. When I got tired, I put down my axe and with the peasant pressed against the tree and tried to make it fall. We bent it: the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered down upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms fell down.

At the same time something seemed to cry, – the middle of the tree creaked; we pressed against it, and it was as though something wept, there was a crash in the middle, and the tree tottered. It broke at the notch and, swaying, fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass. The twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and stopped.

"It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily sorry for it!"

I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other labourers.

HOW TREES WALK