Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/209

commonly called in, the questioner being told that the baby has been sent down from heaven in the arms of an angel, etc. Fairy stories with their pretty conceits, as that of the child Thumbkin growing out of a flower, in Andersen's book, contribute their suggestions, and so there arises a mass of child lore about babies in which we can see that the main ideas are supplied by others, though now and then we catch a glimpse of the child's own contributions. Thus, according to Dr. Stanley Hall's report, the Boston children said, among other things, that God makes babies in heaven, lets them down or drops them for the women and doctors to catch them, or that he brings them down a wooden ladder backward and pulls it up again, or that mamma and nurse or doctor goes up and fetches them in a balloon. They are said by some to grow in cabbages, or to be placed by God in water, perhaps in the sewer, where they are found by the doctor, who takes them to sick folks that want them. Here we have delicious touches of child fancy, quaint adaptations of fairy and Bible lore, as in the use of Jacob's ladder and of the legend of Moses placed among the bulrushes, this last being enriched by a thorough master stroke of child genius—the idea of the dark, mysterious, wonder-producing sewer. In spite, too, of all that others do to impress the traditional notions of the nursery here, we find that a child will now and again think out the whole subject for himself. The little boy C—— is not the only one, I find, who is of the opinion that babies are got at a shop. Another little boy, I am informed, once asked his mamma, in the abrupt, childish manner, "Mamma, vere did Tommy (his one name) tum (come) from?" and then, with the equally childish way of sparing you the trouble of answering his question, himself answered it quite to his own satisfaction, "Mamma did tie (buy) Tommy in a s'op (shop)." This looks like a real childish idea. To the young imagination the shop is a veritable wonderland, an El Dorado of valuables; and it appears quite reasonable to the childish intelligence that babies, like dolls and other treasures, should be procurable there. The ideas, partly communicated by others, partly thought out for themselves, are carried over into the beginnings of animal life. Thus, as we have seen, one little boy supposed that God "helps pussy to have 'ickle kitties, seeing that she hasn't any kitties in eggs given her to sit upon."

 

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Enumerating the climatic influences of forests, Prof. I. B. Balfour showed, in the British Association, that they improve the soil drainage and modify miasmatic conditions. Trees, like green plants, assimilate carbon and purify the air, but it is not established that forests increase ozone. They stop air currents laden with dust particles and germs; they prevent extremes of temperature; they increase humidity, precipitate rain, and control waterflow.