The Fairy-Land of Science | Page 5

allowed
them to come to earth again? Well, thousands and millions of years ago,
those coals were plants; and like the snowdrop in the garden of to-day,
they caught the sunbeams and worked them into their leaves. Then the
plants died and were buried deep in the earth and the sunbeams with
them; and like the gnomes they lay imprisoned till the coals were dug
out by the miners, and brought to your grate; and just now you yourself
took hold of the fairy wand which was to release them. You struck a
match, and its atoms clashing with atoms of oxygen in the air, set the
invisible fairies "heat" and "chemical attraction" to work, and they were

soon busy within the wood and the coals causing their atoms too to
clash; and the sunbeams, so long imprisoned, leapt into flame. Then
you spread out your hands and cried, "Oh, how nice and warm!" and
little thought that you were warming yourself with the sunbeams of
ages and ages ago.
This is no fancy tale; it is literally true, as we shall see in Lecture VIII,
that the warmth of a coal fire could not exist if the plants of long ago
had not used the sunbeams to make their leaves, holding them ready to
give up their warmth again whenever those crushed leaves are
consumed.
Now, do you believe in, and care for, my fairy-land? Can you see in
your imagination fairy 'Cohesion' ever ready to lock atoms together
when they draw very near to each other: or fairy 'Gravitation' dragging
rain-drops down to the earth: or the fairy of 'Crystallization' building up
the snow-flakes in the clouds? Can you picture tiny sunbeam-waves of
light and heat travelling from the sun to the earth? Do you care to know
how another strange fairy, 'Electricity,' flings the lightning across the
sky and causes the rumbling thunder? Would you like to learn how the
sun makes pictures of the world on which he shines, so that we can
carry about with us photographs or sun-pictures of all the beautiful
scenery of the earth? And have you any curiosity about 'Chemical
action,' which works such wonders in air, and land, and sea? If you
have any wish to know and make friends of these invisible forces, the
next question is
How are you to enter the fairy-land of science?
There is but one way. Like the knight or peasant in the fairy tales, you
must open you eyes. There is no lack of objects, everything around you
will tell some history if touched with the fairy wand of imagination. I
have often thought, when seeing some sickly child drawn along the
street, lying on its back while other children romp and play, how much
happiness might be given to sick children at home or in hospitals, if
only they were told the stories which lie hidden in the things around
them. They need not even move from their beds, for sunbeams can fall
on them there, and in a sunbeam there are stories enough to occupy a

month. The fire in the grate, the lamp by the bedside, the water in the
tumbler, the fly on the ceiling above, the flower in the vase on the table,
anything, everything, has its history, and can reveal to us nature's
invisible fairies.
Only you must with to see them. If you go through the world looking
upon everything only as so much to eat, to drink, and to use, you will
never see the fairies of science. But if you ask yourself why things
happen, and how the great God above us has made and governs this
world of ours; If you listen to the wind, and care to learn why it blows;
if you ask the little flower why it opens in the sunshine and closes in
the storm; and if when you find questions you cannot answer, you will
take the trouble to hunt out in books, or make experiments to solve
your own questions, then you will learn to know and love those fairies.
Mind, I do not advise you to be constantly asking questions of other
people; for often a question quickly answered is quickly forgotten, but
a difficulty really hunted down is a triumph for ever. For example, if
you ask why the rain dries up from the ground, most likely you will be
answered, "that the sun dries it," and you will rest satisfied with the
sound of the words. But if you hold a wet handkerchief before the fire
and see the damp rising out of it, then you have some real idea how
moisture may be drawn up by heat from the earth.
A little foreign niece of mine, only four years old, who could scarcely
speak English