Page:Maury's New Elements of Geography, 1907.djvu/14

10

Photograph by Hegger, N.Y.

It may seem strange that the fishes should have so much more room to live in than man and the other animals. But we shall see, when we know more about geography, that man and the lower animals that are on the land could not live at all if it were not for the great sea. The plants would have no rain. They would all die, and there would be nothing for us and the lower animals to eat.

3. Air.—Over all the land surface and over all the water surface is something that we call air. It is just as much a part of the earth as the land and the water. We live in this air much as fish live in the water. It is all around us, but it is so thin and clear that we cannot see it. When we look up, the blue that we see and call the sky, is really air.

When air moves past us wo can feel it, and then we call it a breeze or wind.

The clouds are floating in the air. Anything that is as light as air will float in it. A balloon rises and floats because it is filled with something lighter than air.

1. We have now learned that the surface of the earth is partly land and partly water.

Both the land and the water are divided into parts of bodies of different sizes and shapes.

2. Continents.—The largest parts or divisions of the land are called con'-ti-nents. Notice two of them in the picture on page 9. We can travel on them for hundreds and even thousands of miles without ever reaching the sea. It takes a railway train nearly a week to go across the continent on which we live.