Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/14



The belle of the sea—Her submarine home—A deep dive—Unfamiliar objects—The mermaid's garden—Her subjects—The black goby—Emissaries from the Court of Oberon—An expert well-sinker—Animated umbrellas—The lamps of the sea—The great crab family—The porcelain crab, the spider, and the hermit—Sea-slugs—Living stars—The sea-urchin—Serpulæ and acorn-shells—The mermaid and the naturalist

The flowers of the sea—Smooth anemone—Thick-horned anemone—Living daisies—Plumose anemone—Voracity of these animal flowers—Their curious structure—The madrepore described by Gosse—An amusing anecdote—The living flowers of tropical seas—The aquarium

A meeting of aged insects—An unpleasant scene—A sensible proposition—The cabbage butterfly—Swammerdam's remarks on the internal structure of a caterpillar—The tiger-moth—The dragon-fly's narrative—The gnat—Reaumur's observations—The case-fly—The ichneumon-fly

The witches' cauldron and the tea-kettle—Thermometers—Boiling and freezing points—Latent heat—The genii of the kettle—Ebullition—Conduction and convection—Hot porridge—Oceanic currents—Pressure of the atmosphere—The spheroidal state—Water frozen in a red-hot vessel—Steam springs—The fiery ordeal—The Geysers of Iceland—Sir George Mackenzie's description of the Great Geyser—Bunsen's experiments—Artificial Geysers