JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Here's an absolutely lovely book: The Fairyland Of Science, written by Arabella Burton Buckley (1840-1929), published in 1878. To start with I was more interested to see how many other books have “fairyland” and “science” in their titles and checked it out on WorldCat—I was not surprised to see there was only one other (George McPherson's Fairyland Tales of Science , published in 1891). Well, there was a second title, but that was Buckley's sequel to her 1878 book with its title repeated in the title of the newer book. But that was it.
A look at the contents though shows that Buckley wove some fairy dust into the sciences, and reading of it confirms this observation:
Lecture I The Fairy-Land of Science; How to Enter It; How to Use It; And How to Enjoy It
Lecture II Sunbeams, and the Work They Do
Lecture III The Aerial Ocean in Which We Live
Lecture IV A Drop of Water on its Travels
Lecture V The Two Great Sculptors - Water and Ice
Lecture VI The Voices of Nature, and How We Hear Them
Lecture VII The Life of a Primrose
Lecture VIII The History of a Piece of Coal
Lecture IX Bees in the Hive
Lecture X Bees and Flowers
The author gently and beautifully opens the book for the young reader with the following, there being little greater a wish for the appreciation of science than this:
- "I HAVE promised to introduce you today to the fairy-land of science - a somewhat bold promise, seeing that most of you probably look upon science as a bundle of dry facts, while fairy- land is all that is beautiful, and full of poetry and imagination. But I thoroughly believe myself, and hope to prove to you, that science is full of beautiful pictures, of real poetry, and of wonder-working fairies; and what is more, I promise you they shall be true fairies, whom you will love just as much when you are old and greyheaded as when you are young; for you will be able to call them up wherever you wander by land or by sea, through meadow or through wood, through water or through air; and though they themselves will always remain invisible, yet you will see their wonderful poet at work everywhere around you.”
Buckley walks the reader through familiar territory, explaining the great and overall consequences of water, ice, bees, flowers, coal, and the like, and how these everyday bits figure in the greater scheme of the workings of the world. Here's the table of contents, which is splendid all on its own.
She ends the book as nicely:
- “Neither is it pleasure alone which we gain by a study of nature. We cannot examine even a tiny sunbeam, and picture the minute waves of which it is composed, traveling incessantly from the sun, without being filled with wonder and awe at the marvelous activity and power displayed in the infinitely small as well as in the infinitely great things of the universe.”
Full text via Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5726/pg5726-images.html
Buckley followed a few years later with a companion volume, equally as accessible and interesting as her first: Through Magic Glasses...(1890) explaining how telescopes/microscopes/spectroscopes work and what they reveal—a fine accomplishment.
Again, full text provided by Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37589
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