thing to tell what it is going to be like to-morrow. Yet, in the newspaper every morning, we can read a forecast of what is going to happen during the day, and, although we cannot all have the wonderful instruments with which clever men foretell the weather, it is possible to construct a few devices with very little trouble.

the pressure of the air. The barometer is an expensive instrument; but, with a glass jar and an oil-flask, we may make a device which will tell us a good deal about the weight of the air. Fill the jar about half full with water. Now place the empty oil-flask neck down

wards into the water in the jar,

as seen in picture 2. The water will rise up some distance in the flask. From day to day the height of the water will vary, and, indeed, it will be responding to the pressure of the atmosphere on the water in the jar, so that when the air is dry, and therefore heavier than usual, the water will be higher than when the atmosphere is moist and light. Thus we may expect fine weather when the water in the flask is high, and storms when it is low.

In order to find out the kind of weather which is coming, it is necessary to discover whether the air around us is damp or dry. If there should be a great deal of moisture in the atmosphere, clouds, made of countless particles of moisture, are readily formed, and rain is likely to result. A piece of ordinary brown seaweed, hung up on the wall of a room, will tell us whether the air is damp or dry. When there is little moisture about, the weed will be crisp and hard, but directly rain is coming it will be damp and flabby.

Another important matter is the weight of the atmosphere. Over every object in the world there is a great column of atmosphere, so to speak, miles in height. We get so used to the pressure that we do not notice it, but it is there all the

same.

Now, the weight of air varies from time to time, because when the atmosphere is very moist it is lighter, while when dry it is heavier. On this account it is very

Animals are very sensitive to weather conditions. When it is likely to kec fine, leeches will remain quietly in the bottom of a jar, while at the approach of a storm they will become very restless. A frog in an

aquarium keeps to the bottom of the water if the weather is going to be stormy, while in fine weather he will enjoy coming to the surface.

It is always interesting and useful to know which way the wind is blowing. In most parts of the British İslands, when the wind is in the west, it will not keep fine for very long, while an east wind, as a rule, means dry weather. It is quite easy to cut out a weather-vane, in the shape of an arrow, from a piece of flat wood, as seen in picture 1. If

you drive a nail exactly through the centre of the shaft, the vane may be fastened on to a broomstick, and the pole then fixed in an open place, such as the top of a summerhouse, or from the upright branch of a tree. By watching the movements of the sun, or with a compass, we can soon find out which is the east, and the west, and so on.

It is easy, also, to keep a record of the rainfall. With a narrow-necked bottle, holding about a quart, and a funnel with an opening the same size as the bottom of the bottle, we can make a very simple raingauge. The end of the funnel is put into the neck of the bottle, and the whole thing left to stand in the open, perhaps on a lawn. The rain-gauge must be left out night and day, of course, and at the end of twentyfour hours you must look and see whether any rain has fallen or not - of course, emptying the bottle each time. The bottle used should be one with a flat bottom, and not one with a raised bottom inside. If, after a storm, there is an inch of rain in the bottle, that is the depth of rain that has fallen.

But it may not, perhaps, be easy for you to get a bottle and a funnel exactly the same width, and in that case it will be more difficult for you to measure the rainfall. It is clear that if we use a funnel 12 inches wide, catching the rain falling over a width of 12 inches of space, and then measure its depth in a bottle 6 inches wide, the depth in the bottle will be twice the real depth of the rainfall, because the width of water falling would be twice the width of space for it to fall into, and so the water would rise higher instead of spreading itself out. But if the top of the funnel is not the same

width as the bottle, all we have to do is to compare the width of one with the width of the other, and do a little sum. We have to find out how one area compares with the other. There is a rule regarding areas which may look a little difficult, but which is quite easy. It is: Area = square of diameter x 07854. This means that to find the square inches within a circle we must multiply the diameter of the circle in inches by itself, and multiply the result by o'7854. Now, suppose that the bottle is 3 inches in diameter inside. We multiply 3 by 3, giving us 9, and then we multiply 9 by o'7854, and the result is 7'0686. The fraction is so small that for our purpose we may disregard it, and say that the area of the surface of the water in the bottle, or of the bottom of the bottle, is 7 inches. Now, let us suppose that the mouth of the funnel measures 6 inches across. We multiply 6 by 6, giving us 36, which we multiply by o'7854, and get for answer 28 2744. This is just a very little more than 28 square inches, and we may count it as 28 square inches.

Now, if rain has fallen 1 inch deep in the bottle, we have to find what it would be in a bottle of the same diameter as the mouth of the funnel. To do this, we multiply 1 inch by 7, and divide it by 28. This gives us one quarter of an inch, so we say that a quarter of an inch of rain has fallen. Whatever the diameter of the bottle and of the mouth of the funnel may be, we can find the amount of rain by following these rules, and if we know the size of a garden or of a field, or even of a county, we can tell, by working it out, what weight of water has fallen over the whole area. The rule to work upon is that 27% cubic inches of water weigh one pound.

Let us see if we cannot make a handkerchief and a glove sachet out of it. As we like to have dainty gloves and handkerchiefs, we also like dainty cases into which to put them.

re

13 INCHES

Now, the satin will be 22 inches wide, so let us cut a strip the full length (1⁄2 yard) and 13 inches wide. The piece that mains 9 inches wide and yard longwill just do for the handkerchief sachet. 2 We must begin by tacking the edges neatly, so that the satin may not fray. Let us decide to have our colouring yellow; it would look pretty if we were to embroider a design of buttercups with leaves on the upper side of the sachet. We could then line them with yellow satin, edge them with yellow cord, and tie them up with yellow ribbon.

Buttercups are very pretty and quite easy to work. First let us draw the design, or, if we cannot draw, we can buy a Briggs transfer pattern by the strip. This we should lay lengthwise on the satin, taking care that the shiny side of the transfer is on the satin, and press it with a moderately hot iron.

9 INCHES

Let us work the buttercups in yellow Mallard floss. They can either be outlined, or, what is much prettier, worked thickly with the silk, and the leaves, of course, will be a soft green, the stems and the veins of the leaves being of a darker shade. If the work is at all puckered, we must iron it carefully on the wrong side, which will smooth away all creases. Having finished our embroidery, we must next get 1⁄2 yard of quilted yellow satin at is. Id. a yard.

white silk. We must sew very evenly, so that neither the top nor the lining looks puckered.

We shall want a yellow silk cord of medium thickness to match the quilted satin. Four yards at a cost of 24d. a yard will be sufficient for the two

Now we must cut a strip exactly the same size as the satin for our glove sachet and tack it all round. Our next task will be to tack the satin and the lining very carefully together, after which we must sew them very neatly over and over with fine

cases, and this must be sewn neatly over and over all round, to hide the stitches that join the satin and lining together. Let us put loops of the cord at the corners-it will look so much more finished than if it is left quite plain.

To tie the two cases we shall require 3 yards of yellow ribbon to match the lining and cord. The glove case, being long, will take two sets of ribbon to keep the gloves from falling out. Let us cut each piece of ribbon half a yard long, and sew them on neatly under the cord, about 4 inches from the end.

When this is done, we can lay our gloves on the quilted satin and tie the ribbons together, and we shall have a very pretty addition to the dressingtable.

Now let us turn to our other piece of satin. We shall first tack it all round, and, as it is to be folded to make a square, we must put our buttercups on one half of the satin. We will work it to match the glove sachet, and then cut the lining to fit. We shall then, as before, tack the lining and satin together, and sew it over and over very neatly with white silk. Afterwards we must sew the cord on over and over, and fold the sachet so as to form a square. Now we must sew on one set of ribbons, lay our handkerchiefs on the quilted satin, and tie the ribbons together.

The cost of the material for these two dainty articles will be under 5s., or we can leave out the ribbon to tie the cases and fasten them with buttons and loops, which would reduce the cost to 3s. 8d.

By making these two sachets at the same time we are able to make them much cheaper than if we made them separately.

WE have gone ahead rapidly with our

buildings in Modeltown, though we have still a good deal to do before the town is complete. But perhaps many of us are thinking of the country more than of the town, with its brick walls and noisy traffic. Perhaps the hedges and the brooks, the singing of birds and the rustle of green leaves have much greater attraction for us.

So we shall depart from the task of building town buildings for few weeks; we shall build and lay out a farm, so that our dwellers in Modeltown may get a good deal of their produce near at hand. Our farm will be put down just on the outskirts of Modeltown, and we shall not allow the enterprising builder to cut up our fields by putting up his great buildings where we wish to have meadows with lowing kine and waving fields of yellow corn.

A farm is rather a big undertaking, and we cannot do it all at once. So we shall divide the farm into three parts, making one part of it now, and leaving the remainder for the next two numbers of THE CHILDREN'S ENCYCLOPEDIA. The part which we shall make now will consist of the farmhouse, in which the farmer with his family and servants may live, and a dairy, in which the milk is stored, the cream

This will give us a roof the shape of a deep tray held upside down, and we shall be able to lift up the roof to see inside the house whenever we wish. The appearance of the roof when glued as we have described is seen in picture 3, which also shows the position of the other walls as we are bending them up. We glue the edges of the wall together, but leave the front wall to hinge open as seen in picture 6. We now proceed to divide the inside of the house into two storeys and into different rooms, as seen in pictures 5 and 6. Picture 5 shows the partitions in place as we would see them if the hinged front wall were right off, and picture 6 shows the inside from above, with the roof raised and the front wall hinged open a little bit.

We have already made some pinholes through the walls and floor of the farmhouse before we bent them up. We now glue wood splinters inside the house where these holes are. Large wooden matches with the heads cut off will do nicely. The purpose of these wood splinters or matches is to support the upstairs floor, and to provide something on the floors to which the partitions may be glued.

is allowed to come to the top, and the cheese is made. Afterwards we shall make a cowhouse, a stable, a store, a barn, a poultryhouse, and the other things that help to make a farm complete.

The farmhouse we are about to make is seen in pictures 1 and 2. Picture 1 shows the front of the house, and picture 2 is a view of the back, which looks out upon the farmyard. Picture 4 is a plan of the farmhouse, which is given half-scale, so that we take the sizes from the picture with scale-rule B, and use our full-sized rule to make the drawings on our card. We know well, by this time, how we are to treat the three different kinds of lines, which we had explained first on page 218, so we shall not have them explained again here. Where there are crosses like this X in the picture, we make pinholes right through the card.

The next thing to make and cut out is the first floor, the plan of which is given halfscale in picture 7, so that we use scale-rule B in taking the sizes from the picture. Then we make the partitions for the ground floor, the plans of which are in pictures 8 and 9. We glue the first floor into place, and then the two partitions, gluing the bottoms of the two partitions to the wood splinters we have already glued to the ground floor. Picture 5 shows the position of the partitions after they have been fixed. The stair that goes from the ground floor to the first floor can now be taken in hand. The plans of the three parts to make the stairway are given in pictures 10, 11, and 12, all of which are actual size, so that we use our full-sized rule both for taking the measurements from the pictures and for making the drawings on our card. We bend these pieces and fit and glue them together, all as seen in pictures 13 and 14. We now see that picture 10 is the actual stairway, picture II is the stair-railing, and picture 12 is the support to which we attach the stair to make it retain its proper shape. Now the completed stairway must be glued to the ground-floor partition inside the house as indicated in picture 5. The stair will lead up to the hole left for it in the upstairs floor, and it should fit this neatly. The making and the fixing of the stair is the most difficult

Having drawn on the card the plan of the farmhouse, we cut it out, and then proceed to bend it up. The first thing is to bend the four sides of the roof together, and to bend over the three slips at the front of the three free edges. When we have bent over these three edges, we find that the ends overlap each other. We glue them together there, using the glue rather thick for preference.