68 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[February, 
Great Forces in Nature. 
A GROUP OF MERRY BEARS IN A COUNTRY SCHOOL HOUSE 
artist who drew the picture did not try to show wliat 
lie had seen done by bears, but what he imagined 
that bears, finding themselves in a country school- 
house, might do, if they had a chance. In this 
picture the bears appear to have come while the 
school was in session; it is no wonder that the 
teacher and children, astonished at the visit of such 
an “examining committee,” at once took to flight. 
What would bears do in such a case ? Of course 
the lunch baskets of the children would be the 
chief attraction, and they are properly shown as 
studying the contents of these, as they are more 
attractive than the contents of the books. One 
old fellow is evidently occupied with the ink-bottle; 
don’t you hope his curiosity may tempt him to swal¬ 
low its coutents ? The spirit of mischief which 
young bears, like other youngsters possess, is 
shown by their overturning the bench upon which 
some of their companions have seated themselves. 
The old fellow has taken the teacher’s desk, but he 
does not seem to understand that it is the business 
of the teacher to keep order. The two young 
bears engaged in examining the lunch baskets 
appear to be having the best of the fun. While 
this gives the artist’s idea of what bears might do 
in a school house, is it not altogether too nearly a 
representation of what some wild youngsters actu¬ 
ally do when the schoolmaster is away, and they 
have the room all to themselves ? We think we can 
recollect some unruly doings in a school-house, 
and they were not by four-legged furry animals. 
Where Our Copper Comes From. — The 
new Census Report states that during the census 
year 50,655,140 lbs. of copper were taken from 32 
mines in this country, valued at $8,842,911, or about 
Yi% cents per lb. Of this total, nearly nine-tenths 
(45,830,262 lbs.) came from Michigan, and nearly 
section is estimated to produce about one-eighth 
as much more, or about 6 million pounds. A solid 
or cubic foot of water weighs 621 lbs., and the spe¬ 
cific gravity of bar or ingot copper being about 8.9, 
a solid foot of copper weighs about 556 lbs., or a 
quarter of a ton. 
The Doctor’s Ta$js. 
While I like to have my young friends ask ques¬ 
tions, I do not care to have so many all at once, as 
“ H. D. B.” sends—still, it is better to have many 
than none. One of his questions is seasonable : 
“If water, like other things, contracts with cold, 
Why Docs not Ice Sink?” 
If my young frieud can find a cast-away bottle, 
or one that is not wanted for any other purpose, 
he can make an experiment that will help him an¬ 
swer his question. Fill the bottle quite up to the 
rim of the neck with water, and place it out-doors 
in cold weather. It is better to do this in the even¬ 
ing, and in the morning you can examine the bottle 
—or what may be left of it. It may be, though not 
very likely, if the bottle is a very stout one and the 
freezing takes place slowly, you will find it un¬ 
broken, with a plug of ice sticking out of the place 
where you would put a cork. Most probably the 
bottle will have several large cracks, and some¬ 
times the glass will be found in pieces scattered 
about for some distance. It is for this reason that 
I suggest that you put out the bottle in the even¬ 
ing and leave it until morning. If you made the 
experiment in the day time, you might, in your 
wish to see how it is going on, happen to examine 
it just at the time the bottle bursts and get hurt by 
the flying bits of glass. In either case, whether the 
ice projects at the mouth of the bottle, or the bottle 
Not only do we see it bursting 
water-pipes and breaking pitch¬ 
ers, and even strong casks, and 
splitting large rocks, but in a 
quiet way it helps grind away 
the surface of the hardest stone. 
Water finding its way into min¬ 
ute pores and crevices of the 
rocks and freezing there, by its 
expansion it breaks off from 
them little particles, which ac¬ 
cumulate to form soil. I think 
my young friend has already 
seen that ice floats because wa¬ 
ter, in freezing, expands, and a 
given bulk of water is lighter 
when changed to ice. This 
slight expansion, just enough 
to allow the ice to float, may 
seem a small affair, but when we think that 
Tlie World would hardly be habitable 
without it, it is far from being an insignificant mat¬ 
ter. Let us imagine the reverse, that the ice was a 
trifle heavier than water, and instead of floating it 
sank! We should then have no skating, at least 
not until the pond or river were frozen solid. We 
should have no fishes, and it is not probable that a 
deep lake would thaw out after it were once frozen. 
With such bodies of ice all about us, the climate 
would be changed, our crops, if we had any, would 
be different The more we think of such things the 
more are we impressed with the wonderful wisdom 
shown in matters that the unthinking regard as tri¬ 
fles_Another question by my young friend, and 
a seasonable one, is 
About Making Snowballs. 
He knows that at some times he cau not make 
EXPERIMENT WITH SHELLS. 
a solid snow-hall either by pressing in the hand or by 
rolling. The making of a snowball illustrates one of 
the many interesting things about ice. If you have 
h dining mMiwm 
iiears in tlic Sclaool-ISooin. 
“I don’t believe it,” some matter-of-fact young¬ 
ster will say. I don’t believe that bears ever en¬ 
tered a school-house and acted in the manner 
shown in the picture.”—Well, neither do we. 
There are some artists who have a special talent 
for representing animals in the act of doing the 
things which are done by men and women. The 
four-fifths of the whole (40,389,212 lbs.) came from 
the single county of Houghton in the north-western 
part of Michigan, mainly from one mine, the Calu¬ 
met and Hecla. Vermont’s 1 mine yielded 2,647,894 
lbs. ; North Carolina’s 3 mines, 1,640,000 lbs. ; Mis¬ 
souri, 3 mines, 230,717 lbs. ; Maryland, 1 mine, 
164,640 lbs. ; Maine, 3 mines, 83,080 lbs.; Pennsyl¬ 
vania, 1 mine, 40,460 lbs.; Wisconsin, 1 mine, 
18,087 lbs., leaviug but 3,850 lbs. for all the other 
localities. The total wages paid was $2,915,103, of 
which $1,971,451 went to Houghton Co., Mich. The 
above is from the eastern section. The western 
is broken, it is plain to see that the bottleful of ice 
is larger, takes up more room, than the bottleful of 
water, and that water does not, “like other things 
contract by cold”—that is, not all the time. Water, 
common as it is, is a most remarkable liquid, and 
there is nothing more wonderful about it than the 
way it behaves just before freezing. When water 
is cooled it “ does like other things contract,” and 
it keeps on contracting until it is cooled down to 
about 39° (to be exact 39.2), and then, if the tem¬ 
perature goes still lower, it begins to expand, and 
when reaching 32°, it becomes solid, or ice, it is 
larger by about one-eleventh of 
its bulk. In expanding, this 
force is so great that it will 
burst an iron vessel if confined 
in it. Bomb shells, which you 
know are thick cast-iron, have 
been filled with water and then 
a wooden plug driven in to close 
the hole. These shells were ex¬ 
posed to the cold ; in one case 
the bomb was cracked and a 
sheet of ice forced out of the 
opening. The other had the 
plug forced out to a great dis¬ 
tance, and the ice came out in 
a long cylinder. This expan¬ 
sion of water is one of the 
