SAFETY FIRST. NEVER DIVE INTO WATER WITHOUT KNOWING ITS DEPTH.

GLANDS.
Glands are special bits of the body whose job is to make something. The spinning-glands of a spider 
make the
different silks she uses for her web. The milk-glands of cows and other animals make the milk for 
their babies. The oil-glands of our skin make the grease which keeps our skins waterproof. All these glands put what they 
make outside
the body. There are also many glands which pour what they make inside the body. The glands of the 
mouth pour spit,
or saliva, into the mouth. The glands of the stomach pour stomach juice into the stomach.
There are also other glands that have no special place in which to pour what they make. These glands 
work away
where they are, making what is needed, and the blood comes along and takes away what they have made to use it.
These glands are most astonishing in the things they do. Talk about magic philtres!
One gland lives right under the brain, above the bones that make the roof of the mouth. The stuff it 
makes looks after
the way we grow. If we have too little of this gland we cannot grow properly, and we are dwarfs. If 
we have too much,
we will not stop growing, and we are giants. Most people, of course, have about the right amount. 
There is another
gland right in the middle of the neck, and the stuff it makes looks after our liveliness. If we have 
too much, we are thin
and restless and lively. If we have too little, we are fat and sleepy and dull. Most of us have about 
the right amount of this gland, too.
It is a good thing, however, that everybody has not just exactly the same amount of the stuff these 
glands make, for,
if nobody were taller or shorter or fatter or thinner or funnier or quieter than anybody else, the 
world would not be
nearly so interesting as it is.
Then there are glands pouring out stuff which makes us manly or womanly when we grow up. One kind makes our voices deep, 
and our skin hairy, and the corners of our bodies rather square. Another makes our voices higher, and our skin smooth, and the 
corners of our body rather round. Everybody, however, has some of both kinds, or men would be too loud-voiced and strong, and 
women altogether too quiet and gentle. The best men are 
gentle as well as
strong, and the best women are brave as well as kind. Not that it all depends on our glands, for we 
can teach
ourselves to be some of these things.
The stuffs that glands make to be carried round the body by the blood are rather like messengers. 
They have been
called, " chemical messengers," for they travel from where they are made, and make something happen 
in a different
part of the body altogether. The stuff from the gland under the brain, for instance, makes a 
difference to the size of our
feet and hands. It is like a messenger that says, " Grow," or " Stop growing." Thus we have glands 
that pour out their
juices on the skin or inside the body, and glands that make chemical messengers which travel to different parts of the body.
There is one other kind of gland. At the, elbows, behind the knees, under the arms, in the neck, 
there are glands, just
little lumps, whose business it is to stop stray germs that are wandering about. If we have a sore 
finger and a germ
tries to wander up the arm, the gland at the elbow will stop it. If we have a sore throat and the 
germs are trying to go
down the neck, the glands will stop them, too.

A WHITE BLOOD-CELL SWALLOWS A GERM.

That is why the glands in the neck swell when we have a sore throat. They swell because they are full of blood, and are busy 
sending for white blood-cells to kill the germs; for when a white blood-cell 
meets a germ, it wraps
itself all round the germ and kills it.
-Adapted from " How you Work," by ISABEL WILSON, M.D. (Angus and Robertson, publishers; Gerald Howe, Ltd.'s 
copyright.)

SAFETY FIRST.
KEEP WITHIN YOUR DEPTH TILL YOU CAN SWIM WELL.

SILKEN THREADS.
"If pigs had wings they would fly " is an old saying; yet there are some 
creatures that, although wingless, are more at
home in the air than the cleverest acrobat. For instance, there is the 
caterpillar. It is not even a good jumper, yet it
often takes to the air, perhaps to travel to another spot, perhaps in an 
attempt to save its life.
If it loses its grip on a slippery leaf, or a hungry bird is about to 
snap it up, it hastily puts a dab of sticky stuff on the
leaf and hangs a silk thread from it. The silk is liquid when it flows 
from the bag near the caterpillar's mouth, but it
hardens at once into a firm life-line. Letting itself down by this line, 
the caterpillar saves itself from falling, or, if it is
lucky, escapes from the bird's sharp eye and beak. It may lower itself 
only partly to the ground and then, the danger
past, climb up again by drawing in the fine thread and rolling it into a 
tangled ball between its jaws and front legs.
The caterpillar often makes very long threads, but it spins the largest 
quantity of silk when getting ready to turn into
an insect. Most moth-caterpillars weave wonderful cocoons. Some of these 
sleeping-sacks are a mixture of silk and
moss or bits of leaves, but the finer ones, such as the cocoons of the 
silk-moth caterpillar, or silk-worm, are of pure
silk. The silk is so neatly wound that people can unwind it again into 
long unbroken strands, and so obtain a beautiful
and useful silken thread.
Most of the silky threads that we notice gleaming in fields and gardens 
are not woven by insect grubs but by spiders. Spiders enjoy the luxury of silk all 
through their lives. They begin by being hatched
out in a strong silken bag woven by the mother spider. Some mother 
spiders carry their egg-bags about with them
and are ready to defend them fiercely. Others leave them in cracks or 
hanging on bushes. If a silken bag is touched it
seems instantly to come to life, for startled spiderlings scatter in 
every direction, many of them spinning their first tiny
threads to let themselves drop out of reach. The danger past, they climb 
back to their cradle again.
Young spiders do not stay crowded together for long. They soon part 
company, going to new hunting grounds in
search of food. As they travel they leave dainty trails of silk drawn 
across the plants, for a spider seldom goes far
without using a thread to lower itself from  a height or to swing across 
a gap. In autumn, when thousands of spiders
all go a-roving at the same time, a whole field or a long hedge may be 
covered with a fine veil of gossamer.
The restless young spider, an adventurer that has found a way of 
travelling long distances through the air without the
help of wings, climbs to the top of a bush, and stands on tip-toe facing 
the wind while he spins a silken parachute.
From hidden bags jets of liquid silk flow out through tiny knobs, called 
spinnerets, at the end of his body. Soon a
bunch of threads is floating out from him. He throws himself from his 
perch and sails away on the wind. He cannot
choose his direction; he must go the way the wind carries him; but he can rise by adding to his streamers or sink by shortening 
them. When numbers of little spiders are journeying, the air is full of gossamer, and afterwards the fallen threads make 
fairy-like curtains and carpets rainbow-coloured in
the sunshine, sparkling in the dew or silver in the frost.
Spiders use silk in yet another way. With it they make traps to catch 
insects for food. There are many kinds of
snares. The simplest is one of the usual travelling threads just twisted among the grass. Then there are house-spiders' cobwebs - 
mere
tangles of silk thread with no pattern. Lastly there is the beautiful 
orb-web made by the garden-spider or cross-spider.
Whether large or small, the orb-web always has the same pattern, and the 
spider always makes it in the same way - first the outside framework of strong
threads; next the spokes connecting the framework with the hub in the 
middle; then the outside rings like a builder's
scaffold; and lastly the finer spiral of sticky thread made round the 
centre. This is the real snare, and sometimes the spider stays in the middle to pounce upon the trapped insect, but more often it 
carries a signal line from the hub to a hiding place close by. 

AN ORB WEB.

One wonderful thing about web-making is that the young spider does not have to learn how to do it. It spins its silken thread and 
makes a perfect orb-web the very first time it tries.

SAFETY FIRST.
ON A COUNTRY ROAD KEEP TO THE EDGE OR ON THE GRASS STRIP.
 
SAFETY FIRST.
AS THE DAYS GROW SHORTER WATCH YOUR STEP.

PAGE OF HONOUR TO QUEEN VICTORIA.
Like many other children, when I was a small boy I very much liked 
dressing up. At one time I wore a busby and a
small sword. Then my brothers gave me a hat on which the word " Messenger" was worked. I liked it, till I found it
meant my always being a fag to the rest of the family. I best remember 
going about the house, draped in a red
curtain, with a poker in my hand and a strange hat on my head. I always 
went to see the cook in the kitchen. In spite
of being busy she was very kind and pretended I was a judge - not that I had ever seen any judge dressed like that.
When, therefore, I was eleven years old and my father told me I had been 
appointed page of honour to Queen
Victoria, my chief joy was that I should be able to dress up in real earnest. The pages wear a pretty uniform: a
scarlet coat with gold braid, brass buttons, and blue velvet facings a 
white silk waistcoat, white breeches, white
stockings, buckled shoes with red heels, a little sword, and a three-cornered hat 
with red feathers. It was a great improvement
on the curtain and the poker.
The Queen held her Courts in the afternoon; they were called 
drawing-rooms. Everybody was dressed as they would
be in the evening. I dressed at home, and there was a great fuss to see 
that I put on everything properly. As I grew
up, my page's clothes became tighter and tighter, and there was a risk of 
splits, and buttons coming off. I did not have
to wear the hat; I carried it under my arm. Then a royal carriage came for 
me.
 When I arrived at Buckingham Palace, I joined the other page, and we went 
with the Lord Chamberlain to the
Queen's bedroom door. The dressers came out with the Queen, who was always 
very friendly to us, much more
friendly than she was to the Lord Chamberlain. The dressers gave to us 
pages the loops of the Queen's very long
train. She was always dressed in black with a lot of white lace, a little 
diamond crown, the blue ribbon of her Order of
the Garter, and she wore as a brooch the Kohinoor diamond, which was then 
the largest cut diamond in the world.
We went along the passages, the Lord Chamberlain walking backwards, which 
must have been very difficult for him.
In a large round room, all the Princes and Princesses were gathered, making 
a great noise talking; but, when the
Queen came in, they stopped short and there was dead silence. She spoke only to one or two, and then turned round and walked 
to the throne room. 
When the Queen turned round, we had to
be very careful, because she was like the central spike of a compass which 
doesn't move, while we were like the
pencil end which makes a big circle round.  

LORD PONSONBY WHEN A PAGE TO QUEEN VICTORIA.

As she took up her position before the throne, the Guards 
Band outside struck up, " God save the
Queen."
Then the drawing-room began; first of all Ambassadors and Ministers passed 
by and bowed, and then all the young ladies, who had to be presented by their 
mothers or friends. At first I thought it rather
amusing, especially when a girl was shaking with fright, or when, as once 
happened, an old gentleman went down
with a bang on his knee, and had a job to get up. After a while, however, 
it became very dull. I was bored, and grew
tired of standing still and holding the train for an hour and a half  
and, as I knew nothing about dresses, all the ladies
in the endlessly long procession looked just the same to me, with 
feathers in their hair, and long trains.
The best show in my time was when the Queen opened Parliament in 1886. We 
pages drove down in the first gold
coach in the procession, and stood on the steps on the throne and felt 
very grand, facing all the peers in their robes,
and the peeresses in their tiaras.
I remained a page till I was sixteen, when I had to retire because I was 
too old. When I began, I was smaller than
the Queen; when I retired, I was taller. I went to about ten 
drawing-rooms in the five years. Sometimes the Queen
did not come  and the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Alexandra, took 
her place.
She drove to the garden entrance of Buckingham Palace, where all the 
officials met her. The footmen bundled out her
long train on to the floor in a heap. I remember the first time. The 
stuff was a sort of gold embroidered material. There
were no dressers to give us pages the loops at the end of the train, and 
while everyone was talking we set to work to find them in the rolls of stuff At last we found what was 
certainly an end, though it had no loops. So we
stood up grasping it tightly.
We waited for the procession to start, thinking that as the Princess 
moved forward the full length of the train would be
unravelled and spread out. To our dismay, however, with the first step 
she took forward, we pulled her back. What
we had got hold of was not the train at all but her actual gown, which 
was, of course, quite short. Scarlet with shame
we began our search again, helped this time by the Lord Chamberlain and 
ushers, who rather added to the confusion.
At last the loops on the proper end were discovered, and the procession 
went forward to the throne room. The whole thing was treated as a huge joke, particularly by the Princess herself, 
but we boys did not feel at all inclined to laugh.
Almost the best part of being a page was driving off in the early morning 
from school to the station and seeing all the
boys going into school as usual. I had the whole day off!
-LORD PONSONBY, in "The Listener." (Adapted extract.)

SAFETY FIRST.
ALWAYS WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER PLAYING WITH A DOG.

THE FANTAIL.
Most boys and girls know imported birds such as sparrows, blackbirds, 
thrushes, starlings, not to mention canaries
and "budgies," much better than they know our lovely native birds. These 
birds are shy as a rule and do not stray far
from the forest  that feeds and shelters them. There is one little New 
Zealand bird, however, bolder than most and
more often seen, that we should all try to meet. His picture, at any rate, 
is well known to us, for he appears in all the
glory of his spread fan-shaped tail on our green half-penny stamp.
The beautiful tail, which gives him his name, is indeed his glory, and 
proudly he spreads and flicks and flutters it
when he is courting a mate. It may be black and white or all black, black 
fantails being plentiful in the South Island,
but rare in the North Island. The handsome tail is not only an ornament; 
it is most useful when the bird is hunting his
meal of insects on the wing. As he turns and twists in the air to snap at 
his prey, his tail opens and shuts in a
remarkable manner. It acts as a kind of rudder, helping the fantail to 
change his course in a twinkling, and he
performs all the tricks of an expert airman, diving and rising, turning 
somersaults, and even looping the loop, if need
be.
It is a good thing that the fantail is such
a clever little acrobat, as he catches most of his food on the wing. 
Sandflies, midges, mosquitoes, house-flies are all
snapped up in the strong beak, which closes like a trap on its prey. The fantail disdains such food as honey, seeds, fruit, or even a 
dead insect; but a fly on the wing, that has
to be hawked, is for him a dainty morsel. This strange choice of food  
makes him one of our most useful birds, for he
destroys vast numbers of creatures that are pests both to plant and to 
animal life. 
In his search for house-flies, the fantail will come right into our 
homes and, taking little notice of anyone, set
about his work. He has been known to go from room to room, hunting every 
fly he can see, and some people report
having had a fantail in the house for hours at a time. It is indeed 
delightful that at least one of our native birds is so
fearless and so friendly. Unfortunately, there are lurking foes such as 
rats, cats, weasels, hawks, and owls, but it is
hoped that in spite of these dangers the little fairy-like bird will not 
only survive, but increase in numbers.
Let us watch two fantails building their nest. It is late October, and the 
carefully chosen site is a three-pronged fork on
a slender branch, close to a stream and beside a sunlit opening in the 
bush. Each prong of the fork is capped by a
sheltering tuft of leaves. The foundation blocks of the nest are short 
chips of soft wood pressed tightly into the fork,
and bound on with cobwebs. Then strands of wiry grass are used to begin the 
walls, and, as these begin to rise, the
spaces are filled with moss.
Both birds are busy on this work, and they do not stop for regular meals, 
but at odd times snap up insects that come in their way.
The nest is next lined with horse-hair, tree-fern scales, or fur, and 
after each piece is put in, the birds press it into
place by sitting in the nest and working themselves round in a circle. 
The top rim of the nest is rounded off, and made
firm and strong, and the whole nest is made trim and taut and smooth with
spider-web drawn over it like a hair-net. A tapering tail of lichen and 
grass is sometimes added; and the dainty little
cup-like nest is ready for the pale-cream speckled eggs soon placed in it.
A bird-lover, who once carefully took a fantail's old nest to pieces, 
found that it contained fourteen thousand pieces of material! Think of all the hard 
work and tireless energy of the two little birds!
They must have made hundreds and hundreds of trips to gather all those fourteen thousand
scraps of wood, moss, hair, spider-web, and what-not. Then there was the 
added work of building, moulding, and
finishing off the nest.
The hen bird settles down on her four eggs, while her mate goes off to find 
some food and take a little exercise. In
about ten minutes he comes back squeaking, " My turn! my turn! " The hen 
bird begins to raise herself, and the
moment he appears on a twig above the nest, she glides off for her meal and 
exercise, leaving him to take his turn on the eggs.
When the nestlings appear, the parent birds are busier than ever with six to feed instead of two. Father Fantail arrives with a  
beakful of insects, and pops a few into each gaping mouth; then a 
moment later Mother Fantail does the same
thing; and so it goes on. In a few days the wings and tails of the growing 
family spread over the sides of the nest,
and their bodies are packed more closely than is comfortable.
One morning, Mother Fantail, instead of putting the grubs into the chicks' 
mouths, holds them just out of reach. The
hungry youngsters strain and stretch, and so are lured up on to the rim of 
the nest. Still their breakfast is not passed
to them. They see both parents now fluttering around the nest with beaks 
full of dainty fare, which is, alas, withheld.
The braver of the baby birds spread their wings, lean forward, and at last 
half tumble and half fly on to a branch beneath.
Their delighted parents then feed them. They next turn to the more timid 
fledgelings still perched on the rim of the nest. At
last these poor frightened things are given a good push. They are forced to 
spread their baby wings, and down they tumble
through the branches to the ground. There they also get their reward; and 
the little family's education in flying is well begun.

SAFETY FIRST.
NEVER TOUCH GUNS OR OTHER FIREARMS.

HAPPY LANDING!
Years have passed since Orville Wright and his brother had the daring to 
take up into the air a machine in which the
most skilled aviator of to-day would hardly care to risk his life. During 
those years unceasing efforts have been made
to render flying as easy as walking. Flying will never be that, not even 
when men have found a fool-proof aeroplane.
Nevertheless, the safety of flying has been enormously increased and, in 
particular, the risk in landing a machine is
very much less than it was.
It is not for nothing that your friends, hearing you are going to make a journey by air, say, " Happy landing!" For a good trip may 
be quite spoiled by a bad landing. If you think for a moment of the way an aeroplane lands, you will see where the difficulty lies.
The worst way of jumping off a ten-foot wall is to come down head first. 
If you are unlucky enough to fall head first,
you try to save yourself with your hands, and you jerk up your head so as 
not to bury your nose in the earth. Now, the
aeroplane is unlucky enough to have to come down head first, so the pilot 
when landing does just what you would do.
He saves himself with his wheels, and then gives a sharp backward jerk to 
the joy-stick. This lifts the head of the
plane and prevents it from burying its nose - and a splintered propeller - in 
the ground.
It sounds easy. It is not, for in one thing the landing of a plane differs a good deal from the landing of a boy. When
the nose is jerked upwards, care has to be taken that the aeroplane does 
not rise again. This often happens, not only
with beginners, but with skilled pilots, especially when they are trying to 
land in a fog. Often in foggy places an air
liner will bump the ground several times and each time will leave it again. 
It may even be necessary at last to give up
trying to land at one airport and fly to another where the fog is less 
thick.
This problem of landing has been partly solved since the time of the Wright 
brothers by improving the aeroplane
controls, and making them easier to manage. The tricycle plane, already 
used in America, will probably be used
everywhere for the training of pilots. It has three wheels instead of two; 
two are set well back towards the tail, and the
third, a smaller wheel, is placed right under the nose. As the plane lands 
and its nose drops forward, the little wheel strikes the ground and gently jerks the machine 
back into its correct position. Smashed
propellers become impossible. A beginner can land a tricycle plane 
smoothly and safely without risk to himself or to
his machine.
The use of the autogiro may be another way of solving the landing problem. 
The autogiro, which is not quite perfect
yet, avoids crashing by landing the aeroplane, not nose first, but on its 
"feet." Unlike other aeroplanes it is able to
climb and come down almost vertically. To look at, the autogiro is something like an ordinary aeroplane, but, besides the 
usual propeller, there is another and much
larger one shaped like the arms of a windmill. Its four " sails " 
overshadow the plane, umbrella fashion. When taking
off, the machine travels only a yard or two along the ground, and then 
rises vertically. It lands in the same way,
coming straight down on to its wheels, and travelling only a couple of 
yards before coming to rest.

AN AUTOGIRO.

It is possible that in a short time these inventions will be made 
perfect, and the old method of landing may be used
no more. When that comes about, every landing will be a happy one!
-Adapted from "Conquest," published in Longmans Green and Co.'s "The 
Heritage of Literature" series.

SAFETY FIRST.
LEAVE HOME EARLY TO AVOID HURRYING TO SCHOOL.

SAFETY FIRST.
NEVER PUT CELLULOID NEAR A FLAME.

SAFETY FIRST.
BEFORE STEPPING OFF THE FOOTPATH LOOK RIGHT, THEN LEFT.

SAFETY FIRST.
LEARN NOT ONLY TO SWIM, BUT TO SWIM REALLY WELL.

