What are fungi? Fungi are plants, but they do not have the pigment called chlorophyll which makes the leaves, and often the stems, of other plants look green. Instead, fungi usually appear brown, red, gold or violet, like many of those shown here Green plants use chlorophyll to trap the energy which comes from sunlight,  and then  use this energy to combine water from the soil and a gas in the...

Why is the home of the Beaver so interesting? The beaver, which lives in North America and northern Europe, has a skilful and elaborate way of damming up a stream or river in order to build a house that is partly under water. He does this because he has to make sure he has enough water to get into and out of his house easily when the water ices over in...

Which Mammal has a poison spur? The male duck – billed platypus, that lives in Australia, has!  It has five very strong  each of its four feet, but the back feet have an extra claw, which  can discharge poison. It is used when fighting. In fact the feet of these dark brown, oval shaped furry mammals  are very interesting altogether. They are webbed, for the purposes of swimming, and the web...

What was a clipper ship? This was a nineteenth century wooden sailing vessel built and rigged, or equipped, for speed. With the discovery of steam and its increasing use in shipping by the early 1800s, the position of the sailing ship as a means of transporting people and goods across the oceans, was threatened. So the clipper ship was designed as a final attempt to prove the supremacy of sial over...

Why did it become important for nations to have a powerful fleet?   Following the successful Norman and Danish invasion of England by sea, which ended in the Norman Conquest of 1066, it was clear that the best way of conquering other lands  and peoples was by having a strong fleet of sea- going vessels, manned by soldiers. So it was with this though that nations realised too, that a strong...

Who were the first sea- going sailors and what were early ships used for ? Norse sailors, commonly known as the Vikings, became the first true sea- going adventurers, when they set out in their longships from the firods of Seandinavia and Denmark and began their invasions of England about AD 800. It is known that they crossed the Atlantic Ocean in their open boats to North America about AD 1000-500...

How did man learn to sail? Before man learned to sail he had to discover the principle of flotation and   this is probably did by accident. Noticing how fallen pieces of trees floated in rivers and lakes, primitive man experimented by holding onto logs and discovered that they could support his weight and remain afloat. He developed this ‘floating vehicle’ by tying logs of wood together with vines, bundling reeds together,...

What is the Solar System?   The solar system consists of the Sun and the family of objects that travel round it and accompany it through space. The Sun is a very ordinary star, as far as we can tell, and it is a fantastically hot, luminous globe of gas. Most of the gas is hydrogen. There are nine known planets in the solar system. A planet is a solid body...