Growing and growing up : a book for girls / by Muriel Pout and Theodore F. Tucker.

  • Pout, Muriel, 1907-
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Growing and growing up : a book for girls / by Muriel Pout and Theodore F. Tucker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a ride like this, she will dive gently under the surface so that they are left floating. Then thé babies’ instinct makes them carry out just the right movements to enable them to swim. In fishes the father does not lay the sperms within the mother, but in the water, where the mother also lays her eggs, so that eggs and sperms may join and grow into baby fishes. We have thought about the way in which birds make a nest so that the eggs can have the warmth that they need, and later it forms the home for the young birds. Well, some fishes need warmth and protection. Though fishes lay their eggs in the water, it is not usually done until the warmer seasons of the year, when the sun will help to hatch them. Some fish will scoop a little hollow in a warm sunny spot in the shallow water, while other kinds build nests. One which makes its home in the seas around the Malay peninsula, makes its nest out of the strangest material you can imagine— air bubbles blown in a special way and made to stick together ! Animals such as elephants, and bears, rabbits and guinea pigs, and lots of others, where the baby is kept safe in the nest inside its mother until it is ready to be born, are also formed by the joining of egg and sperm. These creatures have ways of showing their love for each other during courtship just as the birds have, even though they cannot sing such beautiful songs. Sometimes the male animal will try to show how much braver and stronger he is than any others who might want to mate with the female. When they have chosen each other as mates they will join the eggs and sperms. We believe they only do this because their instinct makes them; probably they cannot understand in the way that we can that they are making it possible for their babies to grow. So, too, when the time comes
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