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

  • Pout, M. (Muriel), 1907-
Date:
[1930?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    Two. BEGINNING TO GROW. WE all like to know that we are growing. As children we used to measure our height on the door, and then looked forward to the next time when we measured, to see whether we had increased it at all. and were always very proud if we had. So in this book we want to tell you some things about your growth that may be of interest. The story will start right at the beginning, and then carry on to the time when you will have stopped growing because you will have grown up. Perhaps some of you may have a baby brother or sister, born only a few weeks ago, who has a lot of growing to do to become as big and strong as you. When we look at such a baby we must not think that it is just starting to live. It may weigh about seven or eight pounds, but though quite little, it has been growing for a long time, and is much bigger than when it began, for everyone has been much smaller than the tiniest baby you have ever seen. When a baby begins to grow it does not seem at all like one, and a great many changes have to take place before it is ready to be born. At first it is just a very small, round egg (some- times this is called an ovum or cell) ; if you think of the head of the smallest kind of pin you know, that will be about the size which it is then. And we each started in the same way. It is not only in human beings that we find that there is a great difference between something that is young and one that is older. If you think what a difference there is between an acorn and the oak tree which comes from it, or between the hen’s egg and the fluffy chick which hatches out of it, you will know what we mean, for a plant or animal may change tremen- dously in the early days of its life. Sometimes there is so much alteration that unless we had been told that one had grown from the other we should never have guessed. Even the way in which the creature feeds and breathes may vary during the stages of its life. An example of this is seen in the way in which a bird grows. No doubt you know something about chickens, and that the part which grows into the chick is the tiny dark speck which you can sometimes see just near the yolk of the egg when the shell has been broken. The yolk and the white are th ‘re to provide food for the bird until it is hatched, but afte rthat it will feed in another way. While growing in the egg it takes
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