'Before you were born, mother?'

8. 'Yes, long before that! It was hundreds and thousands of years ago.
It was so far back that the trees were not like the trees we have now.
Many of them were big ferns. Think of a fern grown up to be a tree! And
many were great horse-tails. You know what a horse-tail is?'

9. 'Oh yes,' said Dora, 'we find them in the ditch down the lane. It is
such fun pulling them to pieces and putting them together again--like
puzzles!'

[Illustration: Horse-tail.]

10. 'Those trees must have been very strange,' said Harry. 'They would
not be nice to climb. But there were no boys in those days, so it did
not matter.'

[Illustration]




FIRE.


min´-er-al
coal
fen´-der
prop´-er
walk´-ing