convey no meaning to his mind; and thus has never tasted the sweet kernel from experiencing the difficulty, and to his imagination it may be the impossibility of breaking the shell. "Dispose of them," says Jem, in Miss Edgeworth's admirable tale of Lazy Lawrence, "What does that mean?" "What can be the meaning of all these hard words?" says the boy who has to get a page or two of geographical definitions by heart, Now the main object of this book is to explain the meaning of "hard words," and to familiarize them to the mind by illustrations taken from common life and the scenes and circumstances in which children are usually placed. Accuracy and utility, rather than originality or elegance of style, have been throughout consulted: indeed, to neither of the latter can the Compiler lay the smallest claim. He desires to acknowledge the principal sources from whence he has derived the information contained in the following pages. These are chiefly Ewing's Geography, a book of which it is hardly possible to speak too highly, and of which the public has exhausted several large editions, and Field on the Globes. Miss Williams' pretty little work entitled "Geography in Verse" has furnished some useful hints, and the Penny Cyclopædia has been, as far as it is completed, consulted with advantage. Other information has been gleaned from an extended but rather desultory course of reading, to which it would be as useless as impossible to make any distinct reference. 1. March, 1838. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE rapid sale of the first edition of this small work has encouraged the author to commit it again to the press. The Book has been revised throughout, and such additions and corrections made as the various changes in the political geo. graphy of the world since its first publication have rendered necessary. BIRMINGHAM, March, 1841. THE FIRST BOOK OF GEOGRAPHY. WE read in the Holy Scriptures that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and a little farther on we are told that "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.' We want to tell you, dear children, something about these glorious works of Almighty God. And although the wisest and best of mankind can in this life know but very little of our Creator or his works, yet every one should try to know as much as he can; as the more we know the better and the happier we shall become, and also the more fitted to dwell with God and Christ and all good people in heaven. "God created the heavens and the earth." By the heavens are meant what we call the sky; and by the earth that beautiful world on which, as the Bible tells us, we, through God, "live, and move, and have our being.” In the heavens we see by day the glorious sun giving light and heat to every thing; and by night the bright and pleasant moon, with all the pretty little twinkling stars. We are going to give you a description of what is known of these things as far as you can understand them. You will meet with many hard words and what you may think strange names, but these you must learn, and we will explain their meaning as we go along. Whatever relates to the heavens above us, is called ASTRONOMY, to the earth, Geography. Well then, Astronomy is a description of the heavens, and Geography a description of the earth. It is of Geography A Te earn nay truet ma izei sars, anes You may asi new me tem de de sangat he fet stars sine vi & Vinking tie jane te vinde mi de ames LTE mazing al 1 maled because her Lever thegch, age, od kar jaa, a Long the vice $ * kome mond te e ter LWITS 16ky tab, va yana garis each other. They are myppably "ly "A like it : some of them pertags jd, yet farther away from us; May many "u de her and thereftre twinkle. Isa padre ets paiex, and are continually changing May gimax. The wet planet means a wanderer. They ww Waph #red te kom, and shine by his light alone, pret, wan with, wail looks very bright when the sun ***** *** it, Comere, we you all know, are seen but very seldom. The word comet means hair or hairy, and is applied to there bodies because most of them have hair-like twile Take the planets they have no light of their own: by wunder about and appear to move in all manner of |