First lessons in physical geography [antikvár]

Introduction The aim of this book is to re-introduce you to the world; to try to give you a new and exciting way of looking at it and of living in it. You have already lived on the earth for a few years; you have been clothed and fed by the animals and plants that live on it with you, and sheltered from the wind and rain by its rocks and its woods. Your thirst has been quenched by rain-water collected in tubs and tanks, and the many drinks that man has made by mixtures of water and the various plants and minerals he finds around him. In parts of the world where cold weather is experienced, fires are lighted for warmth; fires that burn wood that has been chopped down today, or which has lain for millions of years undisturbed beneath the ground as coal; or fires that are fed by electricity generated by turbines made to turn by coal and steam power or by man-directed water. Your food is cooked on wood or coal fires or in electric ovens. Is there electric power in your neighbour-hood? If not, where is the nearest place to you which has electricity? We are all part of this world and all our bodily needs are satisfied by it. In this book we cannot deal with all the questions about our world that come to mind, but we can make a beginning by looking at somé of the main problems about its interiorand, more particularly, its exteriőr. It is useful to recall somé words of William Shakespeare's: 'All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players." It will help if we think of the world as a stage on which the play of 'life' takes place with all of us as the actors. It is a poor actor who doesn't know all about stages; about their 'props' (furniture) and curtains and lighting; about their shapes and sizes and slopes. Not only should he have somé understanding of these things, but alsó know how best to fit himself into any particular stage—for not all stages are the same by any means. In fact, if he is to be a master of his art he must be an expert in stagecraft. The world is our stage and if we are to make the most of the part we have been given, and give our best in our performance in the play. we must know our stagecraft too. For instance, if we think about our world we begin to wonder where it came from, what it is made of. why it is the shape it is. Why is the world round? Then, looking much closer, just out of the window of our school, or from a train or lorry, at the world that is immediately round us, we might ask why somé parts are water and somé land? Somé parts fiat and somé mountainous? Somé with many rivers and somé with none? Why somé places have fast-flowing rivers, somé winding rivers, somé rivers which have great floods? Why have somé places lots of rain, somé drought, some ice and snow all the time, and others great heat? What has given the earth's surface its shape? Why has it the weather and vegetation which it has? Why are some beaches rocky, with great cliffs, and others just flat with shingle and wide sandy beaches?