Each Reading Lesson is preceded by a Spelling Lesson suitable for children about to offer themselves for examination in the Second Standard. Multiplication, Exercises in..pages| 9, 14, 18, 21, 25, 32, 39, 45, 51, 56, Drawing Copies-Familiar Objects.. Drawing Copies-Familiar Objects grouped....Frontispiece. .....hue, tint .....pleasure gar-den-er..one who takes care of a garden beau-ti-ful ....lovely shel-ter ........cover grat-i-tude ..thankfulness o-pen-ing ....unclosing pic-ture...........a painting or drawing of any object en-gra-ving .........a print One day John and Mary took a walk with their father. It was a very warm, sultry day, and far up in the sky were many clouds. "Just look," said John, "what big clouds." "Oh, yes," said Mary; "I wonder what the Lord has made the clouds for?" "The clouds are very useful," said the father. "The Lord has made them because He loves us. The clouds are big curtains." "Curtains?" exclaimed the children, astonished. "Yes, truly," answered the father; "don't you know what we use curtains for?" "Oh, yes," said Mary, "I know. When the sun shines too strongly we pull down the curtains to keep off the heat." Quite so," replied the father. "Now, when the sun shines very hot on the fields, the cows in the meadow are languid and restless, and the flowers and plants bow their little heads to the ground. Then the Lord spreads out the clouds before the sun, just as you pull down the curtains, and the cows enjoy the sweet grass, and the flowers and plants lift up their heads with gratitude?" While the father was speaking, it began to rain. They went into a farm-house for shelter. The children placed themselves at the window to look at the rain, which was falling in heavy showers. "That rain, too," said the father, "comes from the clouds." "What a pity!" said John; we cannot walk now; everything is wet." "Still it is very True," answered the father. useful. The Lord has made the clouds to give rain. They are big watering-pots." "Watering pots?" said Mary, opening her eyes in wonder. "Yes, my child," said the father. gardener use his watering-pot for ?" "What does our "To wet the ground," said John, quickly. "Yes," cried Mary, "for if the ground is too dry the flowers will not grow." "Just so," said the father. "But when the big meadows and fields are too dry, what gardener is big enough to water them? And when the farmer's land is so dry that the potatoes, and the cabbage, and the wheat, won't grow, who is to wet all that?" "Oh, I see! I see!" exclaimed John. "Then the Lord takes those big clouds and presses rain out of them." "He does," said the father; "the clouds are big watering pots with which the Lord wets this beautiful world of ours, just as the gardener wets our garden." The rain was soon over, and the father again went out with his children. "How nice it is," they said, as they breathed the cool, fresh air. "Yes," said the father; "the Lord has done it with his big watering-pots. Now, look at the clouds." The children looked up, and cried, "How beautiful!" There the great clouds floated about in the sky. The sun had just broken through them, and given them all sorts of fine colours. Some had gilt edges, others were red, like crimson; some, again, were purple, pink, light blue, and dark blue. Many of them were in strange shapes. On the left-hand side was a large bluish cloud, that looked just like a large ship with its sails set up to the top; on the right was a dark cloud, that had very much the shape of a cow with three horns. The children laughed in delight as they found out what the clouds were like. "Now, you see," said the father, "that the clouds are pictures too. We hang up pictures and engravings in our rooms. So the Lord hangs up golden, purple, and blue clouds on the walls of the sky, to make a beautiful drawing-room for our whole earth.” Arithmetic-I. Exercises in Multiplication. 1.-Multiply 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 respectively, by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. This exercise affords 121 separate sums in the simplest kind of multiplication. 2.-Multiply 12, 34, 56, 78, 90, 31, 25, 67, 94 respectively, by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 3.-Multiply 19, 28, 37, 56, 65, 74, 83, 92, 100 respectively, by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 4.-There are 95 baskets, and in each basket there are 6 eggs : how many eggs do the baskets contain? 5.-There are 73 marbles in 11 bags, and 89 in 7 bags: how many marbles are there in the 18 bags ? 10 THE OX. por-tions plod-ding ex-tracts parts chan-nel... a pipe or passage painstaking com-forts.. luxuries ..draws out char-coal. .burnt wood cal-cined.. burnt to a de-rive..... .to draw from powder em-ployed.. ..used con-veys ..carries ru-mi-nant ...chewing the cud pri-va-tion....... ob-vi-ous be-ne-fit...... ....nourishing ..to chew ..takes away pro-duc-tions..... ....results fi-nal-ly .at last There are few animals which are more thoroughly useful to man than the ox, or whose loss we should feel more deeply in the privation of so many comforts. Putting aside the two obvious benefits of its flesh and the milk of the cow-both of which are so needful for our comfort that we almost forget to think about them at all-we derive very great benefit from its powers while living, and from many portions of its body when dead. In many parts of England, oxen are still employed in farm labour, drawing the plough or the waggon with a slow but steady plodding gait. From the hoofs, ears, and hide-parings, we get glue; while the hide itself is made into leather for the harness-maker and shoemaker. The builder uses cow-hair to mix with his mortar, and the practical chemist would be greatly at a loss for some of his most valued productions if the entire ox tribe were swept from the earth. Even the intestines are used for a number of purposes. Sometimes the bones are subjected to a process which extracts every nutritious particle out of them, and even in that case, the remaining portions of the bones are made useful by being calcined, and made up into the animal charcoal which has lately been so largely employed in many of the arts and sciences. The ox belongs to the ruminant tribe of animals, or |