Natural Science Stories (Tolstoy)
Short summary
A collection of educational stories divided into physics, zoology, and botany. The physics section begins with the legend of shepherd Magnes discovering magnetic rocks that attract iron. Tolstoy explains how magnets work, their properties, and their use in navigation through compass needles. He describes the dangers of bad air in wells and enclosed spaces, telling of incidents where people die from carbon dioxide poisoning. The section on galvanism recounts how Galvani and Volta discovered electricity through experiments with dead frogs, leading to the invention of electric batteries and telegraphs. The sun's heat is presented as the source of all earthly motion and life.
The zoology stories explore animal behaviors and senses. Tolstoy illustrates how animals rely primarily on smell rather than sight, describing how dogs track scents and how insects detect odors from vast distances. He explains the silkworm's life cycle in detail, from tiny eggs through multiple molts to cocoon spinning.
The botany section reveals how trees survive. When an old poplar appears to be dying, the author cuts down young shoots thinking they drain the parent tree. He later realizes his mistake:
I wanted to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its children.
Detailed summary by subject categories
Descriptive titles for The Magnet subsections are editorial.
Stories from Physics
Part 1. The legend and properties of magnetic stones
In ancient times, a shepherd named Magnes lost one of his sheep and ventured into the mountains to find it.
While walking over barren rocks, he noticed his boots sticking to them. When he tested the rocks with his iron-tipped cane, the iron end stuck so firmly he could not pull it off. He discovered these iron-like stones and took pieces home, giving the mineral its name.
Part 2. Magnetic attraction and repulsion
Magnet was found in the earth with iron ore, and where magnet existed in ore, the iron proved to be of the best quality. When iron was placed on a magnet, it began to attract other iron. Steel needles held against magnets became magnetic themselves. Two magnets brought together showed that one side would turn away while the other sides attracted, as though one end pushed away while the other pulled in.
A magnetized needle attached to a pivot turned with one end toward south and the other toward north. Before magnets were known, people could not sail far from shore because they relied only on stars and sun for navigation.
When the magnet was discovered, they made a magnetic needle on a pivot...and since then they have discovered many new seas.
Injurious Air
In the village of Nikólskoe, while people attended holiday mass, a cow-tender went to the well for water but dropped her bucket. She asked the elder to retrieve it.
The elder lowered her into the twenty-foot deep well, but she suddenly fell unconscious. When he descended to help her, the same fate befell him.
The groom called for help from the church. Young carpenter Iván attempted a rescue but nearly died himself from the poisonous air.
The villagers used hooks to retrieve the bodies, but both the elder and cow-tender had died. This heavy air killed both humans and animals, and even extinguished candles. Such dangerous air formed when good air became contaminated in enclosed spaces without fresh air circulation. In mines, lamps were lowered first to test air safety before workers descended.
Galvanism
A learned Italian scientist owned an electric machine and taught students about electricity by rubbing glass with silk to create sparks.
When his wife fell ill, a doctor prescribed frog soup. Dead frogs were left on his table while he demonstrated his electric machine. He observed that every time he sent a spark through the machine, the dead frogs jerked their legs. Further experiments with brass hooks and iron wires on a roof revealed that frogs moved only when touched by different metals in combination.
Another scientist proved Galvani wrong about electricity being in dead animals.
Volta demonstrated that electricity came from combining different metals like iron and copper, not from the frogs themselves. This discovery led to new applications including gold and silver plating, electric light, and telegraph systems that transmitted messages over long distances using wires and magnetic hands that turned according to electrical direction.
The Suns Heat
In winter, everything appeared dead and motionless - snow covered the ground, rivers froze, and trees stood bare. In summer, rivers flowed, frogs croaked, birds sang, and plants grew and swayed.
Without heat everything is dead; with the heat everything moves and lives. If there is little heat, there is little motion; with more heat, there is more motion.
The sun provided all heat in the world. When it traveled low in winter, nothing moved, but as it rose higher and shone directly on earth, everything warmed and stirred. The sun melted snow, caused water to evaporate into clouds, made seeds grow, awakened hibernating animals, created wind by heating air, and generated lightning.
Everything that men need, that is for their use—all that is prepared by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat.
All human needs were fulfilled by the sun's energy - bread, wood for heating, building materials, and food for animals. Even steam engines ran on wood containing stored solar heat. Heat created motion, and motion created heat, both originating from the sun.
Stories from Zoology
The Owl and the Hare
At dusk, owls flew through the forest seeking prey. A young owl spotted a large hare and ignored an old owl's warning that the hare was too powerful. The young owl attacked, sticking one claw into the hare's back and the other into a tree. When the hare darted forward, it tore the owl apart, leaving one claw in the tree and the other embedded in the hare's back. A hunter later found the owl's talons grown into the hare's flesh.
How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps
A shepherd boy witnessed two wolves running through a field - an adult and a whelp. The whelp carried a dead lamb while the old wolf ran behind. When people and dogs appeared, the old wolf took the lamb from the whelp and both escaped. The boy explained that the adult wolf had initially killed the lamb, then allowed the whelp to carry it as a lesson, only reclaiming it when danger threatened.
Hares and Wolves
Hares fed at night and left visible tracks in snow, making them easy prey for various predators. Though they walked straight while feeding fearlessly, at dawn their timidity saved them. Upon hearing any threatening sound, hares jumped frantically in different directions, creating confusing double tracks and long leaps that bewildered hunters trying to follow them.
But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of everything.
The Scent
Humans used five senses with varying abilities, but animals possessed much stronger senses of smell than humans. While people primarily relied on sight and touch to recognize objects, nearly all animals depended most on scent. Horses snorted to clear their noses when afraid, dogs failed to recognize their masters by sight alone until they smelled them, and cattle became agitated only after smelling blood from slaughterhouses. Hunting dogs ran alongside animal tracks rather than directly on them because the scent was too strong on the actual trail. Insects had even more delicate scent detection, with bees flying directly to desired flowers and various pests detecting humans from vast distances.
The Silkworm
A narrator received silkworm eggs and raised them in his garden with old mulberry trees.
The tiny dark gray eggs hatched when mulberry buds appeared in spring. Black, shaggy worms emerged and immediately sought food. He fed them mulberry leaves on perforated paper, and they crawled through holes to reach the food. The worms ate constantly, making sounds like rain falling on leaves. They molted several times, growing larger after each shedding. When ready to pupate, they climbed upward and spun silk cocoons, tossing their heads 300,000 times in three days to create over half a mile of silk thread per cocoon. Twenty days later, white butterflies emerged, laid yellow eggs, and the cycle continued. The narrator collected 5,000 eggs for the following year.
Stories from Botany
The Apple-Tree
The narrator planted two hundred young apple trees and cared for them for three years. In the fourth year, despite healthy appearance and flower buds, mice had gnawed the bark in rings around the trunks during winter. Only nine trees survived where bark strips remained intact.
The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes along the tree.
When bark was completely severed, sap could not reach branches, leaves, and flowers, killing the trees just as severed arteries would kill a person.
The Old Poplar
While clearing an overgrown garden, the narrator cut down young poplar shoots around an enormous old poplar, thinking they drained its sap. However, the old tree was already dying and had been sending its life force to the shoots.
The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.
By cutting the shoots, he had killed all the tree's children instead of helping it.
The Bird-Cherry
A beautiful bird-cherry tree blocked a hazel bush path. Despite its fragrant white blossoms, the narrator and a peasant began chopping it down. As they worked, the tree trembled and showered them with dew and petals.
It was a fine tree! ...I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other labourers.
How Trees Walk
While clearing a path, the narrator discovered old bird-cherry trees that had grown in unexpected places. One tree had stretched twelve feet underground from beneath a choking linden tree to emerge on the path, creating a new root while abandoning its old one. Trees could move by dropping branches to the ground, forming new roots, and leaving their original locations to find better growing conditions.