> Tiny chips of rock and powdered flower petals. Bits of bats' wings and > birds' feathers. Fragments of dried-up caterpillar skin and pieces of > mouse whiskers. > > That isn't a recipe for a magic...
Icy bulldozers
glacier, Chile Some of the snow on a high mountaintop melts and runs off. But much of it stays all year round. The snow that stays becomes hard and grainy, like salt. As new snow falls each year,...
Lands of ice
Two parts of the earth are bitter cold all year round. These places are the "top" and the "bottom" of the earth---the North Pole and South Pole. The land around the South Pole is called Antarctica....
Land in the water
Explosion after explosion of hot rock and ash spurted from the ocean. A thick cloud of steam rose high into the air. Slowly, for many days, a long mound of dark lava rose up out of the water. An...
Dry lands
> an oasis in the Sahara, Algeria The golden, glowing sun glares down on a vast sea of sand. As far as the eye can see, the sand stretches in great yellow-brown ripples. The air is so hot you can...
Open country
All over the earth there are great flat places. The level or gently rolling land goes on for miles (kilometers). These flat parts of the earth are called plains. Most plains are lower than the land...
The lowest place in the world
> Canyon de Chelly, Arizona > Dead Sea, between Jordan and Israel If the highest part of the land is a mountaintop, where do you think the lowest place must be? That's right---in a valley. The...
Nature’s ditches
What parts of the earth's surface have floors and walls? Valleys. A valley is like a long ditch scooped out of the ground. The bottom of the ditch is called the floor. The sides are called valley...
When the earth shivers
"The mountains seemed to walk!" That is what a Chinese writer said about a terrible earthquake he saw. During the worst earthquakes, the ground shivers and shakes and rumbles. Whole sections of land...
Mountains of fire
A volcano is a special kind of mountain that actually builds itself! It is made of red-hot rock that pours up out of the earth amid earthquakes, explosions, and towering clouds of smoke and ash. ...
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