10 
THIRD BUOOBR. 
People formerly used hour-glasses to measure 
their time by. 
An hour-glass is divided into two hollow parts, 
connected by a narrow neck. "The upper part is 
filled with sand sufficient to trickle out into the 
lower glass in the course of an hour, and when the 
lower glass is full, you turn it up, and the lower 
glass is again the empty one, till the sand has 
dribbled out again, and filled it. In this way 
people could measure their day, when once they 
knew the hour; but then, if they were so engaged 
as to be obliged to leave their glass unturned, they 
lost their reckoning. Still it was a very useful 
invention: but clocks and watches are far more 
admirable; because they not only tell you that an 
hour is past, but they point out which hour, and 
show you what portion of the hour, or how many 
minutes are past. 
Erery boy and girl should learn to read the 
hour of the day by a clock or watch. Look at the 
school clock; the hours, you see, are marked in a 
circle, from I. to XII on the face of it, which 
face is called the dial plate; and there are two 
hands or pointers, which move round it, The 
shorter hand, which is called the hour hand, 
points to the hours which are marked I. IL IIL, 
and so on; the longer one points to the minutes, 
which are marked by these little strokes or dots 
which you see in a circle outside the figures; this 
long hand is called the minute hand, 
The hour hand morves slowly; it is an hour in 
moving from one figure to the next, and twelve 
hours in passing round the whole circle, from any 
one hour to the same again.