Do you know what it is to be a positive influence on others. You have to think and be happy. When things are not going well for you or your parents you must think that soon the problem will go away and you will get better.

Sometimes people around you can make you feel very low by their negative thoughts 'its raining and there's nothing to do'. Don't let this get you down. For you can make a rainy day a jolly one if you think of things to do. Like indoor sports or even arranging your cupboard or room, going through all the old books and seeing what you have done. This can be very exciting because you will come across some very interesting stuff that you didn't know was there.

So don't let others ruin your day. Actually you can make others happy too if you make yourself feel happy and content. You will also be able to talk to your friends who are feeling low by cracking some jokes. This will automatically make one get out of their low moods.

Do continue to write in your lovely stories and art.

Until next time
Aunty Sunshine

A trip to Hantana

Last week I went on a trip to Kandy with my family and relatives. We went to Kandy in a private coach. We had our breakfast at Kadugannawa. On the way all of us were singing songs and having a good time. We reached Kothmale around 11.00 am, and did a bit of sight seeing of the reservoir. Then we visited the Peradeniya gardens and had our lunch there. Before we left we visited the Dalada Maligawa and offered flowers since we were there. At last we reached Hantana. It is a huge hill with a fine jungle, so all of us decided to climb this moutain. We saw jungle fowls and other uncommon birds. Because it was tiring many did not climb to the top. At the top it was beautiful. Surrounded by a range of hills and Dumbara Valley below, was breathtaking. You could see Mahaveli river.

The descent was a bit slippery, but we did make it down too. This was a wonderful trip I've had.

Jeevan Heshara Wijayatilaka
Mahanama College
Colombo

What school has to offer

Life is complete only when you live in a community. A community is a group of people coming from different back grounds. Living in a community means respecting other people and their ideas and getting others to respect our ideas. The school is a place that provides a training in community living.

Children come from different families. They only know ideas and habits that are followed in their families. In the school they meet children who come from other families. When they meet they are exposed to habits, beliefs and ideas that are completely new to them.

So, they learn to adjust themselves to suit their needs. When getting together they have to give and take, accept and reject, agree and disagree. This teaches them the first lessons through healthy competition.

In a school, achievements are generally collective. Individual achievements are with group co-operation. So any child irrespective of his home or background has to adjust himself to live in a community. When he learns to adjust he learns community living.

The school provides community life. It gives training in all various fields of life. The class-room gives ample opportunities for healthy competition. It also opens avenues to help others and receive help.

It teaches social values like respecting parents, teachers, elders and others. The classroom and the sports field train them to accept victory and defeat. We can come to the conclusion without any doubt that the school lays the foundation for community life. And it is on this foundation a healthy, happy and sociable society is built.

Anusha Kugarajah,
Good Shepherd Convent
Kandy

If all were one

If all the seas were one
What a great sea that would be !
And if all the trees were one ,
What a great tree that would be !
And if all the axes were one ,
What a great axe that would be !
If all the men were one ,
What a great man he would be !
And if the great man had a great axe,
And cut down the great tree,
And let it fall into the great sea,
What a great splash that would be !

Fazmina Jamal,
Netherfield International School
Palliyakotuwa
Kandy

My self

My name is Nirosha Thalayasingam. I am nine years old. I live in Colombo. I go to Ladies' College. I am in year 4P and I have eight subjects. My favourite subject is science and my hobby is reading books. I have one sister, her name is Tiffany; I love my sister. My favourite colour is pink. My favourite food is pizza. When I grow up I would like to be a doctor.

Nirosha Thalayasingam
Ladies' College
Colombo.

School term test

You gave me pain
And, a goal to gain
You made my head ache
And kept me awake-
At night when the world was asleep,
You made me hunt-
As if; I'm an owl who hunts,
For food - to survive
Through-out the pages I hunted,
Through book and charts printed,
At that time you always seemed. . .
Our worst enemy who never leaves,
Who broke the order,
In our easy lives
But now, as I stay home
I miss you so much,
To my amazement, though.
'Cause it seems, to me, now,
That you were the golden sun,
Through the dark dusk
Who changed our lives,
Our monotonous, bored lives
Who gave the chance,
To stand up a little bit higher,
Than the last term
Time after time - term after term,
I miss you so much

Send by Lawanya Wijesekara
B/Kuda Kusum B.M.V.
Bandarawela

My Granny

I love to walk with granny
But she's very old too,
She had gone to an old school
So she's a little strict too
She's strict about manners
To shake hands with people
And the way to hold a fork.
One day I asked my granny a question.
"Granny do I hold my fork in the right way?"
"Don't worry dear" she said with a smile
She tells me lovely stories
About kings, witches and fairies.
I love hearing her stories

Sent by Nirmani Thilakasena
Musaeus College.

My Sister

My sister's name is Sandu. She is one year old. She can walk, and now she is trying to talk. Now the words she says are mother, father, brother, cat , baba and ball.

Sometimes she stays like a statue. When we say to her "You are very naughty," then her mouth becomes a semi circle.

Sometimes she does funny things and then she is like Charlie Chaplain. I love her very much.

Yashod Savithru Jayasinghe
Sri Lankan School, Muscat

My School

My School is Ng/Andiambalama Primary School. It is near the church. I am a student of year four. I come to school by bus. I love my school very much. The principal is Mrs. Susila Malani de Silva.

There are 19 teachers in our school. My class teacher is Mrs. Balasuriya.

Maheshika
Minuwangoda.
Adiambalama

How I spent Vesak

This year Vesak fell on May 29, 1999. It was a rainy day so many people found it a bit difficult to go out and see the beautiful pandals.

I am a student and I go for tuition classes so I thought it's the best way to see Vesak while coming home. Gampaha town was well with lit and there were lanterns all over. But because of the rain I was unable to go out. Vesak for me was spent at home watching TV and what they showed on the screen was my Vesak.

By Nadeeshani Fernando,
S.M.bungalow
Hunupitiya
Wattala.

Stamp News 71

Nature's beauty

By Uncle D.C.R

Numerous countries use stamps to increase public awareness of nature's beauty and the importance of preserving it for all to enjoy. These help to remind everyone of the popular quote "a thing of beauty is a joy forever".

Among such stamps is the unique pane of 50 different American wildlife designs issued in 1987. These reflected the geographical and biological diversity of native animals. The American postal authorities saw to it that all areas of the United States were represented, from the Alaskan tundra to the Florida Everglades. They depicted many species from a tiny ladybug to a huge bison, from a very rare black-footed ferret to the common blue jay.

It is well known that from the beginnings of recorded time, North America with its varied topography and climate, has been the home of amazingly diverse species of wildlife. With economic development and the transformation of civilization, there was the danger of the existence of these creatures being threatened. However, conservationists worked hard to preserve the species through the opening of refuges and the setting up of national parks.

Here is a random gathering from the pane of 50 designs. Note how the animals are depicted in their native habitats.

Each stamp celebrates the spirit of the nation and the creatures that inhabit it. In its resiliency and beauty. America's wildlife is symbolic of the complex web of life that binds us with all living things", to quote Our World: International Images of Nature, a joint presentation by six postal administrations.

Flowerless plants

Plants first began to live on land more than 400 million years ago. They needed to develop new structures to cope with their new conditions of life and to make them independent of surrounding water.

Their most important need was an internal system for the storage and movement of food, and water containing mineral salts. With such a system all living parts of the plants could be nourished.

Vascular system

What plants developed was a system of mainly woody tubes called a vascular system. The tubes transport water and at the same time add strength and rigidity to a plant. This in turn enables a vascular plant to grow to a larger size than is possible with the non-vascular liverworts and mosses.

The very first vascular plants were the psilophytes. Only three species of this ancient group of plants are still living today, and even they are rather rare in warmer parts of the world.

The best known of these,Psilotum, has a horizontal underground stem, or rhizome, but no roots. It has forked branches coming out of the rhizome. These bear tiny, scale-like leaves, as well as sporangia which release spores during reproduction.

Clubmosses and their relatives

Clubmosses are small creeping plants. Some look like larger mosses, some like miniature pine trees, but a third group, the quillworts, are water plants which look more like onions or garlic.

Like psilophytes, clubmosses reproduce themselves with the aid of a single type of asexual spore. Spores are contained in sporangia which lie in the club-shaped parts of the plants, from which they get their name.

Clubmoss relatives, like the various species of Selaginella and the quillworts, have two types of spores. These are called, respectively, megaspores or big spores, and microspores or small spores.

Microspores give rise to male sperms while still on the plants. Megaspores similarly give rise to female eggs. In some cases, eggs are fertilized while still on the parent plant and may even deveIop into embryos there before dropping off the parent. This of course resembles the type of reproduction that occurs in the highest of plants, the seed plants. These include flowers, trees and grasses .

Horsetails

As with clubmosses, the horsetails of today are the few survivors of a once great group. Three hundred million years ago, many different kinds of horsetails grew as large trees in the coal swamps.

The 25 species that have survived until today are all woody plants a metre or less in height, growing from underground stems. They are seen most commonly as hedgerow or meadow plants, or as garden weeds. Other species still live in swamps and bogs.

The part most people are familiar with is their sterile shoot which makes food by photosynthesis, but does not produce spores. These shoots have an unmistakable appearance. They are upright, green-jointed stems from which whorls of slender green branches spring, more or less horizontally, at regular intervals. Spores are formed at the tips of more shortlived, fertile shoots.

The rhizome, upright stem and branches all bear scale-like leaves. The whole plant feels hard and rough because of silicon deposits in its outer layers.

Ferns

Ferns are the most successful plants of their group. They have by far the most species and these are more widely distributed. They also take many different forms.

In temperate glades and woodland, such ferns as bracken are common plants. In tropical forests, ferns range from the size of trees to filmy, fragile plants that look rather like mosses. Other tropical forest ferns include many epiphytes that perch on the branches and trunks of trees. Some small ferns are water plants with trailing roots .

Another way in which ferns are different from their relatives is that they have large, compound leaves. The way in which these leaves uncurl in the spring is most typical. All fern stems arise from underground rhizomes.

Woody and other vascular tissues are well developed in rhizomes and stems, enabling ferns to grow to a large size — some tree ferns are ten metres or more in height .

The spores of most common ferns are borne inside sori which can be found in rows on the underside of the leaves or fronds.

Reproduction

Ferns, horsetails and clubmosses all reproduce in a similar way. As with mosses and liverworts, this involves an alternation of generations, where plants which bear asexual spores alternate with plants that bear sperms and eggs.

In contrast to mosses and liverworts, however, it is the sporebearing plant of ferns and their relatlves that is the largest and most obvious stage in the fern's life-cycle. This is known as the sporophyte. A fern or horsetail plant, for example, is a sporophyte.

The plant that bears sex cells, or gametes, is tiny. It is called the gametophyte. This develops in the soil from an asexual spore, and bears either sperms, or eggs, or both.

When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fertilized egg divides and multiplies until it has grown into the adult sporophyte.

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