Chapter 13: The Black River; Chapter 14: A Note of Invitation Some Notes about... Compasses
	This is a good point to talk about compass points. Of course you know most of them. You know the four cardinal compass points: North, South, East, and West. You know the points between them, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. But there are more! There are actually 32 points. Can you box the compass? "Boxing the Compass" is naming all the compass points in order, starting at North and going around to the east. Apprentice sailors used to have to learn how to do it from memory because most of them couldn't read. That's why most old compass roses on maps don't have any letters for the directions. If you learn how to box the compass, you will know something that not a lot of people know anymore, which is very cool. And it will help you when these terms come up in these great old adventure books.
	The 32 Points of a Compass
	North North By East North Northeast Northeast By North Northeast Northeast By East East Northeast East By North	East East by South East Southeast Southeast by East Southeast Southeast by South South Southeast South by East	South South by West South Southwest Southwest by South Southwest Southwest by West West Southwest West by South	West West by North West Northwest Northwest by West Northwest Northwest by North North Northwest North by West
	It looks like a lot to memorize, but if you look closely, you will see a pattern that will help you out. To learn how to make your own compass, click here. Sextants
		A sextant is a handheld navigational device that allowed seamen to determine latitude and longitude. It was a bit more complicated than the compass and required the use of tables and charts, so one had to be able to read to use it.
	The whole idea is that you can find the angle between a star and the horizon. Look at this diagram. B and the dark part of A are mirrors, and the arm (really called a level) L can be moved, which moves mirror B. You look through the telescope and line up carefully on the horizon straight in front of you. Then you move the level until the image of the desired star, reflected from B to A to the telescope, looks like it lines up right on the horizon too. Then you can read the angular distance between the star and the horizon on the scale that the level points to. This will tell you how high the star is in degrees.
	The sun at noon is a great indicator of latitude, on the equator it is high in the sky, but in the far north it never gets very high. It was easy to figure out ways to calculate latitude from the position of the sun or the north star. DON'T EVEN THINK OF LOOKING AT THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE OR THROUGH ANYTHING ELSE UNLESS YOU HAVE AN EYEBALL YOU DON'T NEED ANYMORE! If you want to make your own sextant or astrolabe, use Polaris to practice with. I'm not kidding, you will go blind. Now, here's the deal with longitude. The Earth turns 360 degrees in 24 hours. How far does it turn in an hour? 15 degrees. This is a little different way of thinking about something you already understand, so pay attention. If you saw that the sun was at its highest point in your position, you would know that it was noon, right? And if you knew what time it was somewhere else, say in Greenwich, England (to pick a spot at random, hehe), you could compare the differences in time. Then you could do some math, because remember? An hour equals 15 degrees of longitude. Ahhhhh....now you see. So if it was noon where you are and it was 3 p.m. in Greenwich, you would be 45 degrees west of Greenwich. So once the clocks got good enough to keep time at sea, one could determine longitude by finding the time at one's position and doing a little math and/or using tables. Sunset and sunrise are great ways of telling time, if you know the date. The sun rises and sets at a specific time each day, and that time changes each day. So to use sunset or sunrise to tell time, you have to know the date and you have to have charts that tell you the time. Captain Nemo uses sunset in today's reading assignment. Looking out the window Labre Mullet Goby Scombrus Japanese Salamanders Lamprey Some of these images aren't the same exact species as the ones in the book, but you can at least look at animals in the same family.

	Vocabulary
	Acre	A unit of area in the U.S. Customary System, used in land and sea floor measurement and equal to 160 square rods, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet. Just to give you a feel for the size of it, a football field is about an acre.
	Allusion	A casual or incidental mention or quotation.
	Betokened	To be or give a sign or portent of.
	Bunsen pile	A kind of battery.
	E.N.E.	East Northeast
	Epoch	A unit of geologic time that is a division of a period.
	Excrescence	An abnormal, disfiguring outgrowth such as that caused by a tumor.
	Fillet	A strip or compact piece of boneless meat or fish.
	Dynamics	A branch of physics that studies how motion and the action of forces affecting motion interrelate
	Lenticular	Shaped like a lens that is convex on both surfaces.
	Leyden bottles	A capacitor. It builds up and stores electricity. Want to make one? MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS WITH AN ADULT, AND DON'T USE FLAMMABLE ADHESIVES LIKE RUBBER CEMENT.
	Manifest	Clear and unmistakable to the eye or mind; plain; obvious.
	Mare's tails	A long, narrow cirrus cloud with a flowing appearance
	Pinnace	A small ship or ship's boat.
	Planisphere	A maplike projection of all or part of a sphere on a plane surface.
	Quintillion	1,000,000,000,000,000,000
	Rhodomenia palmata	Coarse edible red seaweed.
	Rouquayrol apparatus	A scuba device developed in 1865, where air is inhaled from a supply cylinder and exhaled into the sea. It could only provide air for a few minutes, but Captain Nemo was a smart fella and he improved it vastly.
	Ruhmkorff apparatus	This device takes current from a battery and amplifies it enough to cause gas to become luminous, producing continuous white light.
	Saloon	A large social lounge on a passenger ship.
	Silurian	Of, belonging to, or being the geologic time, system of rocks, or sedimentary deposits of the third period of the Paleozoic Era, characterized by the development of early invertebrate land animals
	Surmullet	Any of various brightly colored fishes of the family Mullidae of warm seas, having two sensory barbels on the chin. Also called goatfish.
	Terra firma	Land that is firm or dry; solid earth.
	Undulations	A wavelike motion or alternation.
	Unity	One
	Venison	The flesh of a deer, used as food.
	Zosteria	A genus of plants of the Naiadace, or Pondweed family. Zostera marina is commonly known as sea wrack, and eelgrass.