1902 Entovtology in Winter 39 



causes their protoplasm to circulate, and then they shortly 

 hatch. 



But other millions of earth's pigmy race do not so perish : 

 many lovely butterflies hide themselves away in hollow trees, 

 outhouses, and even in our very bedrooms — a King George 

 has sat unmoved within my own since last September. 

 Wasps, beetles, moths, frog - hoppers, as well as humble- 

 bees and ants, all squeeze themselves away among the 

 roots of grass, the bark of prostrate trees, in faggot-stacks, 

 and just wherever they know that King Frost cannot find 

 them. And so when you traverse a desolate and empty 

 wintry waste of country, bemoaning the bright fairies 

 which erstwhile peopled every flower and grass-blade, lo ! 

 they are yet with and around you, but each snugly tucked 

 away within its torpid nest, dreaming out the horrid days, 

 with vitality at lowest ebb and respiration just sufficient 

 to sustain the creature in a living state, yet with no undue 

 waste of tissue, till back the blood courses through the 

 veins next spring. 



As the train whirls me on to York through brown pastures, 

 where the snow lies deep beneath the hedgerows, I know 

 that under snow and ice and winter fog there lie the legions 

 of earth's atoms, defying in a wondrous way the worst that 

 frost can do. A caterpillar may be frozen so stiffly that to all 

 appearance it is dead, and so brittle that a slight bend will 

 halve it between your fingers like a twig ; but left alone, it 

 will survive and show no symptoms of degeneration in the 

 spring. Some chrysalides lie for weeks in solid blocks of ice 

 down in the water-meadows, proving to the full that oxygen 

 forms no great factor in the physiology of their quiescent 

 state ; and moths and beetles have often been found, at 

 least in the Hartz Mountains, crawling upon the level plains 

 of snow. 



The sloth of entomologists in winter has ever been a source 

 of wonder to me. True, there is not the number and variety 

 of insects to be found that there is in summer-time, but at 

 this season some will be obtained that will then be sought 

 in vain. Now you see them in their natural habitat, and 

 often little clusters or colonies of some rare kind are met 

 with, which on the wing are seen only singly or in pairs. 



