1903 Animal Colouring in Winter 11 



blunts the edges of all feeling. Sometimes it is fire or flood ; 

 but in that case the creature runs away, with a confidence 

 that he always feels in his legs or wings, till the end comes 

 swift and sure. Those that escape huddle together in a safe 

 spot, forgetting natural enmities and all things else save a 

 great wonder of what has come to pass. In short, unless the 

 animals are to live always and become a nuisance or a danger 

 by their increase, Nature is kind, even in her sterner moods, 

 in taking care that death comes to all her creatures without 

 pain or terror. And what is true of the animals was true of 

 man till he sought out many inventions to make sickness 

 intolerable and death an enemy. 



All these latter cases, it is well to remember, are the striking 

 variations, not the rule, of the woods. The vast majority of 

 animals go away quietly when their time comes; and their 

 death is not recorded because man has eyes only for excep- 

 tions. He desires a miracle, but overlooks the sunset. 

 Something calls the creature away from his daily round ; 

 age or natural disease touches him gently in a way that 

 he has not felt before. He steals away, obeying the old 

 warning instinct of his kind, and picks out a spot where they 

 shall not find him till he is well again. The brook sings on 

 its way to the sea ; the waters lap and tinkle on the pebbles 

 as the breeze rocks them ; the wind is crooning in the pines 

 — the old, sweet lullaby that he heard when his ears first 

 opened to the harmony of the world. The shadows lengthen ; 

 the twilight deepens ; his eyes grow drowsy ; he falls asleep. 

 And his last conscious thought, since he knows no death, is 

 that he will waken in the morning when the light calls him. 



Animal Colouring in Winter. 



By Frank E. Beddard, M.A., F.R.S., Prosector to the Zoological 

 Society of London. 



It is possibly — even probably — the general opinion among 

 those who are not specially instructed in the matter that the 

 remarkable change to white, which many animals inhabiting 



