ECOLOGICAL 53 



and the shore pools, which seemed so empty in winter, begin to 

 teem with what we may with Charles Kingsley call "water-babies", 

 which form the basal food supply for aquatic animals, just as the 

 multiplication of the blades of grass, in the wide sense, is the most 

 important event on land. The circulation of matter from one em- 

 bodiment to another is slowed down in the winter, but it is quick- 

 ened again in spring. Grass begins again to become flesh, and one 

 reincarnation follows another all the world over. 



Summer means a great increase of income and therefore the 

 possibility of a great increase in expenditure. The day is longer and 

 warmer, and what may be called the industry of green plants is 

 incalculably great. Every sunlit green leaf is making carbohydrates 

 and proteins, and great quantities begin to be laid past in root-stock 

 and tuber, corm and bulb, to give the plant capital for next spring. 

 But as leafing is characteristic of spring, so is flowering of summer. 

 No doubt there are many beautiful spring flowers, mostly white and 

 yellow, like snowdrops and celandine, but it is in summer that the 

 crowded floral pageant begins to move, and its colours seem to 

 heighten as the months pass. It is in summer that we see so much 

 of the most important linkage in the world, that between flowers 

 and their insect visitors. "Most important" because many of these 

 visitors, notably the bees that come for nectar and pollen, carry the 

 fertilising golden dust from one blossom to another blossom of the 

 same kind. It is this fertilising pollen that makes the possible seeds 

 or ovules into real seeds that will sprout; in other words, a male 

 nucleus from the down-growing pollen-tube fertilises the egg-cell 

 within the ovule within the ovary of the flower. Summer is charac- 

 terised by industry. In spring, both among plants and animals, 

 there is much living on the strength of the past ; in summer there is 

 living on the present for the present, and for the future. What 

 studies in animal industry we see in the summer months ! Just as in 

 mankind, there are hunters and fishers ; there are miners like moles 

 and foresters like beavers; there are agricultural ants and others 

 that keep domestic animals. The climax of summer industry is to 

 be seen in the ant-hill, the termitary, and the beehive. 



Autumn marks the turn of the tide that began to flow in spring 

 and reached high-water mark in summer. The days become shorter 

 and colder. Spring for foliage, summer for flowers, autumn for 

 fruiting; and the meaning of the fruit is to secure the dispersal of 

 the seeds — the sowing of the next generation. In some cases the 

 nectaries of the flowers close and the surplus sugar is drafted into 

 the fruits, making them tempting to birds. It may seem a bad 

 beginning to be swallowed by a bird, but the seeds are in such cases 

 usually very hard and pass down the bird's food-canal not a bit the 

 worse. Other fruits like those of jack-run-the-hedge and burdock 

 catch on to passing animals and get rubbed off far away. Others, 



