I.] THE WINTER PASSIVITY. 47 



growing only a single generation of the crop in the warm 

 country. Onion seed from stock which has been grown 

 in California for several years is considered to produce 

 onions which do not "bottom," much as I found to be 

 the case with the English onion seed. 



But some plants, in geologic time, could not thus 

 shorten up their life -history to adjust themselves to the 

 oncoming of the seasons. They ceased their labors with 

 the approach of the cold or the dry, tucked up their 

 tender tissues in buds, and resigned themselves to the 

 elements. If a man could have stood amongst those 

 giant mosses and fern forests of the reeking Carbonif- 

 erous tifme, and could have known of the refrigeration 

 which the earth was to undergo, he would have ex- 

 claimed that all living things must utterly perish. 

 Consider the effects of a frost in May. See its wide- 

 spread devastation. Yet, six months hence the very 

 same trees which are now so blackened will defy any 

 degree of cold. And then, to make good the loss of 

 time, these plants start into activity relatively much 

 earlier in spring than the same species do in frostless 

 climates. This very day, when frosts are not yet passed, 

 our own New York hillsides are greener with surface 

 vegetation than the lands of the Gulf states are, which 

 have been frostless for two months and more. The frogs 

 and turtles, the insects, the bears and foxes, all adjust 

 themselves to a climate which seems to be absolutely 

 prohibitive of life, and some animals may freeze dur- 

 ing their hibernation, and yet these April days see 

 them again in heyday of life and spirits! What a 

 wonderful transformation is all this! This enforced 

 period of quiescence is so impressed upon the organiza- 

 tion that the habit becomes hereditary in plants, and 



