NATURE'S CALENDAR 



DECEMBER 



December ushers in the winter some- December i 



times hurriedly and sometimes tardily, 

 but nature is ready in time if snows 

 and cold come early, or is content to 

 wait when they are late. She begins 

 early to make her preparations for an 

 average season, and an excessive winter, 

 which now and then overcomes her de- 

 fences and extensively kills vegetation 

 and animal life, is one of the ways by 

 which nature in a larger sense lops off 

 a weak or surplus form and trims down 

 the world of life to normal proportions. 

 Extra hard winters, summers of drouth, 

 and similar periods of stress are among 

 the instruments of natural selection in 

 getting rid of the least efficient and so 

 raising the general average. The plagues 

 and wars and wide-spread catastrophes 

 that scar human history are, in a large 

 way, beneficent to the human race, as a 

 whole, in the same manner. 



The special preparations made to en- 

 dure the cold are many and ingenious. 

 Such, the botanists say, are the thick 

 scales on the buds of the early leafing 

 trees ; and there is many another pro- 

 vision to protect the tender inner parts 



