THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Vol. 12 December, 1916 No. 9 



Midwinter 



L. H. Bailey 



The November days are running hard into December. The 

 nights are long ; and the glow of my study light is like an island 

 in the night, in the night that is dark and deep and heavy with 

 winds and the driven leaves. The "dead of winter" comes on. 

 The days will be narrowed to their smallest straits, and the dark- 

 ness will dominate. Only a few drifting windy birds are in these 

 days, only seldom is there a wild four-foot, the insects and the 

 lesser world are tucked away so far and so compactly that they 

 might never have been. 



Soon will the jingle of bells give voice. The white-lights along 

 every city street will gleam in all their glory. Every shop will be 

 resplendent. The giddy whirl inside will go round and round. 

 How expediently do we try to make up for the dead of winter ! 



Yet now is the world revealed. The mask is stript. The 

 way it sleeps, the fashion of it, — this I want to know. How the 

 tree looks in its dormancy, where are the cocoons, how the frost 

 comes to the creek, where the rosettes of many weeds hug the 

 ground and how the vegetation shrinks into the cold, the way of 

 the blowing winds, how the snow comes down, — these I want to 

 know. One world from December unto December, with its wonderful 

 shifts, one nature preparing and rising and sleeping and then 

 preparing again forever and forever: this is the great joy of it, — 

 not the waiting for a new season, but the wonder-panorama of the 

 present! This is Jackman's "rolling year." 



To be a part of it, to expand in the blessed uncovered days 

 of winter, to feel the leap of spring (what means this word" spring") , 

 to burn with the summer, to ripen with the autumn, and then again 

 to go down into the wild winter : verily, this is ilfe ! 



373 



