132 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



must not go farther; our point is merely to suggest 

 an interesting inquiry into the great variety of 

 ways in which different animals solve the same 

 problem of surviving the winter. For those that 

 have no solution to offer, and for those that fumble 

 with their solution, winter spells sooner or later 

 elimination. 



As we come home we pass a little tarn, which was 

 such a merry, busy place at midsummer, but is now 

 half-frozen, and looks as lifeless as the moor. The 

 water round the edges is clear and clean, but peering 

 down we cannot see the slightest stir of life. Now 

 the biochemists of the ponds have told us a very 

 interesting thing: that the dying away in autumn 

 and winter produces substances ("auxetics") 

 which later on promote the multiplication of cells 

 and towards spring an increasing quantity of certain 

 other substances ( "augmentors " ) which give more 

 power to the elbow of the first. And so out of death 

 come the stimulants of the wonderful awakening 

 of pond-life in spring. There is, no doubt, in that 

 tarn an abundance of life even now, but it is in 

 hiding, it is in winter-retreat, it is waiting. And as 

 we look at the partial covering of ice another thought 

 rises in our mind which lasts us all the way home : 

 the thought that this world, in spite of all Man's 

 cataclysms, is singularly well adapted for going on. 

 For there is surely food for reflection in the fact 

 that fresh water is anomalous in expanding, not 

 contracting, when it is near its freezing-point. This 

 brings the coldest water to the top, thus tending to 



