AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 285 



cold put all the woodland into winter quarters. 

 The ground froze, as we say, meaning that the 

 moisture in it became ice to a depth of several 

 inches, making an almost impenetrable ice blanket 

 through which the most severe winter weather 

 will work but slowly. Beneath this, or even in it, 

 all burrowing roots, animals and insects are safe 

 from freezing. Where the ground is packed 

 hard, the flinty combination of ice and grit goes 

 deepest, though even in exposed situations only 

 to a depth of three feet or so. The woodchucks 

 asleep in their burrows, the snakes, torpid in their 

 holes, are as safe from frost-bite as if they had 

 migrated to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. 

 The rootlets of small, perennial herbs may be en- 

 cased in ice to their tips, but they do not freeze. 

 The heat which the surrounding moisture gives 

 up in changing to ice, combined with their own 

 self-generated warmth, keeps them just above the 

 freezing temperature and they live through it in 

 safety. The same rootlets laid bare to the frost 

 of a single October night die. The ice which 

 seems to menace them is in fact their armor. So 

 it is with countless numbers of burrowing in- 

 sects. The frozen ground which seems so dead 

 is full of waiting life which the very frost that 



