230 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



elsewhere, to lay stress rather upon the moments 

 in life when plants are doing something, and thus 

 to suggest to my readers the close resemblance 

 which really exists between their activities and 

 those of animals. The more you watch plants, 

 the more will you find how much this is true. 

 And in a case like that of a pond frozen in winter, 

 where both groups have to meet and face the 

 self-same difficulty, it is odd to note how exactly 

 similar are the various devices by which either 

 group has succeeded in surmounting it. 



When you skate carelessly over the frozen pond 

 in winter, you never perhaps reflect upon all the 

 wealth of varied life that lies asleep beneath your 

 feet. But it is there in abundance. The smaller 

 newt, to be sure, has gone ashore to hibernate : but 

 his great crested brother lurks somnolent in the 

 mud, like a torpid bear or a sleeping dormouse. 

 Frogs huddle buried in close packed groups at the 

 centre, massed together in the soft ooze for warmth 

 and company. Many kinds of aquatic snails 

 slumber peaceably hard by, with various beetles 

 beside the whirligigs. As for eggs and spawn and 

 larvce or pupae, as well as petty crustaceans, you 

 could count them by the dozen. Seeds are there, 

 too, and buried plants of water-crowfoot, and 

 winter shoots and winter buds, and a whole world 

 of skulkers. The pond seems dead, if you look 

 only at its hard and frozen top ; but in its depths 

 it encloses for kind after kind the manifold hope of 

 a glorious resurrection. Let May but come back 

 with a few genial suns, and forthwith, the water- 



