i 3 4 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



is too little aware for his own profit. Almost all wild, and 

 indeed domestic animals, can feed on themselves. The 

 sheep, which Jan Ridd in Lorna Doone rescued out of 

 the snowdrift, could have lived there quite happily for a 

 good while so long as they could keep a hole for ventilation. 

 Rabbits and hares have been known to lie snug for many 

 days in a snow cavern. 



The squirrel who, like the virtuous man in Vergil, 

 4 wraps himself in his own virtue, 1 comes between the hare 

 and the bat as a hibernator. Sometimes he sleeps soundly 

 and the breathing diminishes, sometimes he goes to his 

 stores and is as ready as Shelley's seeds to wake up to life 

 as soon as ' the clarion ' of spring sounds its first note over 

 the dreaming earth. 



No autumnal disappearance is more secret and silent 

 than the self-burial of frogs and some fish. More often the 

 winterers one comes across in autumn and winter rambles 

 make themselves snug and comfortable in sufficiently obvious 

 places. The snuggest of all is the dormouse. The writer 

 has found him showing a particular fondness for the upper 

 story of a beehive, the uninhabited attic over the swarm. 

 It is just the right place for him. There is usually cloth or 

 stuffing of some sort put to keep the bees warm through the 

 winter. The dormouse cards and teases this till he has 

 composed a ball of soft wool so evenly distributed that in 

 spite of its lightness it is as effective to keep out cold as the 

 best cotton-wool. Finally he covers up the hole of ingress, 

 leaving as little trace as a hedgehog leaves of his own head 

 and tail. Both 



' Roll their sweetness up into one ball,' 



as Marvel advised in a different sense, and doze away the 

 winter snugly. Perhaps the dormouse is open to the child's 

 complaint that it 'had no habits.' It is never very lively 



