I 



LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 



EVEN in midwinter the fields and woods are full of activity 

 by night, and the darkness and long spells of silence hide the 

 restlessness of many different forms of life. Man is a diurnal 

 animal ; his eyes have little natural power of seeing in the 

 dark. If he had been framed in a savage state for the 

 nocturnal life which is natural to many other species, his eyes 

 would have been large and liquid like those of the lemurs, or 

 would have had the unattractive faculty of contracting the 

 pupil vertically like those of the cat or the fox. Long 

 civilisation has diminished even his original modest power of 

 nocturnal vision ; and so, though the more artificial his life 

 becomes, the more he carries on his activities by night, he 

 works and plays under a wealth of artificial light which is 

 strange and baffling to the wild life of the darkened woods. 



Yet the use of light is natural to all the higher natural 

 organisms ; and most of the creatures which stir abroad at 

 night and sleep by day have inverted their normal habits 

 for some plain reason of self-interest. The innumerable 

 multitudes of rats, mice, voles, and shrews which swarm 

 unseen in the darkness have become nocturnal as a defence 

 against predatory diurnal creatures, including man. To this 

 certain species of birds and beasts of prey have responded 

 by becoming nocturnal also ; and so the old fight is fought 

 out on changed ground, in which the balance of advantage 

 remains with the weaker creatures which need concealment. 



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