THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



377 



fruits and seeds in the ground. Cold 

 produces a providential drowsiness — most 

 of our animal Rip Van Winkles are pre- 

 paring for their winter nap. Fat toads 

 lie snug under earth, and the frogs are 

 sound asleep beneath the mud in the 

 ponds. The ants are busy storing pro- 

 visions — some of them store grain, actually 

 biting the embryos to prevent growth. 

 Certain ants take their cows — the aphis 

 flies — with them into their dormitories. 

 The snail shuts itself in completely, closing 

 up the mouth of its shell with a hard. 

 limy lid. A very industrious person is 

 a hedgehog in Summer, searching out 

 and devouring enormous quantities of 

 grubs and worms. Autumn sees him 

 corpulent and lazy, desirous of a quiet 

 resting place. A mass of crumpled leaves 

 among the roots of a hedge makes a 

 fairly comfortable hibernaculum for a 

 hedgehog. There you will find him curled 

 up like a ball, a heavy sleeper, not to be 

 wakened easily until Spring ; eating no 

 food, but "burning his own fat." The 



So erratic is 

 mild, sunny 

 surprises us 

 Summer. It 



squirrels are busy selecting acorns and 

 beech-mast. How knowingly they guard 

 against want by distributing their hoard 

 over a wide area, hiding awa}' the x'arious 

 nutty titbits in so many different places, 

 the course of our seasons, a 

 day in December no more 

 than does a wintry one in 

 is these brief spells of sun- 

 shine which afford proofs in plenty where- 

 with to counteract our gloomy and 

 erroneous ideas of a dearth of life in 

 Winter time. Light sleepers like the 

 squirrel, the dormouse, and the harvest 

 mouse waken up then, and leave their 

 quarters to enjoy a nibble of food and a 

 freshened toilet before resuming the 

 business of hibernation. These gracious 

 intervals of genial warmth bring the 

 daisies out to star the lawn, and induce 

 the drowsy dor-beetle to indulge in a 

 constitutional ; numbers of spiders issue 

 forth from the crevices in the tree-trunks, 

 where they had tucked themselves in ; 

 bats flit to and fro, and the winter moths 



/'/';, •/.■i.-/-,///i hy r. li. i- 



'A DIFFERENT NOTE NOW BREAKS THE STILLNESS; IT IS WHISPERED BY 



THE FALLING LEAF." 



