PREFACE 



THE aim of this book is to get at the gist or inwardness 

 of the seasonal drama, without going too minutely 

 into the details of the successive scenes. In other words, 

 it is a study of certain biological aspects of the seasons, not 

 in any sense a naturalist's year-book, that I have essayed. 



The book is intended for all who enjoy the pageant of 

 the year and the drama of the seasons, and who see some- 

 thing of the import of the annual analysis as if through 

 a prism of the evolutionary flow of things. There is 

 some reason to believe that Man was helped to find himself 

 long ago by his discovery of the Year with its educative 

 object-lesson of recurrent sequences and long processions 

 of causes. Similarly to-day we may be helped to live on 

 more equal terms with Time by getting back into close and 

 appreciative touch with the march of the seasons. But 

 if that touch is to be natural to men of to-day, it must be 

 scientific as well as practical and emotional. Hence this 

 contribution to a Biology of the Seasons. It is hoped that 

 it may be of particular service to those who have to conduct 

 courses of Nature-Study, which should certainly follow 

 the seasons as closely as possible. 



I am well aware that this series of studies and sketches 

 some more impressionist, some more analytic cannot 

 be more than illustrative of the biological outlook on the 

 seasons. For it is a big problem to try to detect the 

 seasonal punctuation of individual development and of 



