IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 247 



urned out all the remaining grubs from their cradles, and 

 are themselves awaiting death in the first night's frost. 



Life has also been defined as a struggle to avoid death, 

 or as an effort towards continuance, and here again there is 

 truth. For apart from parasites, who live the drifting life 

 of ease, continuance means effort and struggle between the 

 poles of love and hunger. And we undoubtedly miss part 

 of the Biology of Autumn if we do not recognise it as a time 

 of preparation for continued life. 



The plant has been storing all Summer, and now the 

 reserves are all passifig from the more perishable parts, from 

 leaf to stem, from stem to root. There are stores in many 

 buds, well protected by scales which, themselves dying 

 away, save the delicate life within ; there are stores in 

 seeds, similarly protected by dead husks ; and so it is with 

 tuber and root-stock, corm and bulb, all are stores. 



The beavers store branches cut into convenient lengths, 

 the squirrels store nuts, the field-mice grain, the moles earth- 

 worms, and so on through a long list. Many insects store 

 provender for offspring which they will not survive to see. 

 Some ants store grain, biting at the embryo and thus 

 preventing germination ; others chew grain and store it in 

 biscuit form ; a few take their cows the Aphides with 

 them into Winter quarters. It is said that hive-bees become 

 lazy in countries where there is practically no Winter, which 

 corroborates the suggestion that the success of North 

 Temperate peoples is partly due to that discipline in fore- 

 sight, as well as to the emphatic punctuation of life, which 

 the marked seasonal changes impose. 



Autumn is the evening of the year, the beginning of rest, 

 the curfew, as we said ; and we must correct the oppressive 

 vision of a dying world with a thought of the reparation 

 which is given in sleep. The trees, some of them already 

 bare, the inert buds formed some months ago on the boughs, 



