312 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



we are likely to estimate the power of Winter too lightly, 

 and fail in seeing to what degree it casts a spell, often a 

 fatal one, upon life. 



Let us put it in another way : To realise what Winter 

 may still mean for us, we must leave the city and visit the 

 open country, especially to the North. We must see, not 

 the gaiety of the artificially heated town, but the frozen 

 fiord ; not men muffled up in beaver coats, but the beavers 

 themselves in their frozen dam; not the winter-garden, 

 but the trees in a garb of ice ; not the cattle chewing in 

 their stalls, but the dead birds lying under the trees. 



II 



A true appreciation of Winter was long since expressed 

 in the story of the Sleeping Beauty. She was richly 

 dowered with vigorous beauty and joyous grace, but all 

 her gifts were shadowed by the foreboding of early death. 

 This doom, however, was transmuted into a kinder spell, 

 which bound her to sleep, but not to dying. All care not- 

 withstanding, the spindle pierced her hand, she fell into 

 deep sleep, whence at last the Prince's kiss served for her 

 awakening. Various commentators apart, the meaning 

 is plain : v The Princess was our fair earth with its glow of 

 life, her youth was Summer often shadowed, the fatal 

 spindle was the piercing cold, the spell-bound sleep was 

 Winter's long rest, the kiss that awakened was the first 

 strong sunshine of Spring. The beautiful old story is 

 literally one of the " fairy-tales of science." 



In the same way, though there is much else in the 

 myth, Balder the Beautiful represented the virility and 

 vitality of the sunny Summer ; and the twig of gloom, the 

 mistletoe, which flourishes and fruits in Winter, and was 

 fatal to B alder , was the emblem of the freezing cold which 



