328 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



agencies for repair have a more difficult task, especially as 

 regards hard-worked organs, such as heart and brain, liver 

 and kidneys. Rest becomes more and more imperative. 

 Often the only alternative is death. 



Rest is also required when new adjustments have to 

 be made in the body, when there is to be any radical re- 

 construction, as in the metamorphosis of the grovelling 

 earth-bound caterpillar into the free-flying Psyche or 

 butterfly, or when there has been a relatively trivial change, 

 such as sloughing off an old husk, or when wounds have 

 to be healed. In Hilton's well-known Rest and Pain 

 the therapeutic value of rest is demonstrated. 



We need not linger over the analogies which the facts 

 suggest for our guidance, and that not merely on the 

 physical but also on the psychical plane. If we are to be 

 kept whole or if we are to be healed, if we need to moult 

 our worn-out armour and present a new front to the world, 

 if we are to reconstruct our system of experience, if we are 

 to have any metamorphosis, the analogy of Nature points to 

 the fact that we must rest. In many cases, as we have 

 seen in a previous study, the larval insect returns in its 

 pupa stage to an almost embryonic simplicity, but the 

 outcome of its rest is its conversion into an emblem of joy 

 and freedom. It is born again. 



It is obvious, especially in the animal kingdom, that 

 the need for rest is often bound up with the giving origin 

 to new lives. The queen humble-bee, after its arduous 

 maternal labours, sleeps through the Winter. So the birds 

 that fly southwards, after an exceedingly busy Summer, 

 find a time of relative rest and ease in warmer lands 

 where food is abundant and easily procured. 



As we hinted in one of our Spring studies, there seems 

 good sense in what Professor Whitman remarks in connec- 

 tion with the brooding of birds. The supply of heat to 



