December Peace 309 



in the hedge bottoms or among the roots of shrubs, 

 they seem to sleep unbrokenly until spring. Hedge- 

 hogs very seldom stir until spring, once they have 

 rolled themselves into sleepy balls of spines in the 

 midst of a deep drift of leaves in a dry ditch, 

 or under the trailing boughs of a garden bush. 

 Squirrels, on the other hand, move freely abroad at 

 most times in winter ; and in our mild climate 

 their period of hibernation has wasted away to a few 

 spells of sleep in cold weather. Wood-mice can- 

 not be said to hibernate at all. They feast through 

 the autumn and early winter nights on the stores 

 of seeds which they accumulate in old birds' nests ; 

 and when they have consumed or wastefully 

 scattered all these stores, they climb up the sloping 

 hedgerow stems and gnaw away the bark of elder 

 and other shrubs. The marks of their rows of 

 delicate teeth can often be found on peeled stems 

 in a frosty March, when supplies of all kinds have 

 run low, and the frozen earth protects both the 

 buried chrysalis and the garden bulb. At such 

 times they seem to suffer severely from the lack 

 of the dormouse's power to outsleep the storms 

 and frosts. Yet they prove that their way of life 

 is best by continuing to live and thrive; and the 

 activity of such delicate and slender creatures is 

 a triumph of vitality. 



Nature in England hardly knows winter; in 

 spite of bad weather which may come at any time, 

 neither birds nor plants acknowledge any absolute 

 gulf between autumn and spring. Yet in these 

 few weeks in December the forces of growth and 



