NATURE WITH CLOSED, DOORS 
the wood frog. I have seen the toad go into the 
ground in the late fall. It is an interesting proceed- 
ing. It literally elbows its way into the soil. It sits 
on end, and works and presses with the sharp joints 
of its folded legs until it has sunk itself at a suffi- 
cient depth, which is only a few inches beneath the 
surface. The water frogs appear to pass the winter 
in the mud at the bottom of ponds and marshes. 
The queen bumblebee and the queen hornet, I 
think, seek out their winter quarters in holes in the 
ground in September, while the drones and the 
workers perish. The honey-bees do not hibernate: 
they must have food all winter; but our native wild 
bees are dormant during the cold months, and sur- 
vive the winter only in the person of the queen 
mother. In the spring these queens set up house- 
keeping alone, and found new families. 
Insects in all stages of their growth are creatures 
of the warmth; the heat is the motive power that 
makes them go; when this fails, they are still. The 
katydids rasp away in the fall as long as there is 
warmth enough to keep them going; as the heat 
fails, they fail, till from the emphatic “ Katy did it” 
of August they dwindle to a hoarse, dying, “Kate, 
Kate,” in October. Think of the stillness that falls 
upon the myriad wood-borers in the dry trees and 
stumps in the forest as the chill of autumn comes on. 
All summer have they worked incessantly in oak 
and hickory and birch and chestnut and spruce, 
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