32 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
climates. In the one you are toasted on the outside 
and baked all through ; in the other you simmer day 
and night, and get out of your bed in the morning 
sodden and juicy. The strange thing is that the ther- 
mometer registers nothing very outrageous. There is 
some influence abroad other than heat, some electric 
spell forbidding the air to stir. The trees stand as still 
as statues, and the white clouds in the blue sky are 
motionless too. Your ardour for manly pastimes and 
active exercise abates, to say the least of it, for your 
muscles are like a jaded horse which will not answer 
to the spur, and anything like a long walk in the 
morning endows you with a thirst which will not leave 
you all day. It is not a wholesome thirst either, not a 
demand of nature for refreshing forms of moisture, but 
a kind of glutinous thickness such as troubles the throat 
of the office gum bottle. At such times it seems right 
and reasonable to be lazy, but it is bad policy. Heat, 
like most of our enemies, gives way to a bold front, but 
tyrannises over those who yield to it. And from a 
naturalist’s point of view this is the very time to prowl, 
for this heat: which seems to drain our strength away 
has just the opposite effect on the baser forms of life. 
