<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></SPAN>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<p class="center">(NOVEMBER)</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">All-cheering plenty, with her flowing horn<br/></span>
<span class="i4">Led yellow Autumn, wreathed with nodding corn.<br/></span>
<p class="right">—<i>Burns</i>: "<i>Brigs of Ayr.</i>"<br/></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">There's silence in the harvest field,<br/></span>
<span class="i6">And blackness in the mountain glen,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">And clouds that will not pass away<br/></span>
<span class="i4">From the hill tops for many a day;<br/></span>
<span class="i6">And stillness round the homes of men.<br/></span>
<p class="right">—<i>Mary Howitt</i>: "<i>Winter.</i>"<br/></p>
</div>
</div>
<h3>THE AUTUMN STORES AND THE LONG WINTER NIGHT</h3>
<p>When the caveman was still living from hand to mouth;
before he had even got as far as his first crooked stick for
a plough, and when Mrs. Cave couldn't have canned a
bean or a berry to save her life, even if she had had the
cans, a certain little farmer already knew how to get root<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</SPAN></span>
crops in the Fall and clean them and cut them and put
them away in his little barn under the ground for Winter
use.</p>
<p>Several of these forehanded folk we have already met—the
beaver and the chipmunk, among others—but since
we are now at the end of the harvest year I thought we
might spend this evening—the last but one, I am sorry
to say, that we shall be together—in a little chat about
these thrifty brothers of the wild, and how some of them
are going to spend the long Winter that begins in the Autumn
and lasts until Spring.</p>
<h4><span class="smcap">I. Little Granaries under the Ground</span></h4>
<p>I was going to begin by saying that one of the most <i>fore</i>-handed
of them all has <i>six</i> feet, but as that would be almost
as bad as a pun, I decided not to. You would have
known, of course, that by people with six feet I meant the
insects.</p>
<h5><SPAN name="ANTS_THAT_THRESH_AND_STORE" id="ANTS_THAT_THRESH_AND_STORE">ANTS THAT THRESH AND STORE</SPAN></h5>
<p>Among the six-legged farmers, you may be sure, there
have always been many who took thought for the morrow—the
ants, for example. One can believe almost anything
of ants. If that sluggard had gone to the ant, as
wise King Solomon told him to, and learned all their ways,
he would have found, among other things, how one species
harvests the seeds of the plant known as the "shepherd's-purse,"
by twisting off the pods with its hind legs. These
members of the ant family store grains of oats, nettle, and
other plants. They pick up all the seeds they can find that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</SPAN></span>
the Autumn winds have already threshed for them, but
they're not the least like that lazy man who wouldn't have
the corn that was offered by kind neighbors to keep him
from starving, because it wasn't shelled. If they don't
find enough seeds on the ground when it comes time to
think about the Winter stores they climb up and gather
in the seeds themselves. On the shepherd's-purse, for
example, the ant climbs up, selects a well-filled pod which
is not sufficiently dried to have had its seeds threshed out
by the winds, takes the pod in its little jaws and then—watch
him—turns round and round on his hind legs until
he twists it off! Then with it he carefully moves down the
stem, like a baggageman carrying a big trunk from the
third apartment; only the baggageman carries the trunk
in front of him or on his shoulders, while the ant backs his
way down. Sometimes two ants work together, one twisting,
the other cutting away the fibres with its teeth. Sometimes
they drop the pods to companions waiting below,
and these other helpers never run off with it, but carry it
to the common granary; for ants always play fair.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei218" name="imagei218"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i218.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">HOW THE ANTS WORK IN DIGGING OUT THEIR GRANARIES</p> </div>
</div>
<p>And they have granaries, these ant farmers—hundreds<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</SPAN></span>
of them, made just for that, each about the size of father's
watch.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei219" name="imagei219"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i219.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE INSIDE OF THE GRANARY</p> <p class="ctext">Underneath the dome of the ant house you see in the previous picture, are flat chambers like these, connected by galleries, in which the grain is stored. One is prepared not to be
surprised at anything about ants, but listen to this: The Agricultural Ants not only gather
and store this grain, but they actually plant and cultivate it. They sow it before the wet
season in the Fall, keep it weeded, and gather it in June of the following year. Seems incredible,
doesn't it? But I'm only telling you what McCook, an ant student, recognized
everywhere as a reliable observer, saw these six-footed Texas farmers actually do.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Now here's a thing; you stow away a lot of seeds in a
little hill where, of course, there's moisture, and what's
going to happen? Those seeds are going to sprout and
grow and spoil, and this, of course, destroys their value
as food. Then what are you going to do? Of course, a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</SPAN></span>
human farmer would put his grains in a dry granary where
they couldn't sprout, but you see the ants haven't any
granary of that sort; nothing but those little holes in the
moist ground. Just what they do to these seeds has not
been discovered. They do something that keeps them
from either spoiling or sprouting. But, when they get
ready for these seeds to grow, they let them grow; not so
that they can raise a crop, but for the same reason that
the Chinaman lets the barley sprout that he uses in making
chop-suey; so that it will be nice and soft to eat. This<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</SPAN></span>
growing digests the starch in the seeds into sugar. When
the sprouts have grown as far as the ants want them to,
they gnaw the stalk a little, and cut off the roots with their
mandibles. When this sugar-making has gone on long
enough the ants bring all the plants out into the sun and
let them lie there until they are nice and dry. Then they
put them in their barns, and as long as Winter lasts they
live on this sweet flour, grinding it in their mouth mills
as they go along.</p>
<p>Why, it's like living on cookies, almost! Only the ants
have been used to this steady diet of sweets for ages, and
it doesn't hurt <i>their</i> little stomachs as it would ours.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei220" name="imagei220"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i220.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">CLEANING UP AFTER THE DAY'S WORK</p> <p class="ctext">While the Agricultural Ants don't take a bath after the day's work they do the next best thing. They give each other a kind of massage, and they evidently find it very enjoyable.
You know how the cat loves to be stroked, dogs and horses to be patted, and little pigs to
have their backs scratched. The ants below are giving each other a massage (left, abdomen;
right, legs and sides). The lady above who seems to be braiding her back hair, is cleaning
her antennæ.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>This particular kind of a farming ant is called the Attabara,
but there's another kind more wonderful still. If
we want to call on them by their scientific names—these
remarkable little creatures I'm going to tell about now—we'll
have to go to Texas and ask if the <i>Pogononyrmex
barbatus</i> family are at home.</p>
<p>"Oh, to be sure," says the gentleman who first introduced
them to scientific society,<SPAN name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</SPAN> "just come with me."</p>
<p>So he takes us over into Texas and shows us the ants
at work. They destroy every plant on their little farms
except that known as ant-rice. Compared to the size of
the ants themselves, these grain-fields are giant forests,
far bigger than the Sequoia Forests of California. The
ants watch for rain at harvest-time as anxiously as a farmer,
and on the first sunny day, they do their cutting and
hurry the grain into the barn. Then on later sunny days,
they bring it out to dry before finally storing it away.</p>
<p>"Well," you say, "is there anything left that these<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</SPAN></span>
farmers <i>don't</i> do?"</p>
<p>I can't think of anything except the planting. One observer
says that they do actually plant the seeds, and Doctor
McCook says, he wouldn't be surprised if they did,
but he never saw them do it.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei225" name="imagei225"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i225.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE OLD HOME PLACE</p> <p class="ctext">This is the farm of some Agricultural Ants in Texas. See the granary and the roads leading to it? They collect and store the seeds of a plant which from this fact is called "ant-rice."
It looks like oats and tastes like rice. All plants growing around the nest—which is
also called the granary—the ants cut away, so clearing a space for 10 or 12 feet. Roads 5
inches broad near the nest, but narrowing as they recede, are made for hundreds of feet in
different directions.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>In tropical America there is a species of ant that raises
"mushrooms"; at least a kind of fungus that passes for
mushrooms with the ants. They don't exactly set the
mushrooms out, but they save time by planting both the
mushrooms and the leaves that make them as one and the
same job. This is how they do it. They climb the trees,
cut circular pieces of leaf with their scissor-like jaws and
carry them back to low, wide mounds in the neighborhood
of which they allow nothing to grow; the purpose being,
as it is supposed, to ventilate the galleries of their homes
by keeping a clear space about the mound.</p>
<h5>HOW THE ANTS RAISE MUSHROOMS</h5>
<p>The leaves are used as a fertilizer on which grow a small
species of mushrooms. The leaves are first left out to be
dampened by the rain, and are carried into the ants' cellars
before they are quite dry. In very dry weather the ants
work only during the cool of the day and at night. Occasionally
inexperienced ants bring in grass or unsuitable
leaves, but these are carried out and thrown away by older
members of the family. But you see how valuable all these
leaves are to the soil.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei223" name="imagei223"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i223.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">ANTS CARRYING LEAVES FOR THE MUSHROOM CELLAR</p> <p class="ctext">You'd never guess what the ants are going to do with those leaves! Read what it says on this page about these six-legged epicures.</p>
</div>
</div>
<h5><SPAN name="MR_HAMSTERS_THRESHING_HARVESTER" id="MR_HAMSTERS_THRESHING_HARVESTER">MR. HAMSTER'S THRESHING HARVESTER</SPAN></h5>
<p>Of course, we always expect the ants to do extraordinary
things, but one of those four-legged farmers I mentioned
in the beginning of the chapter anticipated the principle<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</SPAN></span>
of the very latest type of threshing-machine. It's a fact.
This remarkable little animal threshing-machine is called
the hamster. He is found in Europe east of the Rhine and
in certain portions of Asia. He does both his cutting and
threshing in his field; something the Gauls did in the days
of the Romans in a crude way, but which men of our day
have only got to doing in recent years. He pulls down the
wheat ear, cuts it off between his teeth, and then threshes
it by drawing the heads through his mouth. The grain
falls right into sacks as fast as it is threshed; just as it
does in those huge, combined reapers and threshers that
you see on our big wheat farms. Mr. Hamster's sacks
are his cheek-pouches, one on each side. When these are
filled, this little threshing-machine turns itself into an auto,
a commercial truck, and off it goes with its load of wheat<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</SPAN></span>
to the little barn hidden in the ground. These cheek-pouches,
by the way, reach from the hamster's cheeks
clear back to his shoulders, and both of these pouches will
together hold something like a thousand grains of wheat.
He empties them by holding his paws tight against the
side of his face and then pushing forward. Rather a clever
unloading device, too; don't you think so? Just as good
for Mr. Hamster's purposes as the endless-chain system
at the Buffalo grain elevator that Mr. Kipling admired
so much.</p>
<p>And in the mere matter of the amount of grain handled,
the work of the hamster is not to be laughed at. The peasant
farmers are very glad to find a hamster granary, which,
of course, they promptly take possession of by due process
of law:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">"The good old rule, the simple plan<br/></span>
<span class="i4">That they shall take who have the power,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">And they shall hold who can."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>One of Mr. Hamster's neighbors, the field-rat of Hungary
and Asia, stores his grain right in the house—the
place where he lives with his family. Mr. Hamster, however,
has his barns separate from his home. Sometimes he
has one, sometimes two; and the older members of the
community may have four or five.</p>
<h4><span class="smcap"><SPAN name="II_Mr_Vole_and_His_Root_Cellar" id="II_Mr_Vole_and_His_Root_Cellar"></SPAN>II. Mr. Vole and His Root Cellar</span></h4>
<p>The farmer I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter,
who is so thrifty about his root crops and so neat, belongs
to the Vole family. He lives away over in Siberia and his
full name is <i>Arvicola economus</i>. In gathering his crop of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</SPAN></span>
roots, he first digs a little trench around them and lays
them bare. Then he cleans them off nicely so as not to
fill his storehouse with dirt; cuts them up in sizes convenient
for carrying, and then hauls them home and piles
them up in little cellars made specially for them.</p>
<p>He only takes one piece at a time, walking along backward
and pulling it after him with his teeth. He travels
long distances in this fashion, going around tufts of grass,
stones, and logs that lie in the way. When he gets home,
he backs in the front door and into the living-room, and
then into the barns which are back of the living-room.
There are several of these and they are at the end of a long<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</SPAN></span>
crooked passage.</p>
<p>Some of the Vole family make a specialty of wheat. One
species of these wheat harvesters used to be common in
Greece. He made such a nuisance of himself—from the
Greek farmer's standpoint—that the Greeks had a special
god to get after him; Apollo Myoktonos, "Apollo, Destroyer
of Mice."<SPAN name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</SPAN> For the vole is just a kind of field-mouse.
The runs of these wheat-harvesting voles are eight
to twelve inches below the ground, and are connected with
the surface by vertical holes. The end of the run is enlarged
into a big room for the nest, and there are special
rooms leading from the main runway that are used for the
storing of the grain. These voles do their harvesting in
the evening. Standing on their hind legs and holding to
the stock with their little paws as a beaver clasps a tree,
they cut off the wheat head with their teeth. They work
very fast.</p>
<h5>HOW DID THESE FARMERS LEARN TO STORE?</h5>
<p>Neither the voles nor any other of these interesting
farmers and warehousemen used to get much credit for
what they did. The fact that they helped themselves to
some of the good things of earth annoyed Man, of course,
and then, when it came to the matter of intelligence, conceited
Mr. Man said: "Oh, <i>that's</i> just <i>instinct</i>." But nowadays
when scientists have begun to study to find out what
"instinct" really is, it is thought that man's brother animals,
although they are born with more knowledge of how<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</SPAN></span>
to do things—with more of what we call "instinct"—have
also learned by experience just as man did. It is argued
that the storing habit was forced on animals wherever the
climate cut off the food-supply for a time—either because
it was too cold or too hot. The idea of putting something
by for a rainy day appealed particularly to the burrowers
because they are a timid lot. Not being able to defend
themselves very well against their enemies they were
obliged to pack up what they could and hurry to some
hidden eating-place. That is where the cheek-pouches,
which many of them have, come in handy. They are also
very industrious, and as the seeds and nuts on which they
lived began to ripen, they just couldn't resist the impulse
to gather and gather and gather more than they could
possibly eat at the time. So, as a result of this habit, food
piled up in their underground homes. Then, as they were
kept indoors by cold weather or by their enemies, they
took to eating more and more from the pantry shelf, and
thus the members of the family that were the busiest and,
therefore, had the most to eat would naturally survive and
leave children of a similar disposition, while the less thrifty
would die off.</p>
<h4><span class="smcap">III. The Long Winter Sleep</span></h4>
<p>Some of these forehanded people, instead of putting
their Winter supply of food in the ground, put it on their
bones. That is to say, before turning in for the Winter,
they get as fat as can be and then live on this fat
until Spring. A great advantage of this system of storage
is that it is particularly pleasant work—you eat and eat<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</SPAN></span>
and enjoy your meals, that's all. Another advantage is
that you can't be robbed of your store as easily as the
hamster, for example, frequently is. You carry it right
with you wherever you go.</p>
<p>There are a lot of curious things about this hibernation.
Not only will warmth arouse the sleepers but also extreme
cold, and after the extreme cold may come another sleep
from which the sleepers never awaken; in other words,
too much cold kills them. So the object of burying one's
self as the ground-hog does, or under the snow as rabbits
do, or in hollow caves and trees as Brer Bear does, is to keep
from getting too cold. Sometimes two or more "bunk"
together, as little pigs do on cold March days. The body
of each helps to keep his bedfellows warm.</p>
<h5><SPAN name="ITS_THE_COLD_THAT_MAKES_ONE_DROWSY" id="ITS_THE_COLD_THAT_MAKES_ONE_DROWSY">IT'S THE COLD THAT MAKES ONE DROWSY</SPAN></h5>
<p>It is the cold itself that seems to make hibernating animals
feel sleepy; just as it does human beings. At a moderate
temperature, say 45 or 50 degrees, dormice and hedgehogs<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</SPAN></span>
will wake up, eat something, and then go to sleep
again. The dormouse usually wakes in every twenty-four
hours, while the hedgehog's Winter naps are two or three
days long. Hunger seems to be the cause of their waking,
just as it is with babies. The little dormouse, as the air
grows colder, gradually dozes off, and his breathing is very
deep and slow. As the temperature rises, he begins to take
shorter and more rapid breaths and gradually wakes up.
Then, if he is in his own little home under the ground, he
feeds on the nuts and other foods that he stored in Autumn<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</SPAN></span>
and drops off again. He sleeps from five to seven months,
depending on the weather.</p>
<p>Moles and shrews, so far as observation goes, don't
hibernate. The moles simply dig deeper, and there they
find worms and insects that are buried away from the reach
of frost. The shrews hunt spiders and hundred-legged
worms and larvæ in holes and crannies of the soil or beneath
leaves of ground plants and old logs.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei228" name="imagei228"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i228.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">LITTLE HEDGEHOG IN MAN'S HAND</p> </div>
</div>
<p>A queer thing is that the hedgehog, which belongs to
the same family as the shrew and the mole, is dead to the
world all Winter. Like all complete hibernators he stops
breathing entirely. The reason for this difference between
the hedgehog and the mole is that the mole doesn't need
to go to sleep, because he digs below the frost-line. As for
the shrews, they have little bodies and are very active, and
so get themselves food and keep warm, while the hedgehog
is so much bigger and slower that, when there is so little
to eat and it is so cold, he would either freeze or starve
to death if he went about looking for food. He finds it
cheaper to turn in and sleep than to work.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei229" name="imagei229"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i229.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">A HEDGEHOG AND HER BABIES</p> </div>
</div>
<p>None of the tree-squirrels seem to take any unusually
long naps in the Winter. We often see them around on
pleasant days in the parks and in the woods. They run
out, get a few nuts from their stores, and then back again
to their nests, but the chipmunks and the gophers, who
are closely related to the squirrels, stay from late Autumn
to Spring in their burrows, where they have plenty of food
stowed away, and they sleep most of the time. In the
home of four chipmunks was found a pint of wheat, a
quart of nuts, a peck of acorns, and two quarts of buckwheat,
besides a lot of corn and grass seed; all to feed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</SPAN></span>
four fat chipmunks. So, with such plentiful supplies, it is
not surprising that after their long Winter sleep the chipmunks
are as sleek as can be and as fat as butter, while
Mr. Bear comes out in the Spring lean and with his hair
all mussed up and as hungry as—well, as hungry as a bear!</p>
<p>All the bear family, except the polar bears, retire to caves
or some sheltered spot under a ledge of a rock or the roots
of a big tree. Among the polar bears the rule seems to
be that it's Mamma Bear only who goes to bed for the Winter.
She is careful to put on enough fat not only for herself,
but so that the babies that come along in the Spring
will have plenty of milk. She is buried by snow that drifts
on her and her breath melts a funnel up to the fresh air.</p>
<h4><span class="smcap"><SPAN name="IV_Mr_Ground-Hog_and_His_Shadow" id="IV_Mr_Ground-Hog_and_His_Shadow"></SPAN>IV. Mr. Ground-Hog and His Shadow</span></h4>
<p>The woodchuck, like the bear, is a "meat-packer."
People talk about him more or less in February. His other
name is "ground-hog" and his shadow is quite as famous
as he is. But is there anything in that old weather saw?
Well, yes and no. You see, it's like this: Mr. Ground-Hog
goes to bed very early in the Fall—long before the cold
weather sets in—and so he is up very early the next Spring;
long before the snow is all gone and, as it is with the other
all-Winter sleepers, a little extra warmth may wake him
up. Along toward morning, you know, we all begin to
stir around in our beds and get half awake. So in addition
to the fact that it is nearly daybreak for him—that
is to say, Springtime—let there come along a bright, warm
day in February—the second is as good as any other—and
Mr. Ground-Hog is likely to come out of his hole. And,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</SPAN></span>
if he does, of course he will see his shadow, after which
there is likely to be quite a lot of cold weather.</p>
<h5>HOW WEATHER AVERAGES UP</h5>
<p>Not that his shadow makes any difference, but the point
is that if you have much warm weather <i>early</i> in February
you are likely to have colder weather <i>later</i> and running on
into March. It's just the law of averages, that's all. You
see it running through the year—this averaging up of
weather; it just sways back and forth like a pendulum.
Take it in any storm of rain or snow; first the clear sky,
then the clouds, then the downfall, and after that the clear
sky again. Take any month as a whole, or a year as
a whole, and it's the same way; you get about so much
rain, so much sunshine, so much heat and cold. The United
States Weather Bureau went to work once and, from the
records, classified the storms for the last thirty years, and
they found that about fifteen storms each year start over
the region of the West Gulf States, twelve begin over the
mountains of Colorado, forty cross the country from the
North Pacific by way of Washington and Oregon; and
so on, just about so many from each region each year.</p>
<p>And records and old diaries, going back a hundred years,
show that the longer the period you examine for weather
facts, the closer the average. The weather for one ten-year
period will be almost as much like any other ten-year
period, as the peas in a pea shell are like each other. Coming
back to the subject of February weather, we find in
the diary of an old resident of Philadelphia in 1779: "The
Winter was mild, and particularly the month of February,
when trees were in bloom." He doesn't say anything about<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</SPAN></span>
the ground-hog, but there is this to be said of the sharper
changes of February and March, that at this season the
earth is getting more and more warmed up and yet the
cold winds from the North don't like to go; so there is a
constant wrestling-match, and it is the wrestling of the
winds one way and another that brings the changes of the
weather. So if the South Winds get the best of it early
in February, the North Winds, with their cold weather,
are likely to win later in the month, and vice versa.
Moreover, if you believe in the ground-hog proverb you
are apt to <i>notice</i> the warm days (or cold days, as the case
may be) for the next six weeks after February 2, and you
<i>won't</i> notice so much the weather that doesn't fit your
proverb! It's a way we all have; <i>seeing</i> the things that
go to prove what we believe and <i>overlooking</i> the things
that don't.</p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei233b" name="imagei233b"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i233b.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">MR. GROUND-HOG AND HIS SHADOW</p> <p class="ctext">"But is there anything in the old weather saw? Well, yes and no. Mr. Ground-Hog goes to bed early in the Fall and is up early next Spring. Let there come a bright, warm day in
February—the second is as good as any—and Mr. G.-H. is likely to come out and see his
shadow. And if you have warm weather early in February you are likely to have colder
weather later. It's the law of averages, that's all."</p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="center">HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY</p>
<blockquote><p>I don't care what it says in "Alice in Wonderland," dormice
never drink tea; although dormice have been at table with people
ever since the days of the Romans. Dormice are still eaten in some
parts of Europe, and the Romans used to keep them as part of
their live stock. The European dormouse is really a little squirrel.
Varro's "Roman Farm Management" (of which you are apt to
find a good translation in the public library) tells how the Romans
put their dormice in clay jars specially made, "with paths contrived
on the side and a hollow to hold their food."</p>
<p>Crocodiles and other tropical animals take very long naps during
the hottest weather. Hartwig's "Harmonies of Nature" tells
about an officer who was asleep in a tent in the tropics, when his
bed moved under him, and he found it was because a crocodile,
in the earth beneath, was just waking up! Imagine what the
dried-up ponds and streams of the llanos of South America must
look like when the rainy season comes on, after the dry spell, with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</SPAN></span>
crocodiles asleep just under the surface everywhere. Doctor Hartwig's
book tells.</p>
<p>But the most remarkable case of drying up that ever I heard
of was that of the Egyptian snail in the British Museum, that
Woodward tells about in his "Manual of the Mollusca." This
snail was sent to England, simply as a shell, in 1846. Never dreaming
there was anybody at home, they glued him to a piece of cardboard,
marked it <i>Helix Desertorum</i>, and there he stuck until March
7, 1850, when somebody discovered a certain thing that indicated
that there <i>was</i> somebody "at home," and that he was alive. They
gave him a warm bath and he opened his four eyes on the world!</p>
<p>In his "Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs" ("Nature's Work
Shop") Grant Allen tells why the hedgehog works at night and
sleeps in the daytime.</p>
<p>How he fastens on his winter overcoat of leaves, using his spines
for pins, and how funny it makes him look.</p>
<p>How Mother Nature manages to have breakfast ready for him
in the Spring just when he is ready for <i>it</i>.</p>
<p>How hedgehogs use their spines when they want to get down
from a high bank or precipice real quickly.</p>
<p>How their eyes tell how smart they are; for a hedgehog is smart.</p>
<p>You will also find interesting things about hibernation in Gould's
"Mother Nature's Children" and Richard's "Four Feet, Two Feet
and No Feet."</p>
<p>In one of his essays on nature topics—"Seven Year Sleepers"—Grant
Allen tells how the toad goes to bed in an earthenware pot,
which he makes for himself, and how this habit may have helped
start the story that live toads are found inside of stones.</p>
<p>Ingersoll, in that delightful book I have already referred to several
times, "The Wit of the Wild," calls the pikas "the haymakers
of the snow peaks." In his article on these interesting little
creatures, he tells why you may often be looking right at one and
still not see it; why the pikas gather bouquets and why they always
lay them out in the hot sun; why their harvest season only lasts
about two weeks, and why, although they usually go to bed at
sunset, they work far into the night in harvest time.</p>
<p>"The Country Life Reader" has a good story of a woodchuck
named "Tommy." Among other things it tells about the variety
of residences a woodchuck has; and why animals that work at night,
as all woodchucks do, have an unusually keen sense of smell. Can<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</SPAN></span>
you guess why? The reason is simple enough.</p>
<p>Here's a clever bit of verse about the woodchuck by his other
name, that I came across in some newspaper:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">"The festive ground-hog wakes to-day,<br/></span>
<span class="i6">And with reluctant roll,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">He waddles up his sinuous way<br/></span>
<span class="i6">And pops forth from his hole.<br/></span>
<span class="i4">He rubs his little blinking eyes,<br/></span>
<span class="i6">So heavy from long sleep,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">That he may read the tell-tale skies—<br/></span>
<span class="i6">Which is it—wake or sleep?"<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Ingersoll's "Nature's Calendar" tells why Brer Bear stays up
all winter when there is plenty of food, but goes to bed if food is
scarce; how he uses roots of a fallen tree to help when he is digging
his winter house; how he makes his bed and what he uses for the
purpose; how the winds help him put on his roof, and how he locks
himself in so tight that he can't get out until spring, even if he
wants to.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="figcenter"><SPAN name="imagei237" name="imagei237"></SPAN><div class="figborder"> <ANTIMG src="images/i237.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">"IT MUST BE BRER BEAR!"</p> </div>
</div>
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