Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1901-08-02
WILD ANIMALS m WINTER.

How Beasts of the Forest Spend the
Cold Season-the Mystery of Hiber-
nation-the Migration of the Birds
and the Housing Underground Of the
Reptiles.
The devices of animal life to bridge
over the winter season, and their ways
and habits during this time, present an
interesting, indeed fascinating, page of
nature, writes Charles Frederick Hold
err in the Scientific American. Why
certain forms should defy the elements
and roam abroad, seeking a precarious
livelihood, while others, much stronger
and apparently better equipped by ma
ture to survive the struggle, enter the
strange and remarkable winter sleep
with all their functions in allegiance,
and sleep away the winter, is one of
the problems that is of more or less
interest. The fox well illustrates the
former with its winter habit of prowl-
ing over the snow.
At the approach of winter, animals
are affected in various ways. In the
North all the reptiles-snakes, lizards,
frogs and toads, vast concourse-dis-
appear in a most miraculous manner
The snakes enter the holes and crew
ices, projecting themselves as far into
the earth as possible, and coiled tight
ly, assume a condition, state of coma,
in which they remain until the heat of
the sun comes to waken them the fol-
lowing spring, when they appear vor-
acious, and eager for prey to rehabili-
tate them physically after months of
fasting. The frogs plunge down into
the mud of the ponds where they have
made music during the long summer;
and the same is true of turtles. Liz
ards affect the same place as snakes,
and when taken out at this time are
apparently lifeless. In some mar
vellous manner the functions OF life
are arrested. There appears to be
minimum consumption of tissue; ma
ture apparently making an exact cal
culation, the functions of life being so
almost completely arrested that they
are enabled to lie in this quiescent
state without food or water, or until
the food supply comes again and the
conditions are favorable to outdoor
life.
This is the case with the reptiles of
the Eastern and middle states, or
wherever there is a cold winter, Ice
and snow; but on the Pacific slope, in
southern California, in the same lat
itude as the above, different con-
dltion holds. Here-and the San
Gabriel Valley may be taken as an ex-
ample-the lizards are subjected to
winter and summer every twenty-four
hours. There is no snow, the days
are bright and beautiful, resembling
cool Eastern summer, and insect life
does not disappear. All winter l
have found lizards basking in the sun
on these bright days, but as the win
fer day wears on and four o'clock APP
proaches, there is a very material
change-a strange chill that affects
rentilian life at once. 1t is their win
ter, and just as the Eastern lizard
Greens down into the earth for smell
ter and enters its winter sleep, so this
california lizard crawls out of sight be-
meath rocks, into crevices or under the
bark of trees, and enters what is the
equivalent of a state of coma. 1t
seems to shrivel, becomes seemingly
INTENSITY cold, often stretches out its
entire length, and lies, to all intents
and purposes, dead and lifeless, in this
way passing the night until nine or ten
O'Clock in the morning, when the rays
of the sun slowly bring 1t back TO me-