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Trumantia Resource Directory 04
Page 08
Each of the winter forms of insects above mentioned can withstand long and severe cold weather--in fact, may be frozen solid for weeks and retain life and vigor, both of which are shown when warm weather and food appear again. Indeed, it is not an unusually cold winter, but one of successive thawings and freezings, which is most destructive to insect life. A mild winter encourages the growth of mould which attacks the hibernating larvae and pupae as soon as, from excess of rain or humidity, they become sickly; and it also permits the continued activity of insectivorous mammals and birds. Thus, moles, shrews, and field mice, instead of burying themselves deeply in the ground, run about freely during an open winter and destroy enormous numbers of pupae; while such birds as the woodpeckers, titmice, and chickadees are constantly on the alert, and searching in every crevice and cranny of fence and bark of tree for the hibernating larvae.
In philology, North America presents the richest field in the world, for here is found the greatest number of languages distributed among the greatest number of stocks. As the progress of research is necessarily from the known to the unknown, civilized languages were studied by scholars before the languages of savage and barbaric tribes. Again, the higher languages are written and are thus immediately accessible. For such reasons, chief attention has been given to the most highly developed languages. The problems presented to the philologist, in the higher languages, cannot be properly solved without a knowledge of the lower forms. The linguist studies a language that he may use it as an instrument for the interchange of thought; the philologist studies a language to use its data in the construction of a philosophy of language. It is in this latter sense that the higher languages are unknown until the lower languages are studied, and it is probable that more light will be thrown upon the former by a study of the latter than by more extended research in the higher.
The fresh-water mussels and snails and the crayfish burrow deep into the mud and silt at the bottom of ponds and streams where they lie motionless during the winter. The land snails, in late autumn, crawl beneath logs, and, burrowing deep into the soft mould, they withdraw far into their shells. Then each one forms with a mucous secretion two thin transparent membranes, one across the opening of the shell and one a little farther within, thus making the interior of the shell perfectly air-tight. There for five or six months he sleeps, free from the pangs of hunger and the blasts of winter, and when the balmy breezes of spring blow up from the south he breaks down and devours the protecting membrane and goes forth with his home on his back to seek fresh leaves for food and to find for himself a mate.
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