The Biology of Winter

The Biology of Winter

We need Winter to explain Summer

ARGUMENT.-I. An appreciation of the full biological import of Winter is not altogether easy for us, here and now. We must think of peoples with less artificial environment, of more wintry regions, and of Glacial Epochs. II. The Sagas of the Biology of Winter are to be found in such stories as those of the Sleeping Beauty and Balder. III. The astronomical facts bear out our vaguer impressions. IV. Reactions to the cold and scarcity of Winter are very variable :-flight, concealment, colour-change, and so on. V. Hibernation in its varying degrees is a common solution. VI. Yet to many death is inevitable, Winter is the time of intensest elimination. This affects not only individuals, but races. The tree of life grows, but it is also pruned. The only biological consolation is that the fruition of the tree has improved.

Prose by J. Arthur Thomson

Headpiece by Effie Ramsay

Patrick Geddes & Colleagues

Winter 1896-1897

Public Domain
Toronto Metropolitan University Library Archives and Special Collections

Evergreen Digital Edition, edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2016-2018. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2019.

English

Image, text

Prose

EGV4_thomson_biology
EGV4o_decorp_p8
EGV4o_ramsay_head_p8

25 July 2017, KF
13 Nov 2017, ljk
3 January 2023, rb

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Dublin Core Metadata