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Once upon a time, in the far north of what is now called Europe, there was a kingdom known as Geatsiand, and its ruler was named Hygelac. It was a harsh country, with high mountains and narrow stony valleys, and it had a long seacoast with many harbors and inlets, and the men who lived there were famous for their bravery on both sea and land.

Now, for many years Hygelac ruled over his people with a stern but kind hand. Beside him was his queen, named Hygd, and called the Wise and Fair. About the king and queen were gathered the finest lords of the land. All. were valiant warriors whose courage had been proved.

Among the number of youths who were in. thrall to Hygelac was Beowulf, the son of the king’s sister. As a small boy, Beowulf had shown such strength of body that Hygelac had early named him one of his thanes. So his mother and father gave him up, and young Beowulf went to live with his uncle, to learn the arts of war and the handling of ships.

For several years he led a lonely life, for so great was the strength of his limbs that even among those men of vast vigor he was a youth to be marveled at. As the years slipped by and he grew to manhood, he became more and more sullen in his strength, and his companions dubbed him “The Silent.” His movements were clumsy. He tripped over his sword. He broke whatever he touched. The other youths laughed at him for his awkwardness, but in secret they envied the immense spread of his shoulders and the terrible swiftness of his stride.

When Beowulf had at last reached the full tide of his manhood, a feast was held one night in the king’s drinking-hall. From all over Geatsland famous warriors and earls gathered at the drinking-benches of their king to hear the songs of the minstrels and take part in games and feats of strength.

At the feet of the royal couple sat Beowulf, at a table especially prepared for the king’s earls. But Beowulf, unmindful of the talk about him, sat in gloomy silence, brooding.

His strength was great, but there was no use for him to put it to, and he longed for wild adventure and the chance to stretch his muscles to the limit of their power.

Then, at a signal from Hygelac, the minstrel came forward with his harp. He was a tall rugged man, with a beard streaked with gray. He had the air of one who had traveled long distances, and his blue eyes were wide and fixed like one used to watching the far horizon.

Around him was wrapped a cloak of deep blue, held together by a curious clasp of gold. Beowulf, noting the clasp, thought it resembled a coiled snake, for there were two green stones set in it which glittered. This man, Beowulf thought, has been in far-away places. He will chant us a good song.

Then the Wanderer (for so he was called) sat down upon a wooden stool, threw back the cloak from about his arms, and with long thin fingers struck the resounding strings of his harp.

He sang in a sharp voice that was like the crying of birds on the gray sea, hut there was a sweetness in it at the same time which held his hearers, and the lords of Geatsiand leaned forward on their benches in eagerness to catch every word.

He sang of the vast and frozen North, where winter lay upon the land for many, many months, and men foi.ght in the gloomy light of the night-burning sun.

He sang of endless forests stretching black and forbidding in a sea of snow; of mountains higher and bleaker than the highest mountains of Geatsiand; of the strange and fearful demons that inhabited this ghostly region.

Then the tune of the Wanderer changed. His voice fell to a lower note, and he sang of Hrothgar who was king of the Danes, that country not far from Geatsiand, across the water.

He told a sad story of desolation and despair in Hrothgar’s land, because of a beast which had struck mortal fear into the hearts of the lords of Daneland. For on one cruel night, twelve years before, there had come a monster, part animal, part man, part bird. The lords of Daneland were sleeping soundly, and the monster, who was called Grendel, had forced open the solid doors of the king’s ball and carried away in their sleep thirty of the greatest earls of the Danes.

There had been lamentation throughout the land, and many were the attempts to slay Grendel, but none had succeeded. And for twelve long years Grendel repeatedly visited the king’s hall and wrought destruction there. Now the land was despoiled of its youthful strength, and there remained to the king only those fighters whose early vigor had long since passed, and Daneland had become a country of old men and defenseless women.

Now, all the while that the Wanderer was singing, Beowulf sat as one bewitched.

He leaned forward upon the table, his arms folded under his still beardless chin, his eyes fixed upon the minstrel. Now and again he lifted his head and shook out the fair hair that hung beneath the golden band encircling his wide white forehead. The huge bracelets that weighted his wrists gleamed like his eyes, and the jeweled collar about his throat was tight because of the swelling veins of his neck. One thought possessed him:

He would seek out this monster, Grendel, and slay him - yes! slay him with bare hands!

He saw himself face to face with the monster Grendel, and suddenly a wild cry broke from his lips and he leaped from his seat.

“Lords of Geatsiand and earls of Hygelac,” he shouted, as the minstrel finished the song, “I am the son of Ecgtheow and of Hygelac’s sister, and in olden times this Hrothgar was a war-brother of my father. Therefore I claim kinship to him, and I will go to the land of the Danes and I will slay this Grendel!”

Then there was great confusion in the hail of Hygelac, and the earls called to one another, and dogs barked. But Hygd the queen stood up amid the turmoil, and holding a jeweled cup in her two hands because of its weight, stepped down to where Beowulf was, and offered him the cup, and smiled at him in affection.

Once again Hygelac commanded silence among the guests in the drinking-hall, and turning to Beowulf said:

“The time has come, 0 Beowulf, for you to prove your worth. The gods have gifted you with the strength of thirty men, and this strength you should use to the advantage of your fellows, Our neighbor Hrothgar is in sore need. Go forth, then, from Geatsland to the land of the Danes, and do mortal combat with this Grendel-fiend.”

For seven days and seven nights there were great preparations in the halls of Hygelac the Great, that Beowulf might go on his adventure fully equipped for whatever a aited him in Daneland. From the group of companions who had come to manhood at the same time as himself, Beowulf selected fourteen earls to accompany him. He had wiched to go alone to the land of the Danes, but his uncle the king had commanded that he be suitably companioned on such a voyage, so that at the court of Hrothgar it could not be said that Hygelac had sent the, youth upon a fool’s errand and badly equipped.

Special shields were made, of stout wood covered with thick hides and bound with iron and studded with golden nails. Rich cloaks of scarlet and blue there were for the warriors, and massive bracelets of fine gold for their arms and wrists, and collars of gold wire.

When at last they stood ready in the meadhall of Hygelac, they were a fine company of young men, whose like was not to be seen in all the countries of the North. Each stood well over six feet in height, with broad shoulders and sturdy legs; and each was swift as a deer.

Then came the signal for the journey down to the beach whre a ship lay in readiness to receive Beowulf and his earls, and with torches flaming in the grayness of approaching dawn, they departed.

They came at length to the coast of Daneland and the sea boiled white between them and the land, and the land itself was scarred and pitted with a thousand narrow inlets, which were treacherous to seafarers unfamiliar with them. The forests that clung to the shore line were half hidden in gray mists that moved and twisted like smoke about the trees, but as the storm lessened, they beached their boat on a tiny strip of sand at the edge of a deep forest hung with gray fog and silent as death.

That night, after Beowulf and his companions had rested, for the first time in twelve years there was a great banquet in the hall of Hrothgar. The place was decorated with fine hangings, the gold-bright roof burnished until it shone like the sun, and the benches had been scraped and polished by many willing hands. Huge fires were built on the hearths, and the smell of roasting meats pervaded the hall.

The fires were burnt out on the hearths when the last of Hrothgar’s train had departed. Then Beowulf and his companions set themselves to fastening tightly the door of the hall. They secured it with wooden bolts and tied it with leathern thongs, and so strong was it that no mortal could have passed through.

Then the warriors of Geatsland unfolded their cloaks upon the benches and laid themselves down to slumber, and Beowulf stretched his great length upon the dais of the king, and resolved that through the long night he would never once close his eyes. Near the door lay the young Hondscio, Beowulf’s favorite earl, who swore that if anyone broke through the door he would be the first to give the intruder battle.

Silence crept over the shrouded forms where they lay upon the floor and benches, and there was no sound save their steady breathing and the faint sighing of the night wind in the trees about the hall.

Beowulf, upon his couch, lay still as death, but his eyes moved here and there in the deepening gloom of the hail.

Outside, a fog was creeping up from the sea, obscuring the moon in milky eclipse, and at last there was not even the sound of the wind in the trees. To Beowulf the deep silence seemed full of moving things invisible to human eyes.

Gradually there came over him a kind of drowsiness that he fought to ward off. His eyelids fluttered against his eyes, and then he swooned with a sleep that lay upon his limbs like a heavy garment.

But suddenly there was a rustling among the wet trees, and a noise like the deep grunt of a pig, but soft and low, startled the fog- bound night, and the drops of mist-water on the trees fell sharply to the ground like heavy rain. Then the fog parted evenly, and in the wide path it made through the night a Shadow loomed gigantic in all that was left of moonlight.

Slowly, slowly it neared the great hail and the night shuddered at its coming, and behind it, as it moved, the fog closed again with a sucking sound. And the Shadow stood before the great door of the hail, and swayed hideously in the ghastly light.

Within there was a deep stillness, and Beowulf and the Geatish earls slept soundly, with no knowledge of what stood so evilly beyond the door. For the monstrous Shadow was the fiend Grendel, and standing there in the fog- strewn night he placed a spell upon those who slept to make them sleep more soundly.

But Beowulf hung between sleeping and waking, and while the spell did not completely deaden his senses, it so ensnared his waking dream that he fought desperately against it in his half-sleep and was not quite overpowered.

Little by little the thongs that secured the door gave way, and the huge wooden bolts yielded under the pressure that was strained against them, but no sound broke upon the silent struggle that went on between Grendel and the door.

Beowulf tossed and turned in waking, but the other earls of Geatsiand fell deeper and deeper into the swooning sleep.

Then with a rush, the door flew wide, and the fog and salt-smelling night swept in. And in the doorway, swaying this way and that, stood Grendel, huge and dark against the dark night, the fog weaving about him in white veils, and the door of the hail limp on its hinges.

And Beowulf came out of his dream-spell and saw what stood so vast and evil in the doorway. But his eyes were heavy with the spell that clung to him as the wisps of fog clung about the body of Grendel, and only slowly was he able to distinguish the monster. Through his nightmare, now, there came the sense of what had befallen him, and he strove to cast the last remnant of the magic from him as he saw the great form of Grendel swoop down upon the innocent form of young Hondscio, catch him up in enormous hands, and tear him limb from sleeping limb.

And now at last Beowulf saw what manner of thing this Grendel was. His legs were like the trunks of trees and they were covered with a kind of gray dry scale that made a noise like paper as the fiend moved this way and that. The body of the beast was shaped like that of a man, but such a man as no mortal eyes had ever before beheld, and the size and shape of it were something to be marveled at.

The head was the head neither of beast or man, yet had something of the features of both, and the great jaw was filled with blunt fangs that ground the bones of the unhappy Hondscio to pulp. Shaggy matted hair hung over the low forehead, and the eyes in the face of Grendel were the color of milk.

Horror-struck upon his couch, Beowulf felt his limbs in thrall and could move neither leg nor arm to raise himself as Grendel devoured the body of the young Hondscio.

And when Grendel had finished his horrid meal, the beast straightened a little his vast form and looked now to the left, now to the right, until his gaze fell upon the length of Beowulf. Then the milk-white eyes burned with a dull light that was like the light of the moon, and slowly, slowly Grendel moved toward the dais.

But Beowulf, stung with loathing, leaped from his bed.

Silently they fought in the fog-strewn hail. Silently their bodies twisted and bent, this way and that, and Beowulf kept Grendel’s huge hands with their long claws of sharp bone from him, and Grendel in turn sought to tear apart the quick body that slipped so easily through his arms and legs.

Their bodies wove in and out among the sleepers, and Beowulf felt the hot reek of Grendel’s breath upon his cheek, and the sweat stood out on Beowulf’s broad brow and ran down into his eyes and blinded him. And Grendel’s huge hands sought over and over again to clasp his opponent’s head, to crush it in their grip.

Then the fight became a deadly struggle in one far corner of the hall, and neither one gained any advantage over the other. Then Beowulf slipped. On the earthen floor they fell together and the force of their fall made the earth tremble.

But Grendel’s hold lessened, and fear smote the heart of the fiend. He strove only to free himself from Beowulf’s grasp and flee into the night away from this white youth whose strength was the strength of thirty men.

And now Beowulf had the upper hand, and flew at the giant’s throat. But here his hands clutched at thick scales upon which he could get no grip. Grendel nearly took the advantage, but before he could seize Beowulf, the lord of Geatsiand had fastened both mighty hands upon the monster’s arm, and with a sudden twist that forced a groan of agony from Grendel’s lips, leaped behind him.

Now came the final struggle, and sweat poured from Beowulf, while from Grendel there oozed a slimy sap that smelled like vinegar, and sickened Beowulf. But he clung to the monster’s arm, and slowly, slowly he felt its great muscles and sinews give way, and as his foot found Grendel’s neck, he prayed to all the gods for help, and called upon his father Ecgtheow for strength to sustain him in this desperate effort.

And the mighty arm of Grendel gave way in the terrible hands of Beowulf, and, with a piercing shriek that shook the gilded rafters, Grendel stumbled forward, leaving in Beowulf’s hands the gory arm.

Beowulf fell back upon the dais, the bleeding arm of Grendel in his hands. And Grendel, with a prolonged and ghastly wail, his blunt fangs gnashing together In dumb fury, stumbled toward the door, and before Beowulf could recover, the fiend was away into the fog which swallowed him as surely and completely as though he had plunged into the everlasting sea.

A vertical line at any point can generally be determined by suspending a plumb line, which is a weight attached to the end of a string, and allowing it to come to rest. The pull of the earth, or gravity, as we call it, will stop the swinging of the plumb line. If we could see the line of the pull of the earth we should see that it passes through the motionless bob, the string and the support from which the string hangs. As the string is in the same line as the earth’s pull, we say it hangs vertically.

At some places the plumb line does not hang quite vertically. Where this is so we know that it is caused by the action of some other force, such as the attraction of a great mass like a mountain, or by the gravitational pull of the moon, or by the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation. Dr. Xcvii Maskelvne, a British astronomer, found that when he suspended two plumb lines near a mountain, one on the north and the other on the south, the angle between their directions was greater than the angle between two vertical plumb lines should be. On measuring he found that each plumb line was pulled slightly toward the mountain.

We can understand this; but in India a very strange thing happens. When a plumb line is suspended in the southern regions, it hangs quite vertically; but when taken north, it is pulled, not toward the Himalaya Mountains, but away from the massive mountains, toward the southern plain.

This behavior of the plumb line, so different from what we should expect, is due to the fact that the weight of the great table- land of southern India. and the material lying beneath it, is greater than the weight of the Himalaya Mountains and the material below them. The heavy plain attracts the bob of the plumb line away from the lighter mountains, massive though they appear to the eye. The unseen attraction is greater than the visible attraction.

A fog is a cloud that has formed near the ground or over a body of water, instead of higher above the earth. Clouds in the sky and fogs lower down form when water vapor in the air condenses in the form of water droplets or tiny particles of ice or snow. If so much water vapor condenses that the air can not hold it in the form of fog or cloud, then it falls to earth as rain or snow, or lies on the ground as dew.

Fogs and clouds form when cool air strikes warmer air or a warm mass of ground or sea. On a summer day when there is much moisture in the air, mist forms on your glass of cold water. The warm air, striking the cooler glass, condenses. If there is ice in the glass, so that it is quite cold, the water vapor in the air condenses in drops of water on the outside of the glass.

Hot water evaporating out of the spout of the teakettle strikes the comparatively cool air of the kitchen, and becomes steam, in a similar way. Hold a cold plate near the steam from the kettle and it will condense in water on the plate. Your breath on a cold day sometimes makes a little fog in the same manner as the teakettle steam. You breathe out a warm current of air against colder air.

Fogs are frequently seen over the sea, over lakes and rivers and swamps, because the air here usually contains water vapor which the sun has drawn up, or evaporated (turned to vapor). Over some parts of the ocean, fogs are present much of the time. One such place is off the coast of Newfoundland. There a cold current flowing south from the Arctic meets warm air blowing northwest from the Gulf Stream.

In cities there is sometimes fog colored by smoke particles from chimneys. Some people give the name smog to this combination of smoke and fog. Mist is thin fog.

Large quantities of fresh water are found at certain places in the sea. This is particularly the case at the mouth of large rivers, where enormous volumes of fresh water are continually being poured out into the sea and spread out over the surface for many miles. The outflow of fresh water from the Amazon is over a million cubic feet a second and this is found on the surface two hundred miles from shore. After a while its freshness entirely disappears as its mingling with the salt water is completed. Ships short of fresh water have often obtained a supply from the sea near the mouth of the Amazon.

Off the mouth of this river many years ago a ship saw another vessel flying signals of distress. ‘Water, water! ‘We are dying of thirst!” ran the message. From the friendly vessel went back the advice: “Cast down your buckets where you are,” The distressed ship could not understand and signaled again and again, always with the same result. At last the captain let down his buckets and up they came, brimful of sparkling fresh water from the Amazon’s mouth.

But fresh water can be obtained from the sea in a still more remarkable way. Much of the rain that falls in Australia sinks through the soil till it reaches an impervious layer of rock. It runs along the top of this, perhaps hundreds of feet below the surface of the ground, and finally makes its way up through the sea as a submarine spring. Off the eastern coast of Australia fresh water from these springs is often dipped up in buckets by the crews of ships.

Off some of the South Sea islands the natives dive to the bottom of the sea and fetch up fresh water for drinking purposes in hollowed gourds. This is surely the most astonishing of all ways to obtain drinking water.

Ground ice has been seen rising to the surface of the sea off the Atlantic coast of America, coming, no doubt, from a submarine spring. When the fresh water reached the cold sea water, which was below freezing point, it rapidly froze into ice and, being lighter, rose to the surface.

Jumping beans come from Mexico and Central America. It is not the bean that jumps, but a little caterpillar inside. A tree which grows in swamps has curious three- cornered fruit divided into three parts, like little pods. In two of these pods are small black seeds the third part often contains a tiny caterpillar and is what we call the jumping bean. Before the tree can have its fruit it must, of course, bear flowers. A gray moth visits those flowers, and in part of each deposits an egg. The part which contains the egg grows with the rest of the flower, but, instead of becoming a pod for the seed of the tree, it turns into a home for the larva, or caterpillar, which is coming from the egg. Later the flowers lose their petals and seed-pods form and ripen. In August the seed is ripe. The husk containing the pods of seed and the little pod with the caterpillar inside drops to the ground and splits into three parts.

The caterpillar eats most of the inside of its house when it travels it coils itself up, then lets itself go like a catapult. carrying the house with it; or it rolls over and over. When the time comes for it to spin a coccoon and go to sleep, it does so. But first it cuts a door in the house, fastening it with silken threads. When its sleep is ended, and the caterpillar has turned into a moth, it cuts the threads that hold the door and crawls out of the bean-pod.

The moon does pull the sea, and it is the pulling of the sea by the moon that makes the tides. In any great dock or port or harbor we see how the water rises and falls twice a day. We know that the tides, as we call them, with their ebb and flow, bring all this water to us and take it away again without ever stopping. The tides never stop because the earth never stops turning, and it is the turning of the earth that somehow makes the tides. Plainly, tides have something to do with days, for they always correspond. Long ages ago, before men knew that the earth turns, they saw, as they could not help seeing, that the tides were in some way influenced by the moon.

The tides always correspond in their ebb and flow to the rising and setting of the moon. The moon is made of matter, and so is the water of the sea. All matter pulls and is pulled toward all other matter everywhere. We call this gravitation. The whole earth and the whole moon are affected by this pull; but as part of the earth is ocean, and as water is not rigid, it is specially affected by gravitation. The water opposite the moon at any time is pulled up toward the moon. As the earth is turning all the time, this means that a mighty wave of water travels over all the oceans, day and night, in response to the pull of the moon. If the moon had oceans, there would be tides there, too, owing to the earth’s pull; and as the earth is very much bigger than the moon these tides would be enormous. But the moon has no oceans, though possibly it has ocean-beds long since dried up. All the moon does is simply to pull the water of the earth’s oceans toward it as the earth twists.

Let us suppose for a moment that the moon did not go around the earth, but simply moved through space with it. Then the moon would appear to rise and set, as it does now, only it would rise and set at regular hours every day. And so, at the same time every day, in any part of the world, there would be tides, as there are now.

The only difference between this and what actually happens is that the moon is moving round the earth, while the earth turns on herself. This makes the moon seem to rise and set about half an hour or so later every day. Tables of tides for certain places are computed far in advance, to aid mariners and others. You can learn from such tables at what time of day there will be high tides in New York Harbor, for instance, and how high the tides will be, a month from to-day, or even a year from to-day.

The sun causes tides on the earth as the moon does, and for exactly the same reason; but the power of gravitation lessens as the distance through which it acts increases. Though the sun is vastly bigger than the moon, it is so much farther away from the earth that its influence on the ocean is comparatively small; but it can be shown.

As the moon goes round the earth once a month, there will always be times when the moon and the sun are on the same side of the earth, and times when they are on opposite sides. When the sun and the moon are pulling on the same side of the earth or when they are opposite each other with the earth between them, they help each other; and the tides for a few days will be very high and very low as the water flows and ebbs. At another time in the month, when the moon and the sun are at right angles to each other in relation to the earth, they do not help each other.

The moon pulls the hardest, but it has to be content with pulling the water toward itself much less than at the other time, because the sun’s pull is not now with it.

The most interesting of the world’s great tunnels are those which go under rivers. One of the largest of these is the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel, popularly known as the Holland Tunnel. It is one of the most remarkable engineering feats of our day. It consists of twin tubes 9,250 feet long, each having a roadway 20 feet wide. Traffic, running one way in each tube, is divided into two lanes, one for slow travel and one for fast. Trucks and commercial vehicles are usually sent on the slow lane so that passenger traffic need not be held to their rate of speed.

Before the tunnel was built, the only way in which a motorist could cross from New York to New Jersey, or vice versa, was by driving the car on a ferry and being ferried across the river. This was very slow both because a boat does not travel fast and because a ferry can carry only a few cars at a time. Traffic would collect at the dock and have to wait in line for the next boat, and on popular driving days, such as Sundays and holidays, it would sometimes be necessary to wait for hours to be taken across. It can easily be seen what a great help the tunnel is, as an automobile can go through in a few minutes.

The construction of such a long underwater tunnel involved many engineering problems, chief of which was the difficulty of keeping the tunnel free of the poisonous gases discharged from the motors. After many experiments, this was accomplished by building four ventilating stations, one at each end of the tunnel, one in the river near the New York side, and the other in the river near the New Jersey side. Fresh air is forced, by means of ventilating fans at each of these stations, into the tunnel through a lower air duct, from which it passes into chambers on each side of the roadway and then into the roadway itself. The fresh air causes the exhaust gases to rise and by suction they are carried off through the openings at the top.

Lined with white glazed tiles, kept beautifully clean, the interior presents a very pleasing appearance. Along one side is a narrow railed walk where watchmen are on duty at all times of the day and night to direct traffic and to help any motorist who is forced to stop.

The tunnel was named in honor of Clifford M. Holland, the chief engineer who successfully planned and directed the work until his death, when the tunnel was nearing completion. It was first opened November 13, 1927. Over 52,000 automobiles passed through it on that day.

It was not long before traffic between New York and New Jersey grew too heavy for the Holland Tunnel to serve all of it. On October 25, 1931, the great George Washington Bridge was opened, and in December, 1937, another tunnel, the Lincoln, began to take some of the stream of cars. On the pages that follow we show you pictures of various kinds of tunnels.

Some of the cells of the hair contain a pigment (coloring mattef). As human bodies grow old, most of them lose the power to make new pigment, so that the hairs are colorless, or white. Some people lose the power to make the pigment when they are still quite young others do not grow gray until they have reached a very advanced age.

General health and good care of the hair may aid in keeping the color. However, loss of hair pigment runs in families, and many physicians believe that it is a hereditary trait. The condition of the nervous system has an effect upon the hair. Persons under a serious nervous strain have been known to grow gray quickly. We hear stories of people who turned white in a single night, because of shock, or fright or fear. Probably these stories are exaggerations; yet it is true that men and women under stress have become whitehaired in a few months.

Scientists have studied for years, trying to find out what happens in the body that stops production of the color cells. In some cases, the mysterious little vitamins play a part. If the body lacks certain vitamins of the B family, the hair may grow gray. When these vitamins are supplied, the hair may regain its color.

Many animals also grow gray with the years. You have noticed this, of course, among cats and dogs. It is true of mice and rats and they are often chosen by scientists for experimental specimens.

This is very often done by an interesting little Alpine plant called the soldanella. During the summer the flat leaves are exposed to the sun and the plant stores up fuel in the leaves until these become quite fat. Then, as time passes, they flatten to the ground, and when the snow falls the hard, leathery covering of the leaves protects them from damage.

The plant sleeps through the winter, but in early spring the water trickling through cracks in the frozen snow above gets round the root and causes the plant to germinate. A little bud begins to open and, using the fuel stored up in the leaves, melts a place for itself in the frozen snow or ice.

As it grows up toward the light it continues to melt the snow, until at last it emerges into the fresh air, but down below the snow again freezes together round the stem. The flowers open, and when the snow disappears the little soldanella is practically a full-grown plant with its blossoms open inviting the bees to enter and fertilize them. The bees accept the invitation, and fruits form, yielding seeds. The plant then flattens again to the ground and stores up fuel for the following year.

If the soldanella were to wait for the snow to disappear before it began to grow it would have little chance of surviving, for there are crowds of other plants all round that would overtop it, shut out the sunshine, and prevent its blossoms from opening properly. By melting its way through the ice and blossoming before the other plants have grown, the soldanella preserves its life and produces seeds which grow and carry on the race.

There is a very small creature known as the tardigrada, a distant relation of the spiders and popularly known as the water bear, which can dry up till apparently all life is extinct, and after remaining in that condition for years, can, with the aid of moisture, revive and live its normal life once more.

These creatures live naturally in a damp atmosphere, but if the atmosphere becomes dry they also dry up. All movement gradually ceases, the body shrinks until it looks like a battered grain of sand, and thus it will remain year after year, to all appearances dead. If placed in water, however, in a few minutes it will swell out, the wrinkles will disappear, the legs will stretch out, and gradually it will move. In an hour or so the creature is as active as ever, and crawls away.

Some snails, too, can remain apparently dead for years without food, and then revive and live as though nothing had happened to them. The most striking example of this was a desert snail from Egypt, supposed to be dead, which was fixed to a tablet in the British Museum, London, on March 25, 1846. On March 7, 1850, it was observed to have awakened from its long sleep and come out of its shell. It was removed from the case and lived for a considerable time.