chipmunk have
laid up their winter stores of nuts and grains in their dens in the
ground and in the cavities of trees. The woodchuck is rolled up in his
burrow in the hillside, sleeping his long winter sleep. The coon has
deserted his chamber in the old tree and gone into winter quarters in
his den in the rocks. The winter birds have taken on a good coat of
fat against the coming cold and a possible scarcity of food. The
frogs and toads are all in their hibernaculums in the ground.

I saw it stated the other day, in a paper read before some scientific
body, that the wood frogs retreat two feet into the ground beyond the
reach of frost. In two instances I have found the wood frog in
December with a covering of less than two inches of leaves and moss.
It had buried itself in the soil and leaf mould only to the depth of
the thickness of its own body, and for covering had only the ordinary
coat of dry leaves and pine needles to be found in the wood. It was
evidently counting upon the snow for its main protection. In one case
I marked the spot, and returned there in early spring to see how the
frog had wintered. I found it all right. Evidently it had some charm
against the cold, for while the earth around and beneath it was yet
frozen solid, there was no frost in the frog. It was not a brisk frog,
but it was well, and when I came again on a warm day a week later, it
had come forth from its retreat and was headed for the near-by marsh,
where in April, with its kith and kin, it helped make the air vocal
with its love-calls. A friend of mine, one mild day late in December,
found a wood frog sitting upon the snow in the woods. She took it home
and put it to bed in the soil of one of her flower-pots in the cellar.
In the spring she found it in good condition, and in April carried it
back to the woods. The hyla, or little piping frog, passes the winter
in the ground like the wood frog. I have seen the toad go into the
ground in the late fall. It is an interesting proceeding. It literally
elbows its way into the soil. It sits on end, and works and presses
with the sharp joints of its folded legs until it has sunk itself at a
sufficient depth, which is only a few inches beneath the surface. The
water frogs appear to pass the winter in the mud at the bottom of
ponds and marshes. The queen bumblebee and the queen hornet, I think,
seek out their winter quarters in holes in the ground in September,
while the drones and the workers peri