Every year when the evenings begin to come quicker and quicker, and grow colder and colder, Mother Nature, who is the mother of our dear own mothers, puts her babies to bed at the time which she knows is best. A queer set of babies they are! Babies of such different kinds that it is a wonder she can keep them all in her head, and not have to say sometimes to herself: "Good gracious, I forgot my dormouse: and I don't believe my brown lizard was properly tucked up in the grass-tuft; and as for my prickly hedge-pig, I don't remember where I sent him last." But Mother Nature never does forget, and never spoils her babies. She whispers "bedtime," and they go. The little insects go first--the flies, and beetles, and earwigs, and frog-hoppers, and myriads of other tiny creatures which you can see in the grass on any warm day by just lying down and opening your eyes. [Illustration: TOADUMS] For all Mother Nature's care I fear that most of these die, but some may manage to live through the cold, and among the larger kinds of insects some always do. You remember what I told you about the Brimstone Butterfly! The Queen Wasp is another of the lucky ones. She creeps into some sheltered crevice, where she can find a shred of something small enough to take into her mouth. This sounds queer, doesn't it? I will tell you the reason. The Queen Wasp sleeps hanging by her jaws, and hardly trusting to her legs at all. You can see what she looks like in the picture, and you must notice that she has tucked her wings right underneath her body so that nothing can brush against them. [Illustration: ROUND EYE THE DORMOUSE] After the insects go the reptiles and the frogs. These are cold-blooded creatures, so they have no need to make a nest to keep them warm, but they don't like to be too cold, and always creep somewhere where the frost will not reach them. Bill the lizard sometimes goes deep down into a large grass-tuft, and sometimes creeps into a mouse-hole. Froggin dives into a pond and wriggles into the mud, or underneath a stone, and there sleeps under the water until the hot sunshine comes again, and he knows, by the feel of things, that it is time to be moving. Toadums prefers to sleep on land. He lies quite flat, with his hands in front of his eyes, and wakes up a little later than Froggin. [Illustration: THE DORMOUSE IN HIS WINTER SLEEP He bunches himself up so as to close all the doors that the air can get in by, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, everything]