These worms are a Himalayan variety of naids, fresh water animals vaguely related to earthworms. They are reddish-brown and seldom more than an inch long. The majority of the worms live with their heads buried in the mud, tail ends waving freely in the air. Upon any alarm their bodies contract leaving no signs of life. Early in the Spring these worms literally lose these heads and die. Compared with those of most worms, their regenerative powers are quite feeble. It is believed that the decapitation is due to the fact that egg-laying is accompanied by such violent contractions of the body that the front segments are disconnected. Every few years there is a report from somewhere in the United States or Europe of enormous numbers of dead earthworms covering the ground. A correspondent of the British scientific journal, Nature, reported in 1921: “About the middle of March I saw millions of dead worms morning after morning on pavements, roads and paths. They were great and small, young and old, of every known species and genus. They lay prone and even when they were able to reach a grass plot alive they lacked the power to burrow.” The phenomenon is unexplained. Examination of the dead worms shows no unusual parasite or evidence of disease. _Fish That Survive Freezing_ There is a realm of “supercooled life.” Its denizens are deep water fish that live long and happily in temperatures below the freezing point of their blood. But whenever one of them comes in contact with even a single crystal of ice it freezes almost instantly. This strange phenomenon of marine life has been observed by biologists of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. These particular fish live at the bottom of Hebron fjord in northern Labrador. The temperature there is about 1.7 below zero centigrade. Some have been caught, brought to the surface, and then plunged into a bath of sea water cooled to exactly the same temperature. They survived for several hours. When, however, one of them came in contact with an ice crystal, it froze stiff in a few seconds. The explanation, it appears, is that these fish normally live below the depth at which it is possible for ice crystals to form in water.