SPRING " FEVER."
THE Lancet asks a question which it tells us has never been authoritatively answered. What is the explanation of " a curious phenomenon" which, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, affects most people about this time of year P " It has been variously described as a sort of rest-
lessness,' or 'a feeling of recklessness and adventure.' Some people assert that they experience an added piquancy in life and a general quickening of perception. Others, again, feel an unwonted depression ; to the majority, however, the spring season is certainly felt as giving fresh buoyancy and a feeling of hopefulness in life." It is pleasant to read through to the end of the Lancet's disquisition and to discover that these symptoms, which are practically universal, are not also ex- tremely dangerous. We have become so accustomed to be informed that special perils surround the commonest actions of our lives, and that we are perpetually running the gravest risks by merely continuing to exist upon the earth, that it is comforting on this occasion to be reassured. We do not gather, as we have sometimes before been led to conclude, that it would be almost safer to end the period of risk altogether, rather than go on day after day with the worst likely to happen at any moment. On the contrary, we are encouraged; we may all of us have spring " fever " as often as we like ; we may be restless, reckless, hopeful, depressed as we please. Whatever we choose to be or to do, it is an engag- ing thought that there does not seem to be any cure for it. However, there must somewhere be a reason. The Lancet's explanation is, at first sight, attractive enough. Man, so far as we know, has never actually hibernated, but in long past ages he must have found the winter nights extremely long. " Before the introduction of artificial light, which was but a matter of yesterday in the history of the human race, it is probable that for long ages he must have lain in a kind of slumberous lassitude, during the dark winter days and long nights, waiting for the sun's brief reign to enable him to seek his food." During this period "all his functions would be depressed," and only with the return of the long days and the heat of the sun would his blood pressure be increased. This, the Lancet argues, " may be, in some measure at least, an explanation of the restlessness' so many of us feel at this season of the year." Up to a point we may agree, though it would have been simpler, perhaps, to attribute the whole sense of change and increase of "blood pressure" to the returning warmth of the sun, rather than to lengthened opportunities of obtaining food.
The increased blood pressure, we can understand and admit, would result in a heightened activity in every human function.
The stronger pulse of blood on the brain impels to stronger work of body and mind ; we may believe that most writers,
for instance, like Milton, do their best work towards "the season of the vernal equinox." But the theory of the stronger beating pulse surely does not wholly explain the " restlessness,"
the " feeling of adventure," the desire to go abroad and see new sights and find new places. Chaucer is, perhaps, the first of our poets to describe that sudden and overpowering desire to go out on the highways of the world :—
" When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Bath in the Ram his halfe tours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melody°, That slepen al the night with open y6 (So priketh hem nature in hir corages) : Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages (And palmers for to seken straunge strondes) To ferns haiwes, couthe in sondry londes."
There is the real " feeling of adventure," the desire to go on Pilgrimage to foreign shrines, strange shores. Compare it, then, with the knowledge of a modern day, and let the setting be East instead of West—the " Spring Running" of the "Jungle Book." Mowgli, those who know the story will remember, had always delighted in the turn of the seasons until that one year.
"Like all his people, spring was the season he chose for his fittings—moving, for the mere joy of rushing through the warm air, thirty, forty, or fifty miles between twilight and the morning star, and coming back panting and laughing and
wreathed with strange flowers But that spring, as he told Bagheera, his stomach was changed in him. Ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking forward to the morning when the smells should change. But when the morning came, and Mor the Peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and gold, cried it aloud all along the misty woods, and Mowgli opened his mouth to send on the cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a feeling came over him that began at his toes and ended in his hair—a feeling of pure unhappiness, so that he looked himself over to be sure that he
had not trod on a thorn There stood Mowgli, his chest filled to answer Mor, sinking in little gasps as the breath was driven out of it by this unhappiness."
There you have the spring " fever" at its height ; the desire for travel, the sudden unknown feeling of misery, the sense of supreme change. But there is some cause at work that has little to do with the lengthened day and the increased heat of the sun. Cannot the cause be further explained, per- haps, by a comparison with other forms of life besides man's— with the compelling instinct of migration which comes over almost every form of life, in fact, at the season of the turning year P The problem of migration, one of the most fascinating, as it is one of the most baffling, known to scientific inquiry, has given up a few of its secrets, but its main facts are plain enough. Birds, beasts, fishes, insects, all migrate, and most of them in the spring. The great tide of migrant birds for the last six weeks has been pouring in to our northern shores from the tropics; birds that have wintered with us have gone up to the Arctic Circle to breed. We do not know, though we may guess, how the incoming birds find their way to us ; we do not know how the weaker flyers, such as landrails, for instance, are able to cross long distances of water; we do not even know for certain why they should come at all. Their first, original home was in the Arctic Circle, some think ; they were driven from it by the increase of ice, and every year when the weather is warmer they try to get back again. It is a mere question of food, others may argue; the bird goes where it knows there will be a plentiful supply of its proper food for its young, and returns to its winter quarters when the food supply fails. But all migrations, it may be replied, cannot be for the sake of food. Salmon, for instance, leave the sea where their food supply remains, and run up rivers for many miles, sometimes travelling through the greater part of the year without feeding at all. The eel sets another problem. Young eels, or elvers, leave the sea in spring to ascend rivers, and feed during their stay in fresh water ; but they leave the rivers again and run down to the sea to breed and die. The food supply is not the impelling reason here.
But as regards mammals, at all events, the impulse towards migration may be assumed, naturally enough, to have been want of food. The great herds of bison which used to travel north and south through America moved in search of pasture according to the season of the year. Deer, when the grass of the hills is covered with snow, leave the mountains for the valley, or from the north push south. Pasture-grazing animals, all the world over, must move towards the springing grass, wherever it may be. And is it not possible, at all events, that the spring " fever " in man may be traceable through uncounted ages back to some such similar migration in search of food? Man, too, would move with the seasons; would move, perhaps, either with the beasts he sought for food, or with the herds he owned; he, too, would seek in the spring for "grass for the cattle, and ,green herb for the service of men." If our ancestors, in the long awns of the creation, came from the trees to be nomad cowherds and shepherds, would not the instinct in the blood of man, to look for the green grass and the springing leaf, be so deep- seated as to remain with us still ? It would all be part of the great scheme of evolution. The men, or the families, which did not move, or were slowest in moving, in the spring in search of the new supplies would not survive ; and we, because we survive, cannot forget the old impulses and the old movements ; the desire for travel in spring still flickers in our blood as spring "fever."
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