ILLUSTRATIONS (3). HYBERNATION, OR LATENT LIFE. 243 



datus) was introduced into the Isle of France (20° 9', latitude), 

 sleep during excessive heat. The objection advanced by 

 Desjardins, that the time of their sleep falls within the season 

 of winter in the southern hemisphere, can scarcely be regarded 

 as applicable in reference to a country, where the meau tem- 

 perature of the coldest month is nearly 7° Fahr. above that 

 of the hottest month in Paris; and this circumstance can- 

 not therefore change the three months' summer-sleep of the 

 Tenrec in Madagascar and Port Louis (Isle of France) into 

 actual hybernation. 



In a similar manner, the Crocodile in the Llanos of Vene- 

 zuela, the land and water Tortoises on the Orinoco, and 

 the colossal Boa, and many of the smaller species of serpents, 

 lie torpid and motionless in the hardened ground, through- 

 out the hot and dry season of the year. The missionary 

 Gilij relates, that the natives, in seeking the dormant 

 Terekai (land- tortoises), which lie buried in dry mud to 

 the depth of 16 or 17 inches, are often bitten by serpents 

 suddenly awakened, and which had buried themselves with 

 the tortoises. An admirable observer, Dr. Peters, who 

 has only just returned from the eastern coast of Africa, 

 writes to me as follows: "I could not obtain any certain 

 information regarding the Tenrec during my short stay 

 in Madagascar, but I am, on the other hand, well aware, 

 that in the portion of eastern Africa where I spent several 

 years, different species of tortoises (Pentonyx and Trionices) 

 remain enclosed for months together, without food, in the 

 parched and indurated ground, during the dry season of this 

 tropical country. The Lepidosiren also remains motionless 

 and coiled up in the hardened earth, from May to December, 

 wherever the swamps have been dried up." 



We thus meet with an enfeeblement of certain vital func- 

 tions in numerous and very different classes of animals, and, 

 what is peculiarly striking, without the same phenomenon pre- 

 senting itself in organisms nearly allied, and belonging to one 

 and the same family. The northern glutton (Gulo), allied to 

 the badger (Meles), does not, like the latter, sleep during the 

 winter; whilst, according to Cuvier, " a Myoxus (Dormouse of 

 Senegal, Myoxus Coupeii) which had probably never expe- 

 rienced a winter-sleep in its tropical home, fell into a state of 

 hybernation at the beginning of winter, the first year it was 



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