HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 'tS? 



what little agreement there often is between facts and 

 many of the hypotheses, which authors of the present 

 day are, from their determination to explain every thing, 

 led to promulgate. But in truth there was no absolute 

 need for imposing this fatigue upon your attention ; for 

 the single notorious consideration that in this climate, 

 as well as in more southern ones, we not unfrequently 

 have sharp night-frosts in summer, and colder weather 

 at that season than in the latter end of autumn and be- 

 ginning of winter, and yet that insects do hybernate at 

 the latter period, but do not at the former, is an ample 

 refutation of the notion that mere cold is the cause of the 

 phenomenon. If, indeed, the hybernacula of insects 

 were simply the underside of any dead leaf, clod, or stone, 

 that chanced to be in the neighbourhood of their abode, 

 it might still be contended, that such situations were 

 alwai/s resorted to by them on the occurrence of a certain 

 degree of cold, but that they remained in them only 

 when its continuance had induced torpidity: and it seems 

 to have been in this view that most reasoners on this 

 subject have regarded the hybernation of the larger ani- 

 mals, to which they have exclusively directed their at- 

 tention. But had they been acquainted (as surely the 

 investigators of such a question ouglit to have been) with 

 the economy of the class of insects, in which not merely 

 a few species, as among quadrupeds, but ninety-nine 

 liundredths of the whole, in our climates, hybernate, they 

 would have known that their hybernacula are in general 

 totally distinct from their ordinary retreats in casual 

 cold weather ; and that many of them even fabricate ha- 

 bitations Requiring considerable time and labour, ex- 

 pressly for the purpose of their winter residence — which 



