1887.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 61 



organs of a like nature, in which a supply of food could be stored 

 away for use when required. Neither do they make any pro- 

 vision, as do the Bees and Ants, in view of such a prolonged 

 existence through the Winter months. Yet there must be some 

 supply of food to keep their temperature above the freezing 

 point. I have examined closely, and dissected many of them, after 

 their long Winter sleep, and could not find that they had suffered 

 at all from the want of food, nor had their internal organs any 

 appearance of starvation. Yet take a perfect butterfly, of the 

 first, or Summer brood ; confine it without food or water, and 

 its life is of very short duration. 



The bears, during their Winter sleep, are said to suck their 

 paws ; but our poor fiutterer has no paws to suck. Neither has 

 it a mouth fitted to suck the paws. 



It is known that all the hybernating animals keep up their 

 heat — and heat is life — by utilizing the stores of fat, deposited 

 next to the skin ; these stores of fat being secreted during the 

 Summer months. But no matter how fat they may be when they 

 go into their hybernating sleep, they invariably come out in the 

 Spring in an almost starving condition. 



But, as stated above, careful examination of specimens of the 

 Vanessa, both before and after hybernation, fails to show any 

 perceptible difference in the appearance of either the internal or 

 external organs, that could be attributed to the want of food. 



It is a well-known fact, that the chrysalis, or pupa form, can 

 withstand an extreme degree of cold, as has been shown by the 

 numberless experiments made by Reaumur, and also by Kirby 

 and Spence. But is not that due to the facts, that the larva has 

 stored up, for just this purpose, a large quantity of fatty matter 

 — corpus adiposujH — and that it is virtually in a transition period 

 — neither larva nor imago ? The hybernating beetles, and certain 

 long-lived larvse of both beetles and butterflies, are either in, or 

 surrounded by their natural food. But where can the food be 

 found for the butterfly, during the Winter months ? 



Newport states that " during hybernation, the act of breathing, 

 like the circulation of the blood, almost ceases ; that the heat of 

 the body is greatly lowered ; and the development of heat, in 

 invertebrates as well as in vertebrates, depends upon the quan- 

 tity and activity of respiration, and the volume and velocity of 

 the circulation." This is true. But, even during the sluggish 



