368 Analytical Notices of Books. 
Art. XLEX. Analytical Notices of Books. 
Nova Acta Physico-Medica Academie Casaree Leopol- 
dino-Caroline Nature Curiosorum. Tomus XIV.— 
Boune 1828. 
IN resuming our analysis of this valuable collection of memoirs, our 
attention i8.again directed in the first instance to a theory “de la cause 
*¢ de P?Hybernation chez les Animaux Dormeurs.’? The paper now 
before us, written by Dr. Pastré, is, however, of a very different character 
from that by Dr. Otto, with which we commenced our notice of the 
previous volume. Instead of proceeding on the basis of anatomical 
facts, it is entirely theorectical in all its parts, and the * physiological 
‘* abstraction’? on which it professes to be founded, is, we are reluctantly 
obliged to confess, too subtle for our comprehension. To avoid miscon- 
ception, we give in the authour’s own terms, the statement of the 
immediate and essential cause of hybernation, contained in his concluding 
paragraph “ The principle of life,’ he says, “is no longer occupied 
‘* with nutrition, or assimilation, or the perception of external objects ; 
a 
‘ it breaks off almost all communication with the moral or instructive 
“* faculty; realizes a sort of asphyxia by means of the power of fixed 
“* situation; and by this means preserves the animal body in all its 
‘© physiological integrity.’’ It may fairly be questioned whether these 
conditions are not rather the symptoms than the cause of a state of 
hybernation, on the modus operandi of which state, (dependent as it is 
universally admitted to be on a peculiar idiosyncrasy), such general 
observations as those contained in the present paper are calculated to 
throw but little light. 
Dr. Rathke’s Essay ‘ Ueber die Entwickelung der Athemwerkzeuge 
“« bei den Vogeln und Saugthieren”’ is, like all the writings of that acute 
anatomist, replete with novel and interesting matter. The gradual 
developement of the respiratory organs in Birds and Quadrupeds is 
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