LIFE OF WILSON. cxxv 



more rational opinion, than that which the advocates of hybernation have un- 

 thinkingly promulgated. And it is not surprising that as experiments are so 

 easy to be instituted, they should have been so seldom resorted to, in order to 

 determine a problem which many may suppose to be intricate, but which, in 

 effect, is one of the simplest, or most easy to be ascertained, of any in the 

 whole animal kingdom. It is a fact, that all the experiments which have been 

 made, on the subject of the hybernation of birds, have failed to give counte- 

 nance, in the most remote degree, to this irrational doctrine. 



From my personal experience, and from my earliest youth, I have been con- 

 versant with the habits of birds, I feel myself justified in asserting, that, in 

 the whole class Aiws, there has never been an authenticated instance known 

 of a single individual capable of entering into that peculiar state denominated 

 torpidity. Be it observed, that the narratives of credulous travellers, and 

 superficial observers, and newspaper tales, on this subject, are of no authority, 

 and must be utterly rejected. And yet these are the only sources whence 

 naturalists have drawn their opinions on the question of torpidity. It is to be 

 regretted that the authority of Linnaeus himself should have given credit and 

 currency to this opinion, and the more so since his example of sanctioning 

 vulgar narratives by his acquiescence, without examination, has been followed 

 by the majority of writers on ornithology, particularly those of Sweden, in 

 which country, if we may place reliance on the transactions of the Academy 

 of Upsal, the submersion of swallows is received as an acknowledged fact. 



Linnaeus nowhere tells us that he had ever seen a torpid swallow; but what 

 shall we say of the English translator of Kalm's Travels, the learned John 

 Reinhold Forster, who positively asserts that he himself had been an eye wit- 

 ness to the fact of swallows being fished up out of the lake of Lybshau, in 

 Prussia, in the winter, and being restored to animation ! a circumstance as 

 impossible, if we are allowed to consider anatomical structure as having any 

 influence on animal existence, as that a human being could be resuscitated 

 after such a submersion.* 



* I am unwilling to object falschooil to this accomplished traveller, and therefore must 

 conclude that, in trusting to his memory, after a considerable lapse of time, he must have 

 given that which he had received of another, as the result of his own experience. Men- 

 tal hallucinations of this kind are not of rare occurrence. 



That persons of the strictest veracity are frequently deceived by appearances, there can 

 be no doubt ; and therefore it becomes a source of regret when such individuals, in record- 

 ing their remarks upon the phenomena of n.iture, omit tliose considerations, which, if 

 observed, could hardly fail to guard them from error. Had our illustrious countryman, 

 I-ranklin, when he tliought he had succeeded in resuscitating a fly, after it liad been, for 

 several months, or perhaps years, embalmed in a bottle of Madeira wine, but exercised 

 that common sense, of which he possessed so large a share, and bethought him to repeal 

 the experiment, he would have soon discovered, that when the vital juices of an animal 

 liecome decomposed by an acid, and their place supplied by a spirituous fluid, something 

 more than the influence of solar heat will be requisite to reanimate a fabric, which has, 

 in effect, lost that upon which existence mainly depends. 



The writer of this sketch has made several experiments upon flies, with the view of 

 ascertaining the possibility of their being resuscitated after having been drowned in Madeira 

 wine ; b'lt in every instance his experiments had a different result from Dr. Franklin's. 



