62 LITE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



it is an adaptation to meet bad times, especially scarcity of food, 

 not necessarily winter. Honath got one of his sousliks (pouched 

 ground squirrels) to hibernate as early as August. When we think 

 of the bats going to sleep when the insects disappear, and reawaken- 

 ing when the inst^cts are ready, it seems the best of possible worlds. 

 Hut how did this beautifully adaptive punctuation arise? Were 

 there wise bats long ago who bent their heads before the approaching 

 stonn, and, escaping, transmitted their wisdom? Is there a tradition 

 among bats, as among the peasants of Kiosk, that it is a fit and 

 projx'r thing to go to sleep when the wind is very cold and the sun's 

 rays are very low? Or has there been gradually coerced upon the 

 bat's constitution a rhythmic tendency to sleep when winter 

 approaches? Or is it not rather that the living creature is inherently 

 an e.\[x?rimenter, whether in its explicit form as adult, or in its 

 implicit form as germ-cell, restlessly trying this and trying that if 

 so be that it may better itself ? Or an artist, rather, in an organi- 

 cally instinctive way, suggesting this and suggesting that, if so be 

 that it may achieve a greater harmony? Less metaphorically, per- 

 haps, it may be that the capacity for hibernation arose as a germinal 

 variation —expressing itself in the heat-regulating centres that 

 probably have been established in the brain of warm-blooded animals 

 — a variation that consisted in great part in lowering the body- 

 temixrature and in a consequent depression of vitality. All uncon- 

 sciously, the pioneer winter-sleeper met the difficulties looming 

 ahead by a variation in the heat-regulating arrangements, antici- 

 pating the cold by becoming cold. This implied immobility, slow 

 breathing, slow circulation, reduction of excretion, and so on. It is 

 not inconsistent with this theory to suppose that there may be some 

 lowering of the blood- pressure through the retention of waste, or 

 some auto-intoxication of the system, as Errcra insists; or that the 

 cold of winter or scarcity of food may serve as the stimuli which 

 touch the spring of the hereditary predisposition and set it a-working 

 at the proi>er time. In any case, winter sleep is very interesting as an 

 illustration of Nature's tactics. It is a successful case of stooping to 

 conquer— a relapse from activity to passivity, from agency to 

 nhibition. The animal becomes almost like a plant, "lying low and 

 saying nothing,' as Hrer Rabbit put it, and in due time it reawakens 

 refreshed. The warm-blooded bats and hedgehogs, dormice and 

 marmots, sink bark towards the level of their cold-blooded ancestry 

 among the reptiles. It is a dangerous game, and it is probable that 

 many have tried to play it with fatal results to themselves; but 

 when it has been successfully learned it is notably effective and one 

 of the finest instances of life's resourcefulness. 



We have laid emphasis on the difference between hibernation 

 and ordinary sleep, yet, after all, and with every due distinction 

 and precaution taken against confusion, is there not something in 



