38 MEMOIR OF JOHN HUNTER. 



Nor will the powers of the stomach be found always 

 equal in the same class. Sleeping animals of the 

 quadruped kind, as hedgehogs, do not digest in the 

 winter, hut in the summer only; therefore conclu- 

 sions drawn from experiments made in the one sea- 

 son, are not at all applicable to those made in the 

 other. Spallanzani observed, that the snake digested 

 food faster in June, when the heat was at 82, than 

 in April when it was only 60, whence he concludes 

 that heat assists digestion. But this heat is not the 

 immediate but the remote cause of the increased 

 power : heat haying produced in the animal greater 

 necessity for nourishment, and of course greater 

 powers, gastric juice was therefore secreted faster, 

 or in greater quantity. When at Belleisle in the 

 beginning of winter 1761-2, I conveyed worms and 

 pieces of meat into the stomachs of lizards when 

 they were going into winter quarters, keeping them 

 afterwards in a cool place. On examining at diffe- 

 rent periods, I always found the substances I had 

 introduced entire, and without any alteration. Some- 

 times they were in the stomach, at other times they 

 had made some progress down the primes vice: so 

 that digestion is regulated by the other actions of 

 the body. Warmth requires action suitable to that 

 warmth ; the body requires nourishment suitable to 

 that action, and the stomach being called upon, per- 

 forms the office of digestion." 



From another of his papers, not less characteris- 

 tic, and containing some particulars respecting his 



