CHARLES WATER TON AS A NATURALIST. 



43 



have the privilege of picking and 

 choosing, I will begin with sun- 

 stroke. 



He says : " I am not a believer 

 in what is generally called sun- 

 stroke, or coup de soldi. To prove 

 this, during several years I went 

 out of the house exactly at twelve 

 o'clock, and stood bareheaded 

 under the heliscentre ray, in latitude 

 six north of the equator, for a 

 quarter of an hour. My compan- 

 ions were terrified for the result. I 

 assured them that I apprehended no 

 manner of danger" (p. 614). An 

 intelligent West Indian informs me 

 that he ran the risk of catching a 

 fever a modified form of " what is 

 generally called a sunstroke." Sun- 

 stroke, however, is little known in 

 the West Indies, perhaps for the 

 reason of the gradual increase and 

 steadiness of the heat, tempered by 

 breezes and the peculiarity of the 

 atmosphere, and not merely because 

 the people expose themselves less 

 than in other places. The same can 

 be said of New Orleans, as distin- 

 guished from New York, where it is 

 very common, there being a special 

 hospital for its treatment, while the 

 other public hospitals receive pa- 

 tients, and each police station 

 (which has a surgeon) is prepared 

 to treat cases temporarily. In New 

 York, where the temperature ranges 

 from say o to 100, the disease mani- 

 fests itself in connection with a 

 variety of circumstances, such as 

 fatigue and exposure, weakness or 

 sickness, the weight of the clothes 

 worn, and dissipated habits, par- 

 ticularly among the foreign popula- 

 tion. Waterton's system was doubt- 

 less in excellent condition for a 

 tropical climate. He ate moderate- 

 ly, and was a total abstainer, and he 

 had a thick head of hair, made 

 thicker by frequent cropping, and 

 very probably a skull to correspond, 

 which he trained for years to an ex- 

 posure, " while standing at ease," of 

 only fifteen minutes, going out of 

 the house with his body in its natural 



temperature into one described by 

 himself as follows : " There is sel- 

 dom an entire day of calm in these 

 forests. The trade-wind generally 

 sets in about ten o'clock in the 

 morning " ( Wanderings, $d ed., p. 

 171). " During the day the trade- 

 wind blows a gentle and refreshing 

 breeze, which dies away as the night 

 sets in " (p. 225). In opposition to 

 his own theory, he told us, in his 

 Wanderings, of his having had 

 " many a fit of sickness brought on 

 by exposure to the noonday sun, etc. " 

 (p. 1 60). Had he told us what his 

 ** terrified companions " dreaded, it 

 would doubtless have been a com- 

 plete refutation of his hypothesis^ 

 which he said was a proof against 

 the existence of sunstroke, or his 

 belief in it. This allusion to sun- 

 stroke acts as a key to at least one 

 cell of his character, and lets in day- 

 light upon it. He seems to have 

 neither believed nor disbelieved in 

 moonstroke. 



The idea of sunstroke was, singu- 

 larly enough, tacked on to the ques- 

 tion whether the pythoness at Lon- 

 don, in 1862, could hatch her eggs. 

 That, of course, he considered, in 

 his usual way, a " granny's idea," 

 notwithstanding that a pythoness 

 hatched her eggs at Paris, about ten 

 years previously, while the London 

 one failed only in consequence of 

 the eggs having, from a variety of 

 causes, become addled, a living ser- 

 pent having been taken out of an 

 egg at an early stage of the incuba- 

 tion. Ordinary people would think 

 that all snakes would hatch their 

 eggs in that way, if they did not 

 know that the generality of them do 

 not; and that it would not be un- 

 reasonable if some of them did, as 

 an intermediary between hatching 

 them in the soil and bringing them 

 far on towards hatching inside of 

 them, and then giving birth to them 

 in a way that is apparently yet to be 

 discovered. Waterton did not seem 

 to be troubled with ideas -of that 

 kind ; his dogmas covered everything. 



