clxxXViii LIFE OF WILSON. 



never been an authenticated instance known of a single indivi- 

 dual capable of entering into that peculiar state denominated 

 torpidity. Be it observed, that the narratives of credulous tra- 

 vellers, 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 regret- 

 ted 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 wri- 

 ters 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 no where 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 posi- 

 tively asserts that he himself had been an eye witness 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 cir- 

 cumstance as impossible, if we are allowed to consider anato- 

 mical structure as having any influence on animal existence, as 

 that a human being could be resuscitated after such a submer- 

 sion.* 



* I am unwilling to object falsehood 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. Mental hallucinations of this kind are not 

 of rare occurrence. 



That persons of the strictest veracity are frequently deceived by appear- 

 ances, there can be no doubt; and therefore it becomes a source of regret 

 when such individuals, in recording their remarks upon the phenomena of na- 

 ture, omit those considerations, which, if observed, could hardly fail to guard 

 them from error. Had our illustrious countryman, Franklin, when he thought 

 he had succeeded in resuscitating a fly, after it had 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 



