LIFE OF WILSON. clxxxix 



Dr. Reeve, in treating of the migration of birds, makes the 

 following judicious observations: " It is singular that this sub- 

 ject should still admit of doubt, when it seems so easy to be de- 

 cided; yet every month we see queries and answers about the 

 migration of swallows; and every year our curiosity is tempted 

 to be amused with marvellous histories of a party of these birds 

 diving under water in some remote quarter of America. No 

 species of birds, except the swallow, the cuckoo, and the wood- 

 cock, have been supposed to remain torpid during the winter 

 months. And what is the evidence in favour of so strange 

 and monstrous a supposition? Nothing but the most vague tes- 

 timonies, and histories repugnant to reason and experience. 



" Other birds are admitted to migrate, and why should swal- 

 lows be exempt from the general law of their nature? When 

 food fails in one quarter of the world, their instinct prompts 

 them to seek it in another. We know, in fact, that such is their 



repeat the experiment, he would have soon discovered, that when the vital 

 juices of an animal become decomposed by an acid, and their place supplied 

 by a spirituous fluid, something- more than the influence of solar heat will be 

 requisite to re -animate a fabric, which has, in effect, lost that upon which ex- 

 istence 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; but in every instance his experiments had a 

 different result from Dr. Franklin's. He submerged them in the wine for dif- 

 ferent periods, viz. six months, eighteen hours, six hours, one hour; and in 

 the last instance they showed signs of life until ten minutes before they were 

 removed for the benefit of the air and sun. Of three flies used in the last ex- 

 periment, only one was reanimated, but after a few convulsive struggles it ex- 

 pired. 



Three flies were afterwards drowned in pure water? and after having been 

 kept in that state for seventeen hours, they were exposed to the sun for several 

 hours, but they gave no signs of life. 



Upon a re-perusal of Franklin's " Observations upon the Prevailing Doc- 

 trines of Life and Death," in which the story of the flies is inserted, it appears 

 obvious to me, that the flies which " fell into the first glass that was filled," 

 were either accidentally thrown into it, or had been in it unperceived, and on 

 this supposition a recovery from suspended animation would have nothing in 

 it which might be thought marvellous. 



