TORPIDITY OF REPTILES* 133 



take food for some weeks previously to retiring 

 to its subterranean dormitoiy. Yet it has been 

 our lot to dissect tortoises which have died in 

 the spring soon after resuscitation, and before 

 taking food, and we have found the vegetable 

 matters, with which the stomach had been 

 filled during the previous autumn, to be totally 

 unchanged. Professor Bell records a similar case 

 which came under his own cognizance. 



Snakes hybernate, and though generally anti- 

 social in their habits, often, as in the case of 

 the common ringed snake, the viper, and the 

 blind worm, associate together in considerable 

 numbers, drawn, as it were, from various quar- 

 ters to one common place of concealment, (a 

 deep hole under the roots of a tree, a cavity or 

 excavation under stacks of firewood, under the 

 covert of dense thickets, hedges, etc.,) in which, 

 as if to preserve some degree of warmth, they 

 coil and intertwine together. Our British 

 amphibia, as the frog, toad, newt, etc., retire on 

 the approach of winter to their hybcrnating 

 retreats, and there pass into a state of absolute 

 torpidity. " This is generally in the mud at 

 the bottom of the water, where they are not 

 only preserved in a nearly equal temperature, 

 though at a low degree, but also secured from 

 external injury. Here they congregate in mul- 

 titudes, embracing each other so closely as to 

 appear almost as one continuous mass. On the 

 return of spring they separate from each other, 

 and merge from their retirement, and recom- 

 mence their active life." Why, it may be 



