ESTIVATION, OR SUMMER SLEEP. 151 



and oppressed. Is this hybernation? In one 

 sense, yes — in one sense, no. Touch red-hot 

 iron, and it blisters the skin ; touch iron in the 

 Arctic regions, while " winter holds her sway," 

 and the same effect is produced. Extremes 

 produce like results. It strikes us very forcibly 

 that the terms hybernation and (estivation are 

 altogether wrong ; they refer to seasons, and 

 not to those peculiarities of animal and vege- 

 table constitution in which sleep for the pre- 

 servation of life, and the accumulation of vital 

 energy during that sleep, are the results aimed 

 at, so to speak, by the laws of nature. The hot 

 dry season is the winter of the intertropics, if 

 we can use the term winter where no winter is, 

 according to our ideas ; and where, in place of 

 rain, of sleet, and snow, and cold, a burning 

 wind, aridity of soil, a drying-up of lakes, rivers, 

 and pools, reduces animal and vegetable energy 

 to its lowest ebb. In the Mauritius, the dry 

 season, when the hedgehog-like tenrac hyber- 

 nates or activates, is 6° 75' Fahr. above the tem- 

 perature of the hottest month in Paris. What 

 the heat of Paris is at Midsummer we well 

 know, and so no doubt do many of our readers. 

 It is not, then, cold that produces within the 

 intertropics the torpidity of animal life, but heat 

 and drought ; for the rain cools the air, and 

 rouses the torpid slumberers from their lair. 



Baron Humboldt expressly alludes to a point 

 which the writer has previously touched upon, 

 in more works than one ; and it gives him 

 pleasure to find that his ideas coincide with 



