322 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I67Q, 



those that emit, and are covered with a very viscous moisture, as tenches, 

 skates, eels, will live longer in air than others. Here he notes that fish under 

 conglaciated water die not so much for want of air, as from the plenty of the 

 vapours that issue from the warm bottom.* To all which he adds the reason, 

 why oysters, lobsters, shrimps, and the like, survive longer in the air than other 

 inhabitants of the water. Concluding this chapter with an account why the 

 serpentine kind grow torpid of themselves in winter, and after revival cast their 

 skins every year. 



Fourthly, he discourses of some quadrupeds hiding themselves in caves dur- 

 ing winter, as bears, hedge-hogs, &c. observing that whatever the tradition be 

 of bears sleeping all winter, and sucking now and then their paws, it will be 

 found, that they sleep soundly at first for a good while, but afterwards awaken 

 and live upon some provision they have stored up for that dead time of winter: 

 and as to the oleous moisture sweating out of the tubulous channels of their 

 feet, that that has no other use than to soften and smooth, by being licked up, 

 the sinuosities of the stomach and bowels that had by long abstinence been much 

 corrugated, and so prepare them again for the new food to be taken in by the 

 animal. 



Fifthly, he inquires how far it is possible for men to live without air. Where 

 he relates first an example, upon his own knowledge, of a woman strangled, 

 who was recovered to life by a good dose of spirit of sal ammoniac ; adding, 

 that doubtless many such might be recovered if the like brisk spirits, together 

 with bleeding and friction, were employed. Then he inquires into the possibi- 

 lity of the living of men under water; where he begins with the consideration 

 of the difference there is between the life of embryos and urinators or divers, 

 representing that the former need no other air than what is conveyed into them 

 by the mother's rarified blood, being imbued with an aerial ferment ; but that 

 the latter, the divers, that is, such as use no art, are of that temper and consti- 

 tution, that their blood being colder than that of others, and there arising but 

 a slender effervescence of the blood in the heart, there is no quick circulation, 

 nor a necessity of expiring any great plenty of sharp and offensive fumes; which 

 kind of blood the author compares to that of fishes, or rather to that of am- 

 phibious animals, as frogs, tortoises, &c.-{- 



On this occasion he relates that extraordinary example of a Swedish gardener,- 

 lately alive, who some years ago endeavouring to help another who was fallen 



* In shallow waters, may not the freezing cold itself prove fatal to them ? 



t Even on the supposition that the foramen ovale remains unclosed in the case of some divers, yet 

 can the fact of their continuing for some minutes under water, without a supply of fresh air, only be 

 referred to the power of habit. 



