IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 317 



constant body-temperature is in abeyance for a time, 

 and the body cools to a degree which in ordinary life 

 would be fatal ; irritability wanes to a minimum ; the 

 ordinary reflexes are at most faint, and the creature 

 steadily loses weight. The real wonder is that it keeps 

 alive. 



The slumberers differ much in the soundness of their 

 sleep. Thus there are light sleepers, like the dormouse, 

 the harvest mouse, and the squirrel ; and heavy sleepers, 

 like hedgehog, hamster, and marmot, or like the tortoise, 

 whom the crack of doom would scarce disturb. But 

 it and all other sound sleepers must yield to the snail 

 who overslept himself so far that when he awoke it was 

 in a case in the British Museum, wherein he bore a ticket 

 already many years old. There was another Rip Van 

 Winkle snail who awoke to find himself an extinct species ; 

 but that, as they say, is another story ! 



After we allow for the tendency that cold has to produce 

 coma, of which Alpine travellers have told us tales, for 

 the drowsiness which is said let us hope it is true to 

 take the edge off starvation, and for the sleepiness in- 

 duced, e.g., in church or lecture-room by confined atmo- 

 sphere, of which no proof is required, there seems to be need 

 of further physiological explanation. It has been shrewdly 

 suggested that the retention of waste-products during 

 hibernation induces a state of "auto-intoxication" a 

 drugging or poisoning of the system with its own excre- 

 tion, a banking-up and smothering of the fire of life with 

 its own ashes. It seems a plausible view that this will 

 tend to keep the sleepy sleeping, and the idea may be 

 hazarded that one of the reasons why plants are not more 

 wideawake is just this retention of nitrogenous waste- 

 products. For it is well known that plants do not get rid 

 of these. The same is in a measure true of the sea-squirts 



