698 HYBERNATION. 



and in a short time became a solid mass of ice, and by a blow or two of the 

 hatchet were easily split open, when the intestines might be removed in one 

 lump. If in this completely frozen state, they were thawed before the fire, they 

 recovered their animation." " We have seen a carp recover so far as to leap 

 about with much vigour, after it had been frozen for six and thirty hours." 

 (Journey to the Polar Sea, p. 248.) Izaak Walton ( The Complete Angler, p, 257.) 

 quotes Gesner for the fact of some large breams being put into a pond which 

 was frozen the next winter into one mass of ice so that not one could be found, 

 and all swimming about again when the pond thawed in the spring, a thing 

 " almost as incredible," says the sentimental sinner, as Lord Byron calls him, " as 

 the resurrection to an atheist." 



Insects easily bear torpidity from cold. In Newfoundland, for example, 

 Captain Buchan saw a frozen lake, which in the evening was all still and frozen 

 over, but, as soon as the sun had dissolved the surface in the morning, was in a 

 state of animation, owing, as appeared by close inspection, to myriads of flies 

 let loose, while many still remained " infixed and frozen round." Ellis also 

 mentions that a large black mass, like coal or peat, upon the hearth, dissolved, 

 when thrown upon the fire, into a cloud of musquitoes. (Quarterly Review, 

 1821, April, p. 200.) Those insects which hybernate are not thought by Kirby 

 and Spence (Entom. vol. ii. p. 460. sqq.) to prepare for and enter into that state 

 solely from cold, &c., as they do so when the season comes round, although the 

 weather be as warm as previously, and do not before this period, though the 

 temperature chance to be as low as it usually is in the season of hybernation. 



Some animals become torpid on being deprived of moisture, the most 

 simple infusoria, rotifera, vibriones for instance. A common garden snail 

 falls torpid if put in a dry place, and may be revived at any time by the 

 application of a little water. Moisture has revived some animalcules after a 

 torpidity of twenty-seven years. (Spallanzani, Opuscoli di Fisica animate e ve- 

 getabile. ) The same is true of some of the most simple vegetables, as mosses. 

 The microscopic wheel animal, after remaining three or four years as a shri- 

 velled point, capable of being broken to pieces like a crystal of salt, is still re- 

 coverable by a drop of water : and the eel of blighted corn (vibrio), after twenty 

 or thirty years. Yet electricity destroys their capability of resuscitation. Most 

 vegetables become torpid in winter. Many lichens and mosses, dried in her- 

 baria, have been restored to life by moisture after a century or two. Seeds 

 and bulbs which have remained for centuries in the bowels of the earth have 

 sprung into life on being thrown into a more congenial soil : and bulbs, taken 

 from the hand of a mummy found in one of the pyramids, after having been 

 immured between two and three thousand years, produced unknown plants 

 when sown in one of our botanic gardens. (Dr. Fletcher, 1. c. P. ii. b. p. 144.) 

 Still more lately, a writer of rank, Baron Herberstein, who was twice ambas- 

 sador in Russia from the Emperor Ferdinand, informs us, in his Commentaries 

 on Russian History, that, in the northern parts of Muscovy, near the Oby, on 

 the borders of Tartary, a people called Leucomori hybernate " like tortoises, 

 under ground," " quite frozen," from the 27th of November to the 2Sd of 

 April, when u they come to life again." No specimens have yet been imported 

 into this country. 



