78 On Hybernation. 



smooth within, and about twenty inches under ground. 

 The man who first discovered it, not knowing what it was, 

 struck the ball with his spade, by which means it was bro- 

 ken to pieces, or the ball also would have been presented 

 to me. How long it had been under ground it is impossible 

 to say ; but as I never could observe any of these animals 

 after the beginning of September, 1 conceive they lay them- 

 selves up sometime in that month or the beginning of Octo- 

 ber when the frost becomes sharp, nor did 1 ever see them 

 again before the last week in May or beginning of June. 

 From their being enveloped in balls of clay, without any 

 appearance of food, I conceive they sleep during the win- 

 ter, and remain for that term without sustenance." — Lin. 

 Soc. Trans Vol. IV, p. 1£6. 



Thus it appears that life may be preserved in a torpid 

 state without respiration, and this gives countenance to the 

 frequently asserted fact that live toads have been taken 

 from sandstone and other recent rocks. As a further ar- 

 gument in favour of this fact, I will mention that Spallan- 

 zani kept frogs and serpents alive for three years and a 

 half at the temperature of 38° and 39°. In this case we 

 cannot suppose that nourishment was necessary, and we 

 are told by the same philosopher, that fat is not essential to 

 torpidity as some persons have supposed. Dr. Monroe's 

 hedge hog lost, during four months' torpidity, only two oun- 

 ces, and a tame marmot kept by Pallas, very fat, continued 

 awake all winter although exposed to the same severe 

 weather that rendered the rest of its species torpid in Rus- 

 sia ; but we have other instances where every attempt has 

 been in vain exerted to keep animals from becoming so. 



Some animals become torpid when their food fails them, 

 and are thus preserved until accident shall bring them a 

 supply. Mr. Gough preserved a large garden snail three 

 years without food in a perforated box. An operculum, 

 was formed at the mouth of the shell, and it remained in this 

 dry stale dormant until the end of the time when it was re- 

 vived by putting it in water at 70.° 



The same gentleman relates an experiment which clear- 

 ly proves that the cricket may be revived and induced from 

 his winter retreat by the encouraging vi^armth of a fire. 



"The crickets,'^ he says, "were brought from a dis- 

 tance, and let go in the room in the beginning of Sept. 



