50 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



and motionless, encased in indurated earth, from May to 

 December." 



Thus we find an annual enfeeblement of certain vital 

 functions ir/many and very different classes of animals, and, 

 what is particularly striking, without the same phenomena 

 being presented by other living creatures nearly allied to 

 them, and belonging to the same family. The northern 

 glutton (Gulo), though allied to the badger (Meles), does 

 not like him sleep during the winter ; whereas, according 

 to Cuvier's remark, " a Myoxus (dormouse) of Senegal 

 (Myoxus coupeii), which could never have known* winter- 

 sleep in his tropical home, being brought to Europe fell 

 asleep the first year on the setting in of winter." This tor- 

 pidity or enfeeblement of the vital functions and vital acti- 

 vity passes through several gradations, according as it 

 extends to the processes of nutrition, respiration, and mus- 

 cular motion, or to depression of the activity of the brain 

 and nervous system. The winter-sleep of the solitary, bears 

 and of the badger is not accompanied by any rigidity, and 

 hence the reawakening of these animals is so easy, and, as 

 was often related to me in Siberia, so dangerous to the 

 hunters and country people. The first recognition of the 

 gradation and connection of these phenomena leads us up 

 to what has been called the " vita minima" of the micro- 

 scopic organisms, which, occasionally with green ovaries and 

 undergoing the process of spontaneous division, fall from the 

 clouds in the Atlantic band-rain. The apparent revivifica- 

 tion of rotiferse, as well as of the siliceous-shelled infusoria, 

 is only the renewal of long-enfeebled vital functions, 



