1880. ] Zoölogy. 131 
nine in the evening, at Evanston, Ill. I was surprised at discover- 
ing a bat at that time of year, and secured it ina box. It was a bit- 
ter cold night and the bat hung himself up by its claws on the edge 
of the box among the cotton and went into a torpid state. Several 
days afterward I placed him over the fire and thawed him out. 
He became quite lively in the warmth, took a drop of water and 
flew around the room. The following night was the coldest of 
the season, and it again went into a torpid state and retnained 
some two weeks jn that condition before it was disturbed. My 
efforts to bring it to life ôn this occasion were not so successful 
as formerly. After much warming it came to sufficiently so that 
two spots of breath would appear on the mirror when held to it. 
In order to get a greater amount of heat to operate on it, I placed 
the box containing it on the fancy top of the stove, turned my 
back to it and became engaged in writing. I had written some 
time when my attention was aroused to a bad scent in the room. 
I turned around but to behold box and bat wrapped in flames. 
This ended my experiments in that direction, I had arrived at the 
following conclusions, however: That animals in a torpid state 
may be aroused by an application of heat; or, in other words, 
torpidity is but a state of lowered temperature of the body. I am 
strengthened in this conclusion by some observations of no little 
importance to the topic under consideration. ` 
The torpidity of swallows has long been regarded as a tradition, 
but traditions are generally founded on fact, however perverted 
the facts may be. A young man, whose word I regard in all mat- 
ters as perfectly trustworthy, told me that one April day while 
out gunning, he treed a coon. He borrowed an axe and as the 
tree was falling a half-bushel of swallows rolled out from the 
hollow. In the warm sun of the early spring day many of these 
took life, and consequently wings, and flew away. And why not! 
st winter the papers were prolific with stories about the — 
resuscitation of sheep, cows, and even men, from a frozen state. 
Indeed, it is no secret of late years that the heat generated by a 
dog will easily bring to its natural state a frozen limb of a man. — 
r noticed this fact in the South, the overflow of the Mississippi 
river leaves thousands of little ponds full of fishes, which in winter 
freeze up solidly. The fishes are confined in the ice. When 
these ponds thaw oùt, in spring, the fishes are liberated and go 
Sporting about immediately. Fishes, of course, are cold-blooded 
and may not be affected by the ice. The fact remains, however, 
that during the winter a party of us were mapping the Mississippi, 
about Cairo, in Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri, and that each 
day these fishes could be seen, frozen stiff, in the ice, many of ` 
which we cut out and examied, and from all appearances, were 
as dead as the logs that strewed the ground. But with the ap- 
proach of warm weather, they were as lively asever. = — = 
The only instance, in any way, against the above observations 
