448 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 
ment ceases to be necessary to them: it keeps them in a 
sort of torpidity (engourdissement), in which no tran- 
spiration from them takes place; or, at least, during 
which the quantity of that which transpires is so incon- 
siderable, that it cannot be restored by aliment without 
their lives being endangered. In winter, while it freezes, 
one may observe without fear the interior of hives that 
are not of glass; for we may lay them on their sides, and 
even turn them bottom upwards, without putting any 
bee into motion. We see the bees crowded and closely 
pressed one against the other: little space then suffices 
for them?.” In another place, speaking of the custom 
in some countries of putting bee-hives during winter into 
out-houses and cellars, he says that in such situations the 
air, though more temperate than out of doors during the 
greater part of winter, “is yet sufficiently cold to keep 
the bees in that species of torpidity which does away their 
need of eating>.” And lastly, he expressly says that 
the milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees 
consuming their honey before the spring, and dying of 
hunger; and confirms his assertion by an account of a 
striking experiment, in which a hive that he transferred 
during winter into his study, where the temperature was 
usually in the day 10° or 12° R. above freezing (59° F.), 
though provided with a plentiful supply of honey, that 
if they had been in a garden would have served them 
past the end of April, had consumed nearly their whole 
stock before the end of February‘. 
Now, how are we to reconcile this contradiction ?—for, 
if Huber be correct in asserting that in frosty weather 
4 Reaum. v. 667. b Ibid. 682, € [bid. 668, 
