4.52 HYBERNATIGN OF INSECTS. 
T observed in my garden, in the commencement of spring, 
were numbers of the caterpillars of the gooscberry-moth 
(Phalena G. grossulariata), which, though they had 
passed the winter with no other shelter than the slightly 
projecting rim of some large garden-pots, were alive and 
quite uninjured; and these and many other larvae never 
in my recollection were so numerous and destructive as 
in that spring: whence, as well as from the correspond- 
ing fact secorded with surprise by Boerhaave, that insects 
abounded as much after the intense winter of 1709, du- 
ring which I’ahrenheit’s thermometer fell to 0, as after the 
mildest season, we may see the fallacy of the popular no- 
tion, that hard winters are destructive to insects 3. 
But though many larvee and pupe are able to resist 
a great degree of cold, when it increases to a certain 
extent they yield to its intensity and become solid masses 
. of ice. In this state we should think it impossible that 
they should ever revive. ‘That an animal whose juices, 
muscles, and whole body have been subjected to a process 
which splits bombshells, and converted into an icy mass 
that may be snapped asunder like a piece of glass, should 
ever recover its vital powers, seems at first view little less 
than a miracle; and, if the reviviscency of the wheel ani- 
mal (Vorticella rotatoria) and of snails, &c. after years 
of desiccation, had not made us familiar with similar 
prodigies, might have been pronounced impossible ; and it 
is probable that many insects when thus frozen never do 
revive. Of the fact, however, as to several species, there 
isno doubt. It was first noticed by Lister, who relates 
* Vid. Spence in Transactions of the Horticult, Soc. of London, ii. 
148, Compare Reaum. ii. 141, 
