620 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. L 



When disinterred the body is cold and stiff with no signs 

 of any pulse, and apparently lifeless ; but it revives with 

 no bad after-effects upon the application of warm water 

 to the head and after being manipulated for a quarter of 

 an hour. Dubois emphasizes the fact that in order to 

 induce this state of trance, the fakirs make it a point to 

 breathe as little as possible. This and much other in- 

 direct evidence is brought forward by this author in sup- 

 port of his carbonic auto-narcosis theory of hibernation. 



Mosso 78 (1899) holds just the opposite view. He thinks 

 that winter-sleep is due to a condition of acapnia, or lack 

 of C0 2 in the system. 



It is not strange that in this age of ductless glands and 

 internal secretions some theory should be brought for- 

 ward that would involve the ductless glands. In 1905 

 Salmon 79 advanced the view that the pituitary body (hy- 

 pophysis cerebri) is a center for sleep and produces an 

 internal secretion which by virtue of some vasomotor or 

 autotoxic power acts on the nervous system and thus pro- 

 duces normal sleep. His view has been further elaborated 

 in later publications 80 (1910) in which he states that hi- 

 bernation may be explained upon an analogous mechan- 

 ism involving especially the so-called hibernating gland 

 —a structure which has lately received renewed attention 

 by physiologists. Salmon seems to favor the old idea 

 that a depletion of the cerebral blood vessels offers the 

 best explanation of the lethargy characteristic of the hi- 

 bernating state. The role of the hibernating gland, how- 

 ever, is very uncertain. This structure is now generally 

 regarded as reserved food. Vignes 81 (1913), however, 

 considers it probable that it plays some important physi- 

 ological role, particularly in hibernation, since its ex- 

 tirpation in the white rat, where the operation is at- 

 tended with little difficulty, is nearly always fatal. He 

 finds that this structure modifies the action of certain 

 toxic substances such as adrenalin, chloroform, tetanus 

 toxin and cobra venom, retarding the action of some and 

 accelerating that of others. He further maintains that 



