LIFE OF WILSON. 
cxxv 
more rational opinion, than that wliicli the advocates of hybernation have un- 
thiukiuply pi-uniulgatcd. And it is not surprising that as experiments are so 
easy to be instituted, they should have been so seldom resorted to, in order to 
determine a problem which many may suppose to be intricate, but which, in 
effect, is one of the simplest, or most easy to be ascertained, of any in the 
whole aniimil kingdom. It is a fact, that all the experiments which have been 
made, on the subject of the hybernation of birds, have failed to give counte- 
nance, in the most remote degree, to this irrational doctrine. 
From my personal experience, and from my earliest youth, I have been con- 
versant with the habits of birds, I feel myself justified in asserting, that, in 
the whole class Avcs, there has never l)een an authenticated instance known 
of a single individual capable of entering into that peculiar state denominated 
torpidity. Be it observed, that the narratives of credulous travellers, and 
superficial observers, and newspaper tales, on this subject, are of no authority, 
and must be utterly rejected. And yet these are the only sources whence 
naturalists have drawn their opinions on the question of torpidity. It is to be 
regretted that the authority of I/iina3us himself should have given credit and 
currency to this opinion, and tl:.' more so since bis example of sanctioning 
vulgar narratives by his acquiescence, without examination, has been followed 
by the majority of writers on ornithology, particularly those of Sweden, in 
which country, if we may place reliance on the transactions of the Academy 
of Upsal, the submersion of swallows is received as an acknowledged flict. 
Linnasus nowhere tells us that he had ever seen a torpid swallow; but what 
shall we say of the English translator of Kalni's Travels, the learned John 
Reinhold Forster, who positively asserts th;it he himself had been an eye wit- 
ness to the fact of swallows being fished up out of the lake of Lybshau, in 
Prussia, in the winter, and being restored to animation I a circumstance as 
impossible, if we are allowed to consider anatomical structure as having any 
influence on animal existence, as that a human being could be resuscitated 
after such a submersion.* 
* I am unwilling to object falschooil to iMs .iccomiilisheil traveller, ami thei-efore mu.st 
conclude that, in trusting to his memory, after a considerable lapse of time, ho must have 
given that wliicli he had received of .Tnother, as the result of his own experience. Men- 
tal hallucinations of this kind are not of rare occurrence. 
That persons of the strictest veracity arc frequently deceived by appearances, there can 
he no doubt ; and therefore it becomes a source of regret when such individualM, in record- 
ing their remarks upon the phcmjmena of nature, omit those considerations, which, if 
observed, could hanlly fail to guard them from error. Had our illustrious countryman, 
Franklin, wdicn he tlumijlit he hail succeeded in resuscitating a fly, after it had been, for 
several months, or perhaps years, cmbalmeil in a li(jttle of IMadeira wine, lait exerciseil 
tliat common sense, of wdiich he possessed so large a share, and bethought him to rrjtcat 
tlie experiment, be wouhl have soon discovered, that when tlie vital juices of an animal 
become decomposed by an acid, ami their place supplied by a spirituous fluid, something 
more than the influence of solar beat will be requisite to reanimate a fabric, which has, 
in effect, lost that upon which existence mainly depends. 
The writer of this sketch has made several experiments upon flies, with the view of 
ascertaining the possibility of their lieing rcsuseitateil after having been drowneil in Madeira 
wine; but in every instance his experiments had a different result from Kr. Franklin's. 
