38 
MEMOIR OF JOHX HUNTER. 
Nor will the powers of the stomach he found always 
equal in the same class. Sleeping animals of the 
quadruped kind, as liedgehogs, do not digest in the 
winter, hut in the summer only; therefore conclu- 
sions <lrawn from experiments made in the one sea- 
son, are not at all applicable to those made in the 
other. Spallanzani observed, that the snake digested 
food faster in June, when the heat was at 82^, than 
in April when it was only 60'^, whence he concludes 
that heat assists digestion. But this heat is not the 
immediate but the remote cause of the increased 
power : heat having produced in the animal greater 
necessity for nourishment, and of course greater 
powers, gastric juice was therefore secreted faster, 
or in greater quantity. When at Belleisle in the 
beginning of winter 1761-2, I conveyed worms and 
pieces of meat into the stomachs of lizards when 
they were going into winter quarters, keeping them 
afterwards in a cool place. On examining at diffe- 
rent periods, I always found the substances 1 had 
introduced entire, and without any alteration. Some- 
times they were in the stomach, at other times they 
had made some progress down the primcE vim : so 
that digestion is regulated by the other actions of 
the body. Warmth requires action suitable to that 
warmth ; the body requires nourishment suitable to 
that action, and the stomach being called upon, per- 
forms the office of digestion.” 
From another of his papers, not less characteris- 
tic, and containing some particulars respecting his 
