LIFE OF WILSON. 
CXCIX 
ratives by his acquiescence, without examination, has been follow- 
ed by the majority of writers on ornithology, particularly those of 
Sweden, in which country, if we may place reliance on the Trans- 
actions of the Academy of Upsal, the submersion of Swallows is 
received as an acknowledged fact. 
Linnaeus no where tells us that he had ever seen a torpid 
Swallow; but what shall we say of the English translator of Kalm’s 
Travels, the learned John Reinhold Forster, who positively asserts 
that he himself had been an eye witness to the fact of Swallows 
being fished up out of the lake of Lybshau, in Prussia, in the win- 
ter, and being restored to animation! 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 re- 
suscitated after such a submersion.* 
^ I am unwilling to object falsehood to this accomplished traveller, and therefore must 
conclude that, in trusting to his memory, after a considerable lapse of time, he must have given 
that, which he had received of another, as the result of his own experience. Mental hallucina- 
tions of this kind are not of rare occurrence. 
That persons of the strictest veracity are frequently deceived by appearances, there can be 
no doubt ; and therefore it becomes a source of regret when such individuals, in recording 
their remarks upon the phenomena of nature, omit those considerations which, if observed, 
could hardly fail to guard them from error. Had our illustrious countryman, Franklin, when 
he thought he had succeeded in resuscitating a fly, after it had been, for several months, or per- 
haps years, embalmed in a bottle of Madeira wine, but exercised that common sense, of which 
he possessed so large a share, and bethought him to repeat the experiment, he would have soon 
discovered, that when the vital juices of an animal become decomposed by an acid, and their 
place supplied by a spirituous fluid, something more than the influence of solar heat will be re- 
quisite to re-animate 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 ascer- 
taining the possibility of their being resuscitated after having been drowned in Madeira wine; 
but in every instance his experiments had a different result from Dr. Franklin’s. He submerged 
them in the wine for different periods, viz. six months, eighteen hours, six hours, one hour, and 
in the last instance they showed signs of life until ten minutes before they were removed for 
the benefit of the air and sun. Of three flies used in the last experiment, only one was reani. 
mated, but after a few convulsive struggles it expired. 
Three flies were afterwards drowned in pure water, and after having been kept in that state 
