TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 641 
ration of life in animals deprived of food^ cceterls paribus, is 
always in proportion to tlie internal power of reconstituting 
the blood and maintaining the calorification. In fact, we 
see it in the plan of nature. Those animals destined to 
undergo deprivation of food are provided agaiust the un¬ 
avoidable consequences of abstinence. In summer and 
autumn they profit by the abundance of grass and herbs to 
accumulate a quantity of fat, which supplies them with nu¬ 
triment against the time when an arid soil only offers them 
a scanty pasture. The camels which Pallas saw in the 
steppes of Asia, reduced in winter to feed on dried reeds, 
lose their humps, and become frightfully emaciated. The 
bear, before retiring to hybernate in the clefts of the rocks, 
has increased his fat by the abundance of honey, grapes, and 
other ripe saccharine fruits in the autumn. It is not by licking 
his paws, as Aristotle asserted, that he sustains his long 
torpor, but by licking his fat muscles, and the substance of 
all his organs. It is also the case with the marmot, the por¬ 
cupine, the dormouse, the bat, which could not hybernate if 
they had not laid in a store of fat. It is to this excess and 
quality of the matter hoarded up that they are preserved 
from perishing from hunger or cold. 
In stating that the duration of abstinence is in proportion 
to the provision in the organism, I did not give the entire 
formula. To complete it I must now add that this duration 
is also in proportion to the sloivness with which these pro¬ 
visions are consumed. There are facts within the range of 
observation and experiment to prove this. We find that a 
fat horse can live a month Avithout food, and that during 
that time the blood and the temperature are maintained in 
a normal condition by an average daily loss of 2666 grammes, 
and when after that time the horse Avas destroyed he still 
had a quantity of fat and Avell-developed muscles; the small 
amount of consumption was the essential condition of his 
longevity. Another horse, very muscular and moderately 
fat, Aveighing, twenty-four hours after his last meal, 508 kilo¬ 
grammes, lost 64 in four days only, viz., 17 the first, 16 
the second, 16 the third, and 15 the fourth day; he died on 
the fifth day, very much more exhausted than the one first 
experimented on at the end of thirty days. This horse, 
Avhich consumed itself so rapidly, became glandered; fcA^er 
therefore existed, and instead of burning 6 grammes per 
kilogramme of his weight, he burned 31, Avhich was five 
times more than the healthy horse. With Avhat he consumed 
in the four days the other would have lived three Aveeks. 
Such a contrast betAveen a healthy horse, whose functions 
