TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 643 
racters on other animals. Dogs^ cats_, birds^ deprived of 
food, or who, through certain mutilation, are unable to take 
it, emaciate much more rapidly than those who have been 
subjected to simple abstinence; birds, in particular, waste 
v/itli astonishing promptitude. In eight days a goose which 
had undergone a slight operation was reduced to a state 
of marasm much greater than the one which died after 
having been deprived of food for forty-six days. In less 
than a week pigeons which have no fat are reduced to mere 
skeletons; the pectoral muscles lose nine tenths of their 
thickness, and towards the abdomen they are as thin as a 
sheet of paper. The excitement caused by pain or fever, is 
not the only thing which accelerates the emaciation during 
abstinence of food. All excitements, especially such as 
exercise, work, or exaltation of the instinctive and other 
cerebral faculties, lead more or less speedily to the same 
results, and are a cause of emaciation, even in individuals in 
good health, and who are well and regularly nourished. Shut 
a rat up in a cage; if it agitates itself continually, it dies in 
twenty-four hours; if, on the contrary, it is quiet, it will live 
seven or eight days. Thus it matters not whether the animal 
is possessed of abundant store of nutritive matter or not; if it 
consumes it too fast, it cannot support a long abstinence. In 
youth, when all the functions are in greater activity, absolute 
diet causes rapid emaciation; children cannot support it, 
particularly if they are very lively, according to the saying 
of Hippocrates. Puppies taken from their mother lose all 
the fat out of their liver in less than forty-eight hours; small 
birds which are constantly on the wing live hardly two days 
if they take no food. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, takes 
care to prevent all these causes of excitement in those animals 
which have to live a long time on their internal substance; she 
changes a hot-blooded animal almost into a cold-blooded one; 
she causes it, through instinct, to seek a retreat sheltered from 
too great a variation of temperature; she slackens the respi¬ 
ration, the circulation, and the exhalations of every kind; 
she plunges it into a state of torpor, and paralyses all its 
movements. By these means she weakens all the external 
and internal excitations, and keeps alive a small mammi- 
ferous animal during the whole of the winter Avith what it 
Avould have- consumed easily in a month had it been in 
activity and fully aAvake. I have much studied the hedge¬ 
hog, more particularly to compare the loss during the period 
of activity with that of torpor ; a inioriy if the hedgehog has 
not acquired fat before entering into a torpid state, he cannot 
pass the Avinter. I caused two of these animals to lose their 
