044 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
fat^ and tliongli they became tor[)id afterwards^ they died in a 
month ; the small quantity of combustiljlc material they had 
preserved could not maintain them for a longer period. But 
the hedgehog who has the panniculus carnosus fat and thick, 
and the omentum well furished with adipose matter, is 
capable of existing from Kovember to ^darch without taking 
any food. On awaking he has still something left, for lie 
must be provided against the cold days which miglit be un¬ 
seasonably prolonged. A hedgehog weighing 1035 grammes 
lost per diem 8 gr. 6: that is, 8 gr. G per kilogramme of 
live weight at the end of seven w'ceks, during which he still 
ate a little, and was reduced to 965 kilogrammes; he then 
became torpid, and aw^oke at the end of four months or there¬ 
about. In the state of torpor in 112 days he lost 230 
grammes, or nearly one fourth of his whole w'eight, or 2 gr. 
5 per tw'enty-four hours. During and in consequence of the 
torpor, the daily loss w^as thus reduced just to one fourth of 
w'hat it w'as during the period of activity; this is a con¬ 
siderable average. If the animal had consumed the same 
quantity in a state of torpor as when in activity, it would 
have consumed in one month that which w'as to suffice for 
four, consequently before the end of the month of December 
it would have exhausted that which was to nourish and warm 
it to the end of March. M^hat takes place in the hedgehog 
takes place likewise in all other hyiiernating animals, and 
something analogous is the case w ith reptiles and the inver- 
tebrata, of wdiich I may be allowed to quote an example. Every 
one knows that the hedge and vine snail at the approach of the 
cold w^eather hides in damp excavations, and retires to the 
bottom of the shell, the entrance of which it hermeticallv closes. 
It is thereby protected from the direct action of the air, and 
only respires and perspires through the pores of its calcareous 
envelope. Fifty snails thus closed up, well wiped dry and 
clean, weighed 904 grammes. From the 12th of Xovember 
to the 1st of March they lost 42 grammes in 109 days, being 
0 gr. 38 in every twenty-four hours. In the spring, w hen 
they had cast off their opercular films, they lost I gr. 15 
in every tw'enty-four hours, that is, three times as much as 
during the torpid state. It is, then, from motives of economy as 
to nutriment and combustible matter, that the snail shuts 
itself in so closely in winter. By thus shutting’itself up it can 
subsist for three months on what it would otherwise have 
consumed in one. I w^as struck b)^ the simplicity and the 
uniformity of the phenomena by which life is maintained 
during hybernation, without food, in all animals, from the 
mammifera to those which inhabit a thin shell. It appears 
