Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1912. 
VOL. I.XXIX.—No. 1. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
The Winter Sleep of Brute Creation 
By LEONARD K. HIRSCHBERG, A.B., M.D., ETC. 
T O be as sleepy as Ludlum’s dog, to have our 
eyes begin to draw straws, to woo Mor¬ 
pheus, are longings that all of us poor 
mortals, afflicted at intervals with insomnia, seek 
as sedulously as a bride does her absent spouse. 
The busy bee probing the dahlia, improving each 
shining hour, obtains in return months of winter 
torpor. Not so man, poor man. 
Man, it is true, in the Congo, has the lethal 
sleeping lethargy that lingers for many weeks. 
But that is a sleep worse than death. It is that 
fatal malady inoculated by the deadly tsetse fly, 
the insect that harbors a micro-parasite, whose en¬ 
trance into the human blood by a bite is in the light 
of our present ignorance inevitable death. Since 
the tsetse fly bites for the most part by night, 
the old saw, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes 
a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” seems sub¬ 
stantiated by science. 
As a rule, the human machine requires eight 
hours sleep in the twenty-four. Mortal man 
often obtains less. One of my old instructors, 
Professor Paul Haupt, of Johns Hopkins, has 
been for years satiated with four hours’ sleep. 
I, myself, feel unrefreshed without nine. 
The long winter nap of animals inhabiting 
the globe above and below the tropics of cancer 
and capricorn, that strange comatose snooze that 
endures throughout cold months, those forty 
winks for forty days and forty nights, known 
to naturalists and pundits as "hibernation,” never 
occurs under healthful conditions. It may on 
no account be admitted that those East Indian 
fakirs, that type of mad Mullah who, at Lahore, 
bury themselves in deep slumber for months at 
a time, are in a human state of physical equi¬ 
librium. 
Vastly different, however, are the flocks and 
herds, the fauna of field and farm. In early 
autumn, certain varieties of animals begin al¬ 
ready to go into winter quarters. They retire 
to caves, somber crevices, smoked-out trees, sub¬ 
terranean passages, mines, pits, or any hollow 
shaft of quartz or hidden herbage. 
The fledermaus, or common bat, either mi¬ 
grates to the south land, or seeks out a warm 
green wood niche. Here, with others of his 
tribe, clustered like California grapes, head 
downward, they hang together, their hind claws 
clutched like tiny monkeys upon some grateful 
forest branch. 
Curiously enough, such sluggard beasts as 
the marmot, ground squirrels and similar rodents, 
though they might be, because of their native 
laziness, expected to awaken from their bleak 
and algid nap, still sleek and fat, that is not the 
case. 
The bear, on the other hand, though she ob¬ 
tains no food whatever during the winter of her 
none content, brings forth her young, suckles 
them from February to April, and emerges from 
her somnolent state as big and gargantuan as a 
behemoth. 
Scientists are now somewhat doubtful about 
the perfect torpidity of the grizzly bear while 
hibernating. The grizzly may be any color, and 
is, therefore, often confused with the black bear 
whose Siberian sleep lasts longer. The common 
"brown” or cinnamon bear is a color type of the 
black bear. 
The badger rarely falls into complete hypno¬ 
sis in its slumber of the long night. The ground 
hog, in this country, educates the mass of Amer¬ 
icans about the relation of hibernation to the 
weather. Folk lore and superstitions about it 
fill the daily press for days. It is popularly sup¬ 
posed to emerge from its snow-covered home on 
Feb. 2. If the day be sunshiny and bright, the 
woodchuck or aardvark, as zoologists name it, 
rubs his eyes with his fore paw, wheels face 
about, and hastily curls up like a Rugby football 
and resumes his narcotized position. 
In most American towns there has never 
been a groundhog. His appearance then on a 
cold, gleaming day is purely academic. Should 
such be the case, the prophesy is accepted by the 
benighted that six weeks of bleak winds, bliz- 
zardy snows, sleety rains and sloppy weather 
generally may be expected. Should groundhog 
day, however, dawn blemished by bleary clouds 
and the mad driving of Mother Cary’s chickens, 
should Eolus drive his wild snow chariot before 
imperial Phoebus, the folk then shout: “The 
groundhog failed to see his shadow; we shall 
have six weeks of clear weather.” 
Is it necessary to add that this prevalent 
superstition depends upon that well known fal¬ 
lacy in logic that negative inferences are always 
ignored by careless observers, that positive in¬ 
ferences are unconsciously emphasized in the 
ignorant mind? Francis Bacon first called at¬ 
tention to this mental defect in all untrained 
minds. He ascribed the false notion about the 
transmission of maternal impressions to the un¬ 
fortunate human faculty of always recording on 
the cerebral negative one positive inference, 
while losing simultaneously the twenty other 
negative ones. Supreme Court Justice Hughes 
said it was this fallacy that made book makers 
rich and prosperous on the race track. 
The hedgehog enters into a deep sleep com¬ 
parable to that of mosquitoes and fireflies. It 
retires to some rocky crevice, beneath some 
gnarled roots or intertwining vines and twigs. 
GETTING READY FOR BED. 
