orpid again on the 15th November,
1851, and was found dead and dried up in March, 1852.[1] But exceptions
serve to prove the accuracy of Hunter's opinion almost as strikingly as
accordances, since the same genera of animals that hybernate in Europe,
where extreme cold disarranges their oeconomy, evince no symptoms of
lethargy in the tropics, provided their food be not diminished by the
heat. Ants, which are torpid in Europe during winter, work all the year
round in India, where sustenance is uniform.[2] The shrews of Ceylon
(_Sorex montanus_ and _S. ferrugineus_ of Kelaart), like those at home,
subsist upon insects, but as they inhabit a region where the equable
temperature admits of the pursuit of their prey at all seasons of the
year, unlike those of Europe, they never hybernate. A similar
observation applies to bats, which are dormant during a northern winter
when insects are rare, but never become torpid in any part of the
tropics. The bear, in like manner, is nowhere deprived of its activity
except when the rigour of severe frost cuts off its access to its
accustomed food. On the other hand, the tortoise, which in Venezuela
immerses itself in indurated mud during the hot months shows no tendency
to torpor in Ceylon, where its food is permanent; and yet it is subject
to hybernation when carried to the colder regions of Europe.

[Footnote 1: _Annals of Natural History_, 1860. See Dr. BAIRD'S _Account
of Helix desertorum; Excelsior,_ &c., ch. i. p. 345.]

[Footnote 2: Colonel SKYES has described in the _Entomological Trans._
the operations of an ant in India which lays up a store of hay against
the rainy season.]

To the fish in the detached tanks and pools when the heat, by exhausting
the water, deprives them at once of motion and sustenance, the practical
effect must be the same as when the frost of a northern winter encases
them in ice. Nor is it difficult to believe that they can successfully
undergo the one crisis when we know beyond question that they may
survive the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: YARRELL, vol. i. p. 364, quotes the authority of Dr. J.
Hunter in his _Animal oeconomy_, that fish, "after being frozen still
retain so much of life as when thawed to resume their vital actions;"
and in-the same volume (_Introd_. vol. i. p. xvii.) he relates from
JESSE'S _Gleanings in Natural History_, the story of a gold fish
(_Cyprinus auratus_), which, together with the a marble basin, was
frozen into one solid lump of