e example of the insect
chrysalis, which passes all the winter without giving any signs of
life, and the aquatic insects which remain all the winter motionless
in the mud; which also happens to the frogs and toads; ants even,
against the common opinion, are during the winter in a death-like
state, which ceases only on the return of spring. Swallows, in the
northern countries, bury themselves in heaps, in the lakes and ponds,
in rivers even, in the sea, in the sand, in the holes of walls, and
the hollows of trees, or at the bottom of caverns; whilst other kinds
of swallows cross the sea to find warmer and more temperate climes.

What has just been said of swallows being found at the bottom of
lakes, ponds, and rivers, is commonly remarked in Silesia, Poland,
Bohemia, and Moravia. Sometimes even storks are fished up as if dead,
having their beaks fixed in the anus of one another; many of these
have been seen in the environs of Geneva, and even in the environs of
Metz, in the year 1467.

To these may be added quails and herons. Sparrows and cuckoos have
been found during the winter in hollow trees, torpid and without the
least appearance of life, which being warmed recovered themselves and
took flight. We know that hedgehogs, marmots, sloths, and serpents,
live underground without breathing, and the circulation of the blood
is very feeble in them during all the winter. It is even said that
bears sleep during almost all that period.

Footnotes:

[568] Guill. Derham, Extrait. Peclin, c. x. de aere et alim. def.

[569] Vita S. Suitberti, apud Surium, I. Martii.

CHAPTER XLIII.

INSTANCES OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN BELIEVED TO BE DEAD, AND WHO HAVE
COME TO LIFE AGAIN.

Very clever physicians assert[570] that in cases of the suffocation of
the womb, a woman may live thirty days without breathing. I know that
a very excellent woman was six-and-thirty hours without giving any
sign of life. Everybody thought she was dead, and they wanted to
enshroud her, but her husband always opposed it. At the end of
thirty-six hours she came to herself, and has lived a long time since
then. She told them that she heard very well all that was said about
her, and knew that they wanted to lay her out; but her torpor was such
that she could not surmount it, and she should have let them do
whatever they pleased without the least resistance.

This applies to what St. Augustine says of the priest Pretextas, who
in his trances and swo