Among vegetables, there are many which resist the strongest frost, and the native trees here have their stems very seldom injured. Most of the herbaceous plants lose their stalks, though their roots remain alive; and some revive at the return of spring even after their roots have been frozen.
Ants and flies, and many other insects, fall asleep in a very slight degree of cold.—Dormice, also, and other animals of the same class, appear as if life was suspended for several months during cold weather, so much so that their heart ceases to beat. The snail and the toad undergo the same stupefying effect, and serpents can be frozen so as to become brittle; if they are broken in that state, they die, but if left in their holes, into which the warmth of spring penetrates slowly, they recover.—It is in the season when their food begins to fail, and the fruits which fattened them disappear, that these creatures conceal themselves in order to submit to this wise law of nature. Those that are deprived of food by the snow covering the ground, sleep till it melts. The white bear lives on the sea shore in summer, and on islands of ice in autumn, and he does not fall asleep till the ice, being thickened and raised too high above the water, is no longer the resort of his chief prey, the seal. His means of obtaining food continuing longer, a much severer cold is requisite to deaden in him the call of seeking it, than in the black bear who devours vegetables; or than in the brown bear who lives on animals who retire earlier than he does.—That hunger should thus give way to sleep, when the cold which benumbs them would starve them by famine, appears ordered by that benevolent Providence, who regulates every part of the universe.
My uncle says that something like this is the case in man; when the cold is very violent he becomes insensible; if one of his limbs should freeze he does not perceive it, but on the contrary fancies himself growing warmer, and feels such a propensity to sleep, that he is angry at being roused. There are continual instances of this in the northern parts of Europe; and the poor frozen person, if indulged by his companions in closing his eyes for a few minutes, seldom opens them again. He does not, however, die immediately, my uncle says: it is even thought by some, that as long as the same temperature continued, he would sleep like the dormouse, deprived of all vital action.
My aunt said, she wondered whether human creatures could be revived, after having been many days frozen, provided similar means were used for their recovery that are employed to restore a frozen limb. Warmth, she said, is applied with the utmost caution, the frozen parts are rubbed with snow and then immersed in water very little warmer than melted ice. The attempt would be worth making, instead of abandoning frozen people to their fate, she thought; but that as to having the power of sleeping like a dormouse or a bear, to whom Providence gives that habit, because they have no means of procuring food, she could not believe that possible. “Man has so many resources, that it was evidently unnecessary to endow him with the capability for sleeping away hunger; but I really believe,” she added, “that there are people of such inveterate indolence, that they would sleep for several months to relieve themselves from all care, if they had the power of voluntary torpidity.”
My uncle replied that doubts have been expressed whether it was in any case a voluntary power; it is asserted that animals never yield to torpidity till driven to it by necessity; and that many of those lethargic animals, while existing during winter on their accumulated fat, which is gradually absorbed into the system, retain the use of their faculties. The cricket is one proof, that animals do not submit to it from choice. This insect passes the hottest part of summer in crevices of walls and heaps of rubbish; about the end of August it quits its summer dwelling, and endeavours to establish itself by the fireside, where the comforts of a warm hearth secure it from torpidity. He then mentioned a colony of crickets which had taken up their abode in a kitchen, where the fire was discontinued from November to June, except one day every six weeks. On these days they were tempted from their hiding place, and continued to skip about and chirp till the following morning, when they again disappeared in consequence of the returning cold. This fact, which he was told by an ingenious friend, shews that in crickets at least torpidity depends on circumstances; and perhaps other sleeping animals, he says, have the same accommodating faculties.
Mrs. P. amused us with some very extraordinary accounts of toads that have been found in the stems of old trees, so that the wood must have grown round them; and even in cavities of stones without the smallest crack or aperture for any communication with the air. My uncle told her that an experiment had not long ago been tried at Paris on that curious subject: a living toad was inclosed in plaster, and at the end of six months it was alive and strong; but some one having suggested that plaster of Paris when dry is more or less porous, the same experiment has been repeated with the addition of a coat of varnish to prevent the admission of air.
Before we separated, my uncle promised to procure for me if possible a torpid dormouse.
12th.—You must allow, mamma, that my journal never detains you very long on any one subject: from polar bears and frozen limbs we must now skip to tobacco plantations and the West Indies, where you know, Mrs. P. resided some time.
My uncle was inquiring from her this evening about the different modes of culture and the proper soil for tobacco. Few plants, she says, are so much affected by situation; it acquires such different qualities from the soil, that tobacco plants which have been raised in one district, if transplanted into another, though not a quarter of a mile distant, will entirely change their flavour. For instance: the Macabau snuff is made from the leaves of a tobacco plant which takes its name from the parish of Macabau in St. Kitt’s, and there only the real snuff of that name can be prepared. Both plants and seed have been tried in all parts of that island, and in several of the other islands too, but the peculiar scent has not in any instance been retained.
The tobacco of St. Thomas has also a particular smell, which the produce of no other island resembles. It is a curious circumstance that none of it is manufactured there; it is all sent to Copenhagen, and is returned from thence to St. Thomas, and made into snuff. In Barbadoes they make the highly scented rose-snuff, which is sometimes imitated in London by adding attar of rose to fine rapee; but in the island it is made by grating into the snuff a fruit called the rose-apple, which is cultivated for that purpose. It is, however, neither a rose nor an apple, though, when ripe, it somewhat resembles a crab-apple; but it has a stone within, and has at all times a delightful fragrance like the rose. The fruit, when ripe, is gathered, and carefully dried in the shade.