[754] Reaum. ii. 170.
[756] Here must be excepted my lamented friend the late Dr. Reeve of Norwich, who, in his ingenious Essay on the Torpidity of Animals, has come to nearly the same conclusion as is adopted in this letter; but, by omitting to make a distinction between torpidity and hybernation, he has not done justice to his own ideas.
[758] Kyber in Germar's Mag. der Ent. ii. 3.
[759] Since the publication of the first edition of this volume, I have had an opportunity of making some observations which strongly corroborate the above reasoning. The month of October in the present year (1817) set in extremely cold. From the 1st to the 6th, piercing north and north-west winds blew; the thermometer at Hull, though the sun shone brightly, in the day-time was never higher than from 52° to 56°, nor at night than 38°; in fact, on the 1st and 3rd it sunk as low as 34°, and on the 2nd to 31°: and on those days, at eight in the morning, the grass was covered with a white hoar frost; in short, to every one's feelings the weather indicated December rather than October. Here then was every condition fulfilled that the theory I am opposing can require; consequently, according to that theory, such a state of the atmosphere should have driven every hybernating insect to its winter quarters. But so far was this from being the case, that on the 5th, when I made an excursion purposely to ascertain the fact, I found all the insects still abroad which I had met with six weeks before in similar situations.
[760] Hist. Nat. Edit. 1785, v. 277.
[761] Beiträge zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde 1801. p. 298.
[762] In his Philosophie Zoologique, Paris 1809 (ii. 325)—a work which every zoologist will, I think, join with me in regretting should be devoted to metaphysical disquisitions built on the most gratuitous assumptions, instead of comprising that luminous generalization of facts relative to the animal world which is so great a desideratum, and for performing which satisfactorily this eminent naturalist is so well qualified.
[763] Dr. Zinken genannt Sommer says, that if in August and September a snuff-box be left open, it will be seen to be frequented by the common house-fly (Musca domestica), the eggs of which will be found to have been deposited amongst the snuff. Germar Mag. der Ent. I. ii. 189.