Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1884-02-01
THE PHENOMENA OF LIFE.
LIVING CREATURES EXISTING LONG
PERIODS WITHOUT AIR.
A Curious ana UnsOIved Problem of
Nature-MysteriOus Power OF the
Fakirs of India.

r Responding to a correspondents ques-
ton whether science teaches that any
living creature can exist for any length
of time, say six months or a year, abso
lutely without air, the Hartford Times
says:
Our correspondents question touches
one of the most interesting and wonder
full realms of nature. Nothing known to
man is more wonderful than the mystic
rious principle of life. Nothing yet re-
vealed is more interesting than the won
derful way in which that principle can
be, and in many instances is, preserved,
not for weeks, but for months, and even
for years, under conditions which have to
alappearance already caused actual death.
Indeed, nature herself provides, for GER
tain animals that do not migrate, win
ter condition of torpidity, in which all the
bodily functions are lowered, and in some
cases seemingly suspended, as in death.
Breathing, like the action of the heart
and the circulation. is for considerable
periods in very cold weather actually
suspended. The Information of bears is
analogous to the full torpidity of some of
the smaller quadrupeds, as the wood
chuck, the bat, the marmot, the prairie
dog, the dormouse, and some others.
The birds-such as are not birds of prey
can fly away, and follow the summer
to warmer climates; but some of the
quadrupeds, that live by preying on the
smaller creatures of summer, or the veg
citation that disappears with warm
weather, cannot migrate, and for them
nature has provided state, or condition,
that practically serves the purpose of a
change of country or climate. 1t is to be
noted that it is not the animals with
hoofs that migrate, but certain kinds that
have claws, Others, whose claws and
instincts enable them to live, as beasts
of prey, through our northern winters,
as the panther and lynx and wildcat,
neither migrate nor hibernate. Hawks,
owls, etc., do not need to migrate. DR..
Wares PHILOSOPHY of Natural History"
says:
"Among the lower classes the state of
torpidity is more universal and complete,
and they are capable under its influence
of enduring much greater degrees of
cold. Many of them do not breathe,
circulate, or digest at all. Some rep
tiles, as tortoises and frogs, dive beneath
the mud of ponds and rivers, lizards
and serpents retire to their holes, to the
crevices of rocks and to trunks of trees
If the cold be indefinitely continued,
they seem capable of continuing torpid
an indefinite time. Spallanzani kept
toads and salamanders in an ice house
for three years, during which they ex-
hibited no signs of life. At the end of
this time, on exposure to warmth, they
revived"
Living frogs and toads have been dis
closed, in the work of blasting, securely
imbedded in the heart OF bedrock. OBJ
servations on these phenomena, as yet,
lack the fullness and precision which
would be required by scientific consider
ations, and it does not appear to be posi-
lively known, in any case, that these
creatures, thus living, perhaps for ages
In the deep heart of the rock, were abb
solutely deprived of air. But the indi-
cations do seem to point to that marvel.
A more scientific method was followed
in the case here mentioned by Dr. Ware:
GIVE specimens of green toad were
once found in the center of a tree nine
teen inches in diameter. Every exertion
was W ulSCONCI d
between the external air and the cavity,
but without success. Every part of it
was probed with care, and water kept in
each half for considerable time, with
out its passing into the wood"
The toads revived from what appeared
to be state of actual death on exposure
to the air and sun. Flies, and some
other insects, seem to die, in winter, and
dry up; but they revive with warm
weather.
In Professor Brocklesby's "Views of
the Microscopic World " we find fully
substantiatcd cases of infusorial ami
malcules, smaller than the notes of dust
that float athwart a beam of sunshine in
an empty garnet and revealed only in the
compound microscope, and which, after
being taken from their drop of water and
thoroughly dried up, have still retained
for months, the principle of life, and
been restored to activity when restored
to their proper conditions. The micro.
scopic "whcel, animalcule has thus re.
manned dried up and dead for four years
not breath, any more than in the
SphinX-and yet been restored to life on
being restored to water. A fine speck of
impalpable dust in the air is as visible as
a "wheel-animalculen- creature whose
water-wheel nevertheless draws in, by its
little vortex, multitude of still more in
finitely minute life for its food.
The mytelious power of some human
beings-as certain few of the fakirs Of
India-to suspend, for an indefinite time
by a voluntary effort, the actions of the
bodily functions, seems to belong to
another and higher class of phenomena.
Two or three remarkable cases illustrat-
ing the reality of this amazing fact have
been published within the last thirty or
forty years in England, attestcd by such
arrays of military and other names, as
witnesses, that it seemed as difficult to
reject as to accept the stories. OF one
case, narrated by Sir Claude Wade, q
resident at the court of Runjee Singh in
Lahore, in 1887, that authority was him
self an eyewitness. The body was
buried three feet below the floor, in a
cell under an apartment that was closed
up with brick and mortar, and sealed at
the keyhole with the princes private seal
No aperture existed through which food
or air could be admitted. The place was
guarded, night and day, by four sentries,
and was daily inspected by the officers OF
Runjeet Singh, who was himself skepti-
cal as to the reality of the phenomena. AT
the disinterment, at the end of forty days,
"the body, tied up in linen bag, which
had become widowed, was found in Il
cell three feet below the level of thu
floor in q wooden box, upon which was
a paddock, sealed like the other. There