The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1889-03-02
SLEEPING ALL WINTER,
Problem Of Information in the
Animal Kingdom.
Subsisting for Months Without Food or
Air-Curious Instances of, Suspen-
sion of Natures Functions-The
Explanation.

Explanation.
We are apt to forget how large
part of the animal creation goes to
sleep for the whole winter. The dead
season of the year is obviously an ap-
propriate name so far as regards the
trees and plants, but it is just as cor
rect a term for numerous species of
living creatures. Nearly all the in
sects, crustaceans, worms, snails and
the like, go into winter quarters; frogs,
and all the reptile kind, bury them
selves in the mud, or under stones,
and even a few animals of mans own
class spend several months Of the year
in a state Of unbrol1en sleep. This is
the problem of international great
deal more debated in former times
than now. Aristotle began the specu-
lations about it, and extended his in
quiry to certain Of the fishes of the
Egean Sea- Hardly any naturalist of
note missed writing about it iowa lis
the end of the last century, or in the
early part of the present one. The
curiosity has always been greatest in
reference to those few of the higher
animals who have the faculty of coiling
themselves up in a hole in the ground,
and going to sleep for months together.
The water vole is one of these:
"Down into his burrow he cozily creeps,
And quietly through the long winter time
sleeps
Gilbert White was told by.a farmer
in the parish of Selborne that his pillow
had turned up a vole's winter nest in a
field some hundred yards from the
water, with a gallon of potatoes stored
at one end of it. Our other common
winter sleepers are the hedgehog, the
dormouse and the bat. Offers, badgers
and squirrels seem to have the faculty
OF lying perdu for days at time in a
very hard season; but they do not count
among the Winter-sleepers proper. In
Alpine countries the various species of
marmots are well-known hibernators:
in Russia and Siberia there are several
such species, and all over North Ger
many the most familiar instance is a
curious animal, called the hamster,
something between a large rat and a
rabbit. In Canada an interesting OBJ
servation was made by General Davies
on the profound winter sleep of the
jumping mouse, and published, with a
picture in the ''Linnaan Transaction"
for 1897. The little animal, which was
a curiosity in the summer time for it's
flying leaps through the long grass,
was lost sight of about the month of
October, and was not seen again until
the month Of May. General Davies
solved the problem of what became of
it all these months. A laborer, digging
the foundations of a garden-house near
Quebec in the spring, turned UP with
his spade lump of clay like a cricket
ball; on breaking the clod he found a
nicely-molded round space inside, with
in which lay a jumping-mouse, with it's
long hind legs folded against it's breast
and it's head sunk deeply between
them. It was placed in chip box in
warm room until it should awake;
but the change of atmosphere was too
abrupt for it. and it never awol1e. The
The jumping mouse cozily sleeping in
smooth nest of clay two feet below
the ground brings us face to face with
the whole problem of winter sleep.
The animal had neither food nor air
for some six months of the year, and
yet it was alive, and would resume all
it's old agility with the warmth of sum-
mer.
It is clear that winter-sleepers sub
sist for months without food, but it is
so not SO easy to understand how they can
do without air. There is, however,
no doubt about the fact; their breath
ing becomes gradually slower during
the first week or two of their hiberna-
ton, and soon ceases altogether.
Nearly all their manifold functions
come to rest. Taking no food, they
have nothing to digest; their senses are
lost for the time, and they are insensi-
BILE to pricl1s or pinching of the skin.
A. sleeping marmot has been trundled
along the ground like an inanimate
ball. The only organ that keeps
working all the time without mo-
ment's rest is the heart, and even the
heart is brought down to less than half
of it's usual waking force. All these
facts have been confirmed, it is need
less to say, by the most minute observ-
ations. Learned Germans, Italians
and others have kept bats, hedgehogs,
marmots and 'hamsters in their bed
rooms and back kitchens, and have
watched and investigated the creatures
in all sorts of ways. There is no doubt
at all that, unless when they are I'M
usually disturbed, they do not breathe,
do not feel, do not exercise any of the
ordinary functions of their Waking
state, except the great and indisp ensa-
able function of the heart. ThsAr in
ternal heat is kept a little higher than
the temperature of the air. It is Ear
below the ordinary blood heat, but tits
just high enough to prevent their being
4 frozen. The water Of their tissues X
mostly dried up, and even the blood is
thicker than usual. Their muscles,