[Footnote 1:  Annals of Natural History, 1850.  See Dr. BAIRD’s Account of Helix desertorum; Excelsior, &c., ch. i. p. 345.]

[Footnote 2:  Colonel SYKES has described in the Entomological Trans. the operations of an ant which laid up a store of hay against the rainy season.]

The bear, in like manner, is nowhere deprived of its activity except when the rigour of severe frost cuts off its access to its accustomed food.  On the other hand, the tortoise, which immerses itself in indurated mud during the hot months in Venezuela, shows no tendency to torpor in Ceylon, where its food is permanent; and yet is subject to hybernation when carried to the colder regions of Europe.

To the fish in the detached tanks and pools when the heat, by exhausting the water, deprives them at once of motion and sustenance, the practical effect must be the same as when the frost of a northern winter encases them in ice.  Nor is it difficult to believe that they can successfully undergo the one crisis when we know beyond question that they may survive the other.[1]

[Footnote 1:  YARRELL, vol. i. p. 364, quotes the authority of Dr. J. Hunter in his Animal OEconomy, that fish, “after being frozen still retain so much of life as when thawed to resume their vital actions;” and in the same volume (Introd. vol. i. p. xvii.) he relates from JESSE’S Gleanings in Natural History, the story of a gold fish (Cyprinus auratus) which, together with the water in a marble basin, was frozen into one solid lump of ice, yet, on the water being thawed, the fish became as lively as usual Dr. RICHARDSON, in the third vol. of his Fauna Borealis Americana, says the grey sucking carp found in the fur countries of North America, may be frozen and thawed again without being killed in the process.]

Hot-water Fishes.—­Another incident is striking in connection with the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon.  I have mentioned elsewhere the hot springs of Kannea, in the vicinity of Trincomalie, the water in which flows at a temperature varying at different seasons from 85 deg. to 115 deg.  In the stream formed by these wells M. Reynaud found and forwarded to Cuvier two fishes which he took from the water at a time when his thermometer indicated a temperature of 37 deg.  Reaumur, equal to 115 deg. of Fahrenheit.  The one was an Apogon, the other an Ambassis, and to each, from the heat of its habitat, he assigned the specific name of “Thermalis."[1]

[Footnote 1:  CUV. and VAL., vol. iii. p. 363.  In addition to the two fishes above named, a loche Cobitis thermalis, and a carp, Nuria thermoicos, were found in the hot-springs of Kannea at a heat 40 deg.  Cent., 114 deg.  Fahr., and a roach, Leuciscus thermalis, when the thermometer indicated 50 deg.  Cent., 122 deg.  Fahr.—­Ib. xviii. p. 59, xvi. p. 182, xvii. p. 94.  Fish have been taken from a hot spring at Pooree when the