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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6438, 1 December 1881, Page 2

Experiments made with a view to produce artificially the peculiar “winter-sleep” of hybernating animals in summer, have always failed. Herr Horvath has lately described such experiments made on marmots, hedgehogs, and hamsters. Though these animals were not thrown into the hybernating state, they proved remarkably resistant to cold, and recovered from a several days’ cooling of + 3° to + 1° C, which is fatal to other warm-blooded animals. A phenomenon only once observed before, by Valantin viz., the occurrence of winter-sleep in summer, without artificial appliance of cold, Herr Horvath observed repeatedly in marmots. The sleeping and waking symptoms were quite the same as those of the winter-sleep. Herr Horvath concludes with the remark : “In lecturing on the rose of Jericho in ordinary course. Prof. Cohn said—The rose of Jericho is, firstly, not a rose; and, secondly, it never grows at Jericho. Gathering up the known facts about winter-sleep . . . we come more and more to be of opinion that one may truly say—Wintersleep is, firstly, no sleep; and, secondly, it has nothing to do with winter,”