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It is doubtless favourable to the serpents to hybernate in large numbers massed together; and the habit of resorting annually to the same spot once formed, we can imagine that the individuals perhaps a single couple in the first place frequenting some very deep, dry, and well-sheltered cavern, safe from enemies, would have a great advantage over others of their race; that they would be stronger and increase more, and spread during the summer months further and further from the cavern on all sides; and that the further afield they went the more would the instinct be perfected; since all the young serpents that did not have the instinct of returning unerringly to the ancestral refuge, and that, like the outsiders of their race, to put it in that way, merely crept into the first hole they found on the approach of the cold season, would be more liable to destruction.
I refer to a habit of some ophidians, in temperate and cold countries, of returning annually to hybernate in the saine den. A typical instance is that of the rattlesnake in the colder parts of North America.
This was the ordinary brown bear of Europe, which still exists in Transylvania, Hungary, Italy, and especially in Turkey. The same bear inhabits Asia Minor, and both these varieties hybernate at the commencement of winter.
It is proved by the simple fact that those bears belonging to warm latitudes, as the Bornean, Malayan, and even the black American of the Southern States, do not hybernate at all. There is no need for them to do so. Their unfrozen forests furnish them with food all the year round; and all the year round are they seen roaming about in search of it.
One ought to hybernate at this time of the year." "Then why don't you hybernate?" said Lopez. "Business is too good. That's about it. A man has to stick to it when it does come. Everybody can't do like you; give up regular work, and make a better thing of an hour now and an hour then, just as it pleases you. I shouldn't dare go in for that kind of thing."
The tropical species, if transferred to a colder climate, should have arrangements made for enabling them to hybernate during the winter: they will die in a very short time if exposed to a temperature below the freezing point. The edible turtle is found on all the coasts of the island, and sells for a few shillings or a few pence, according to its size and abundance at the moment.
Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it.
The proof of this necessity for repose during a period of enforced abstinence will be observed in the independence of tropical bears, which do not hybernate, for the best of all reasons, "that there is no winter," therefore they can procure their usual food throughout every season without difficulty or interruption.
This, however, is a mistake, as it is only indulged in by a few kinds; and the climate and nature of the country which the bear inhabits has more to do with his hybernation than any natural instinct of the animal: since it has been observed that bears will go to sleep, or hybernate, as it is termed, in one part of a country, while individuals of the same species, in another region, will be found roaming about all the winter through.
I had been assured that the bears would hybernate at the commencement of winter, and that they could only be found at the season when the first snow-fall would expose their tracks.
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