The supply of food may also be a factor producing this condition, as torpidity in dormice and groundhogs is delayed or prevented when the food supply is plentiful. I question this for the following reasons: Spermophiles and marmots retire for their winter sleep when their food supply is at its best; they only remain active until the full coating of fat is acquired. Here in British Columbia they will retire a month or more earlier in the low lands than they do at the timber line. In the latter regions they have not acquired enough fat until the end of September, as they come out of hibernation later in the spring.
In this connection it is interesting to note the influence of the food supply on man, protectively causing a condition closely resembling hibernation. For instance, there is in Russia a certain class of peasants who suffer from a chronic state of famine which becomes more acute at the end of the year and more or less severe according to circumstances. In these cases, when the head of the family sees, towards the end of autumn, that by a normal consumption of their supply of wheat it will not last the family through the winter, he makes arrangements to diminish the rations as much as possible. Knowing that it will be difficult to preserve their health and keep up the physical force necessary for their work in the spring, he and his family plunge themselves into a condition known as "lejka" which means that everybody simply goes to bed, lying down on the top of the flat stove, and there they stay during the four or five months of winter. They get up, during this time, only to replenish the fire, eat a small piece of black bread and take a small drink of water. The peasant and his family try to move as little as possible and sleep as much as they can—stretched out on the stove top, they preserve almost complete immobility. Their only care during the long winter is to keep down the body metabolism, to waste as little as possible of their animal heat, and for that reason they try to eat and drink less, move less, and to generally reduce the activities of their bodies. Their instinct commands them to sleep as much as possible—obscurity and silence reign in the hut where, in the warmest place, either singly or crowded, the occupants pass the winter season in a condition closely resembling hibernation.
The following observations are purely physiological phenomena, occurring in mammals only.
Respiration
The frequency of respiration is greatly diminished, the rhythm is irregular and often of the Cheyne-Stokes type.[1] What little respira-
- ↑ In the Cheyne-Stokes type of respiration, there is a pause in the respiratory act, then a small respiration occurs, to be followed by a deeper one; then a still deeper act and so on until the maximum is reached, when the respirations begin to gradually diminish until they die away altogether. This is followed by a prolonged pause, then they gradually begin again.
