Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Book of Reptiles: Class Reptilia; With Some Account of the Fossil Remains of Animals Whose Species Have Become Extinct
Reptiles are more limited in intelligence than birds or quadrupeds and although, as said before, capable of being tamed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to teach them any action that does not depend entirely on the appetite for food.
Respiration may remain suspended for some time in Reptiles, without death being produced, or the circulation of the blood interrupted. Frogs, Salamanders, and Turtles, will dive under water, or bury themselves in mud for entire days together. In cold weather, these animals can remain thus submersed for a longer time, without having occasion to breathe the air, for they are then in a half-torpid state; but in warm weather, they enjoy a more active existence, and are obliged more frequently to breathe the atmospheric air. In couse quence of the construction of their breathing organs and heart, the vital air combines with the blood only in a small quantity; from this proceeds the small degree of heat possessed by this ?uid, in the same manner as we have seen that rapidity of breathing in the Birds, pro duces a corresponding degree of heat*.
This natural coldness of constitution in reptiles will account for their almost total disappearance from the Polar regions, and the colder latitudes of the North, while they abound between the Tropics, where the exter nal heat atones for the sluggishness of their circulation.
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