Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria Volume 7-8

by Royal Society of Victoria.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 ...last column give the time (in hours) which the eggs would have taken to hatch according to this law, assuming m = 40,200; and a = 1-3 C. for this species. Table I. No. 6 is the set already referred to as having been marred by an accident; but the general agreement of the figures can leave no doubt as to the accuracy of the law. In the formula given it is plain that a temperature of-1-3 C. would be that at which the eggs would take an infinite time to hatch, or, in other words, would never hatch at all; but at temperatures somewhat above this we may be sure that other circumstances would interfere to prevent the development of the tadpole. The quantity m is constant only for a given species; but in what follows of this paper, enough will be seen to make it probable that in comparing species with species, it is a quantity varying directly as the sixth root of the weight of the fully matured animal. So far as I can depend on the very few and very rough observations made as to the hatching time of lizards, snakes, turtles and alligators, this belief is fairly well borne out. But, as the unreliable nature of these figures prevents more than a sort of prima facie evidence, let me pass by preference to others in which there is more accuracy, though still the observations are often merely approximate. All birds and mammals, except the monotremata, and, as I shall show in a future paper, the marsupiata, keep at a temperature which may, for the purposes of this enquiry, be considered constant, so that in the following investigation we may neglect temperature variations, as the figures to be dealt with are not accurate enough to allow of refined adjustments. Excluding the monotremata and marsupiata, the extremes of health temperature for birds and mammals would be 37 ...

162 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012