s, worms, flies, snails, marmots,
sloths, &c., remain asleep during the winter, and in blocks of stone
have been found toads, snakes, and oysters alive, which had been
enclosed there for many years, and perhaps for more than a century.
Cardinal de Retz relates in his Memoirs,[606] that being at Minorca,
the governor of the island caused to be drawn up from the bottom of
the sea by main force with cables, whole rocks, which on being broken
with maces, enclosed living oysters, that were served up to him at
table, and were found very good.

On the coasts of Malta, Sardinia, Italy, &c., they find a fish called
the Dactylus, or Date, or Dale, because it resembles the palm-date in
form; this first insinuates itself into the stone by a hole not bigger
than the hole made by a needle. When he has got in he feeds upon the
stone, and grows so big that he cannot get out again, unless the stone
is broken and he is extricated. Then they wash it, clean it, and dress
it for the table. It has the shape of a date, or of a finger; whence
its name of _Dactylus_, which in Greek signifies a finger.

Again, I imagine that in many persons death is caused by the
coagulation of the blood, which freezes and hardens in their veins, as
it happens with those who have eaten hemlock, or who have been bitten
by certain serpents; but there are others whose death is caused by too
great an ebullition of blood, as in painful maladies, and in certain
poisons, and even, they say, in certain kinds of plague, and when
people die a violent death, or have been drowned.

The first mentioned cannot return to life without an evident miracle;
for that purpose the fluidity of the blood must be re-established, and
the peristaltic motion must be restored to the heart. But in the
second kind of death, people can sometimes be restored without a
miracle, by taking away the obstacle which retards or suspends the
palpitation of the heart, as we see in time-pieces, the action of
which is restored by taking away anything foreign to the mechanism, as
a hair, a bit of thread, an atom, some almost imperceptible body which
stops them.

Footnotes:

[604] Hieron. Cardanus, lib. viii. de Varietate Verum, c. 34.

[605] Olaus Magnus, lib. iii. Epitom. Hist. Septent. Perecer de Variis
Divinat. Generib. p. 282.

[606] Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, tom. iii. lib. iv. p. 297.

CHAPTER LI.

APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING INSTANCES TO VAMPIRES.

Supposing these facts, wh