LONGEST LIVERS LEAST LIVELY. 149 



name an involuntary shudder passes over one, has been kept 

 alive, without food, for three years, and may perhaps be a 

 longer liver in its own locality of death."* 



An individual spider may often, it is probable, live long 

 enough to lie in murderous wait for flying innocents, even to 

 the fourth and fifth generation. Goldsmith, indeed, mentions 

 one as having lived three years ; and though his authority on. 

 this, as well as on other matters, especially of natural history, 

 has been often called in question, Audibert is also stated to 

 have kept another quite as long. 



Some of the weevils a tribe of beetles distinguished by 

 their long beaks, or rostrums can also boast themselves of a 

 span of life comparatively long. One of these, found upon 

 rotten wood, the substance which it feeds on, we have kept 

 under a glass from June to the April following, when it escaped. 

 This, also, though it has not once grown torpid, may be con- 

 sidered as an insect of gloomy and retired habits, and, like 

 others of its family which live in wood or earth, is of sombre 

 dark-brown hue ;f in this respect, strikingly contrasted with 

 the gayer colouring usually a vivid green, sometimes red 

 displayed by that more cheerful division of the same tribe, 

 which is used to frequent and feed on trees and plants, in open 

 daylight, and which die, probably, with the leaves and stalks 

 whose sap constitutes their wine of life. 



It would seem, then, that the highest apparent degrees of 



* See Vignette to ' The Scarabteus.' f See Vignette. 



