SEVENTEEN YEARS UNDER GROUND. 35:J 



ber to have had this thought when I read in au agri- 

 cultural paper some time ago of the tribes of ephemei'al 

 insects which are born, live merrily, grow old, and die 

 within the compass of twenty-four hours. That seemed 

 to me a great waste of jSTature's noble gifts, and I so 

 said in the presence of one of our ministers. I was 

 much surprised when at the meeting next First Day, 

 she was moved to refer to this in a beautiful address 

 upon the fleeting nature of our life, and the vanity of 

 making so much of it, instead of preparing for a higher 

 and nobler state of being." 



''I am not surprised, Aunt Hannah," I answered, 

 " that you should have fallen into so common an error, 

 and your minister was not the first to use the same 

 as a text for moral lessons. The great Dr. Franklin 

 once published an essa}', full of very instructive philo- 

 sophy, which he put as an address into the mouth of an 

 'Ancient Ephemera,' that had lived to the extreme old 

 age of four hundred and twenty minutes ! Like your 

 good Friend's remarks in the meeting, his moral 

 reflections are admirable, but his entomology is de- 

 fective." 



There are, indeed, several flies, known as May- 

 flies, or Ephemera that live but a very short time, 

 and a few of them only for ten or twelve hours, in the 

 xmnged state. But the larvae of these very same flies 

 have lived in the water for nearly a year before they 

 left their native clement and became denizens of the 

 air. Of course they are insects quite as truly when in 

 the larval as when in the imago state, and there is no 



