PAIRING OF INSECTS. 219 



have kept a spicier for several years. * This, how- 

 ever, will not authorise us to credit Goldsmith's story 

 of a spider, not confined, living for three years, "par- 

 ticularly as it does not appear that he had any means 

 of identifying the individual ; and much less to believe 

 that a flea, even when confined and well fed, would 

 Jive six, or a mantis ten years, — such circumstance 

 being so very anomalous as to be quite incredible. 



It would not be correct, however, to say that the 

 day-flies {Ephemeridcr) live only one day, and in 

 some species only a few hours ; for, in the form of 

 grubs, some of those short-lived flies continue for two 

 years ; and though the goat-moth ( Cossus ligni- 

 percla) and the stag-beetle [Lucanus cerviis) live in 

 their perfect state only a few weeks, their larvee live 

 for three years ; that of the cock -chafer [Melolontha 

 vulgaris) lives four years, as a destroyer of the roots 

 of grass and other herbage ; "j" while the beetle only 

 lives to pair, and deposit its eggs. The same holds 

 true of the queen-bee ; but she docs not, like the 

 beetles and the moths, lay her eggs at once, but 

 sometimes continues, if we may credit the elder 

 Huber, for two successive years to deposit her eggs. 

 The following experiment which he made to ascer- 

 tain the fact of the first swarms being always, as 

 Reaumur had conjectured, led by an old queen, is 

 interesting as to this point : — 



* One of my glass hives,' he says, ^ consisting of 

 three parallel combs, in frames opening like the leaves 

 of a book, was well peopled, and abundantly provided 

 with honey and wax, and with brood of various ages. 

 From this hive I removed the queen, on the 5th of 

 May, and next day transferred into it all the bees 

 from another hive, with a fertile queen, at least a year 

 old. They entered easily, without fighting, and were 

 well received by the old inhabitants^ who, upon having 



* Nouv. Diet d'Hist. Nat. ii, 285. 

 t See Insect Transformations, p. 227. 



