STATES OF INSECTS. (Pupa.) 263 
open air. The disclosed insects were in every respect 
perfect, and the females, after pairing, laid their eggs, 
and then died, just as if they had not been thus pre- 
maturely forced into existence. ‘The converse of this 
experiment equally succeeded :—by keeping pupz the 
whole summer in an icehouse, Reaumur caused them to 
produce the fly one full year Jater than their ordinary 
period?. 
This extraordinary fact leads us to a very singular 
and unexpected conclusion—that we have the power of 
lengthening or shortening the life of many insects at 
pleasure; that we can cause one individual to live more 
than twice as long as another of the same species, and 
vice versd. Had Paracelsus made this discovery, it would 
have led him to pursue his researches after the elixir of 
immortality with redoubled confidence, and would have 
supplied him with an argument for the possibility of 
prolonging the life of man beyond its usual term, which 
his sceptical opponents would have found some difficulty 
in rebutting. Even the logical Reaumur seems inclined 
to infer from it, that this object of the alchemists was 
not so chimerical as we are wont to conclude>. He con- 
fesses, however, if it were to be attained only by the same 
process as effects the extension of an insect’s life,—by 
prolonging its state of torpor and insensibility,—that few 
would choose to enjoy it on such conditions. The man 
of pleasure, blunted by excess of use to all modern sti- 
muli, might perhaps not object to a sleep of a hundred 
years, in the hope of finding something new under the 
sun when he waked; and an ardent astronomer would 
probably commit himself with scientific joy to a repose 
* Reaum, ii, 10—. > Tbid. 24. 
