208 AN INSECT MIRACLE. 



assemblage of these rat-tailed pupae, which had probably, 

 while yet grubs, deserted, for the hollow of the tree, some 

 stagnant and very uninviting pools adjacent. 



But what is the tinge of the marvellous, investing the above 

 relations, compared with the red-hot hue of wonder which 

 colours the following almost incredible, yet (as it would seem) 

 not ill attested anecdote? The summoners here were the 

 united powers of fire and water the sturdy spirits of bees 

 the little contumacious tenants which refused to dislodge for 

 all their combined authority. 



Mr. Beddome, a respectable chemist of Tooley Street, 

 London, in a letter to the editor of the Times, which was 

 copied in the Times Telescope for 1822, thus writes : " I 

 bought twenty large hives, and a hogshead of Dutch honey in 

 the native state, not separated from the wax, which had been 

 in the warehouse above a year; and, after emptying the hives 

 as well as I could, I boiled them for a considerable time in 

 water, to obtain honey from between the interstices. A con- 

 siderable number of bees, mixed with honey, floated on the 

 surface of the water. These I skimmed off, and placed on 

 flag-stones outside my laboratory, which was at the top of the 

 house, exposed to a July meridian sun. You may imagine my 

 astonishment, when in half an hour I saw scores of these bees, 

 that had been for months in a state of suffocation, and then 

 well boiled, gradually come to life and fly away. There were 

 so many of them that I closed the door, fearing that they 

 might be disposed to return, and punish me for the barbarous 

 usage they had received at my hands." 



The above we must confess to be a marvel of marvels ; 

 but there is something scarcely less wonderful in the stubborn- 

 ness with which the vital sparks of many insects have been 

 known to hold out within the tiny citadels of their bodies 

 when called on to surrender, not by flood or fire but by 

 famine. We read of a chameleon fly subsisting nine months 

 upon air, of a church-yard beetle living without food for 



