KOTES. 411 



CHAPTER II. 



Note 8, page 40. Hitherto only one single genus of animals is known 

 of which the species are occasionally able to go through their whole 

 cycle of development without their requiring to take nourishment from 

 the time they escape from the egg till their death. The male indi- 

 viduals of some species of Irodct never take any food after they have 

 left the egg, and they perish after fulfilling their sexual function. 

 Hence the amount of food contained in the egg must have been suffi- 

 cient for the requirements of the creature throughout life. 



-V</te 9, page 41. Numerous instances are known of such long- 

 enduring resistance to want of food in the Invert ebrata as well as in the 

 Vertebrata. In this respect those snails must be mentioned which were 

 kept for years with their shells glued down, in the collection in the 

 British Museum, and at last, under specially favourable meteorological 

 conditions, were enabled to creep away. At all times those cases have 

 excited much attention which have seemed to prove that Amphibia, 

 such as toads, salamanders, &c., have been preserved from the remotest 

 times, though shut up in a perfectly hermetically closed stone. But 

 the data in these individual cases are always so far from exhaustive that 

 it is impossible to found any explanation on them ; it therefore seems 

 to me superfluous to give here any special cases, and I refer the reader 

 to the literature of the subject given by Schmarda (Geographic der 

 Thitre, vol. i. p. 101). 



But it is highly probable that they all, without exception, might be 

 explained in the same way as a case described by Franenfeld in the 

 year 1867. A stone of about the size of the palm of the hand had in it 

 two cavities which communicated with each other, and in one of these 

 an Amphibian about two inches long probably Triton cristatut was 

 living curled up when the stone was split open. The cavity communi- 

 cated with the outer air by a small hole, which was 1 millimetre (about 

 ^ of an inch) in depth, and about 3 millimetres wide. Frauenfeld 

 assumes that the larva found its way into the inner cavity, there grew, 

 and at last became too big to get out again. It had, moreover, not been 

 able to obtain enough food (it was apparently at least a year or two 

 years old) to grow beyond two inches in length. According to this 

 the Triton had not, however, been absolutely without food ; but we 

 may regard it as quite certain that it had obtained a very insignificant 

 amount of nourishment, since through so narrow an opening it was 

 impossible that it should have been supplied in sufficient quantity. Ex- 

 periments have even been made on this matter, for living amphibia have 

 been enclosed in masses of gypsum, and left \hus enclosed, and they have 



