332 DURATION OF INSECT LIFE. 



matter of some surprise, that of the myriads which die daily 

 round and about our paths, so few "mortal remains" should 

 meet our eye. Something, in short, of the same sort of 

 mystery is attached to their entire disappearance as that which 

 seems to have been noticed by some of old Fuller's " worthies," 

 with regard to the disappearance of pins, which caused them 

 to admire "that so many millions of these useful and neat 

 little articles made, sold, used, and lost in England, should 

 vanish away invisible ; " to the which remark, our excellent 

 divine, with gravity becoming his profession, and quaintness 

 belonging to his style and character, appends this serious 

 reflection : that such persons may rather wonder how so many 

 that wear them, being no more than pins in the hand of their 

 Maker, do decay, die, and slip down in the dust in silence and 

 obscurity. 



The duration of insect life varies greatly ; but there is one 

 remark respecting it of very general application : Its last and 

 most perfect stage is usually the most brief, often immensely 

 disproportioned to those which have preceded it. 



A few instances do, indeed, occur, of insects being very 

 long-lived after their attainment of a perfect form ; but these 

 are, for the most part, to be found, not among the gay and 

 gaudy flutterers of air not among the livers upon sweets 

 ambrosial quaffed from painted flower-cups, not more fragile 

 than themselves not among the baskers in the sun, or the 

 sporters on his beams ; but rather amongst the dull, lugu- 

 brious, sober-suited crawlers which lurk in the dark places 

 of the earth and the dark corners of our habitations. 



An individual spider may often, it is probable, live long 

 enough to lie in murderous wait for flying innocents, even to 

 the fourth and fifth generation. Goldsmith, indeed, mentions 

 one as having lived three years ; and though his authority 

 on this, as well as on other matters, especially of natural 

 history, has been often called in question, Audibert is also 

 stated to have kept another quite as long. 



