LONGEST LIVERS LEAST LIVELY. 333 



Some of the weevils a tribe of beetles distinguished by 

 their long beaks, or rostrums can also boast themselves of 

 a span of life comparatively long. One of these, found upon 

 rotten wood, the substance which it feeds on, ^we have kept 

 under a glass from June to the April following, when it escaped. 

 This, also, though it has not once grown torpid, may be 

 considered as an insect of gloomy and retired habits, and, 

 like others of its family which live in wood or earth, is of 

 sombre dark-brown hue ; * in this respect, strikingly con- 

 trasted with the gayer colouring usually a vivid green, some- 

 times red displayed by that more cheerful division of the 

 same tribe, which is used to frequent and feed on trees and 

 plants, in open daylight, and which die, probably, with the 

 leaves and stalks whose sap constitutes their wine of life. 



It would seem, then, that the highest apparent degrees of 

 vitality, sensitiveness, and enjoyment, are seldom, in insect 

 life, made to consist with long duration. With them, to live 

 long is not always to live much, though we may justly say of 

 them, as of other and higher existences, that to live much is to 

 live long. 



The Ephemera, 1 for instance, in their single day of light 

 and love as tenants of the air may be said to live longer 

 than in the darksome years of their immurement within earth 

 and water; while the butterfly, fluttering over the flowers of 

 the grave, may enjoy more of existence in that short half-hour 

 of sport and sunshine, than the churchyard beetle in the whole 

 course of its buried career amongst the relics of mortality. 



In this seemingly disproportioned, yet in reality well-balanced 

 allotment of insect life, there exists, as we have noticed, no 

 parallel with the history of the soul, viewed as an immortal 

 principle ; but amongst the instances just adduced, as well as a 

 thousand more, there is not wanting a very marked corres- 

 pondence with the earthly tenures of human existence as most 

 usually holden. 



1 See Vignette. 



