394 APPENDIX. 



perhaps, from the singular nourishment which they derive from 

 themselves. M. Grignon observes that this animal sheds its skin 

 several times in the course of a year, and that it always swallows 

 it. He has known, he says, a large toad shed its skin six times 

 in one winter. In short, those which, from the facts we have 

 related, may be supposed to have existed many centuries without 

 nourishment, have been in a total inaction, in a suspension of life, 

 or a temperature that has admitted of no dissolution; so that it 

 was not necessary to repair any loss, the humidity of the sur- 

 rounding matter preserving that of the animal, who wanted only 

 the component parts not to be dried up, to preserve it from 

 destruction. 



The results of modern chemistry and philosophy have proved 

 the number of elementary substances to be far greater than was 

 admitted in the preceding century. And this discovery is pro- 

 gressive, and will probably go on a long time ; after which, it is 

 not improbable a new race of chemical and philosophical observers 

 will spring up, who will be able to decompose many substances 

 we now consider elementary, and thus again reduce the number 

 of elements of which all external matter is composed. It would 

 not be wonderful if posterity should reduce the number of ele- 

 ments even as low as the ancients had them. Such a result would 

 throw new light on the mysterious and intricate connection which 

 seems to exist between animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. 

 We should then, perhaps, have less cause to wonder that toads, 

 &;c., are capable of supporting life in stone, that birds should exist 

 in solid blocks of wood, &c. 



But toads are not the only animals which are capable of living 

 for a considerable length of time without nourishment and com- 

 munication with the external air. The instances of the oysters 

 and dactyles, mentioned at the beginning of this article, may be 

 advanced as a proof of it. But there are other examples. — Eu- 

 ropean Magazine^ March, 1791. 



A beetle, of the species called Capricorn, was found in a piece 

 of wood in the hold of a ship at Plymouth, The wood had no 

 external mark of any aperture. — European Magazine, 



A bug eat itself out of a cherry table at Williamstown, Mass. 

 See an account of this phenomenon, by Professor Dewey, in the 

 Lit. and Philos. Repertory. 



