LONGEST LIVERS LEAST LIVELY. 149 



name an involuntary shudder passes over one, has been kept 

 alive, without food, for three years, and may perhaps be a 

 longer liver in its own locality of death.* 



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. 



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 ;f 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 



* See Vignette to ' The Scarabaeus.' t See Vignette. 



