On new Scarabseidae in the British Museum. 507 



Rotifers and Macrobioti, after being perfectly lifeless, have 

 been revived after five months (Leeuwenhoek, 1719), two 

 years and a half (Fontana, 1769), days (Spallanzani, 1777), 

 several years (C. A. S. Schultze, 1834, and Creplin, 1837), 

 six months (C. A. S. Schultze, 1838), three years (the same 

 author, 1840), many years (the same, 1861), hours (Grreeff, 

 1865), days, weeks, months, and years (Preyer, 1864-1889). 



Whoever thoroughly examines the shrivelled Rotifers and 

 Arctiscoids as they lie in the drying-oven, and notes how, on 

 the evaporation of the water emitted by them at the moment 

 of drying, after being completely isolated on a slip of glass 

 they become motionless, and, exhibiting no change whatever 

 for whole days and months, first swell up on being moistened 

 and then begin to move, will arrive at the conviction that 

 there is in this case no possibility of a vita minima, a mini- 

 mum of physiological metabolism, since water is wanting. 

 It is excluded as certainly as in the case of the frozen frog's 

 heart. There remains only a potential life, which, through 

 the emancipating process of anabiosis, is transformed into 

 kinetic or actual life. The interruption of this latter through 

 freezing and drying occurs in an enormous number of cases 

 in nature, probably favoured in the case of many organisms 

 (e. g. on the bark of trees) by a specific adaptation, and con- 

 firmed by heredity as being a highly advantageous property. 

 The pause in the life of the individual comes to an end either 

 through death in consequence of irreparable injury to the 

 lifeless organism or through natural anabiosis, as, for instance, 

 in the soil when it thaws in spring, or in the dust of the 

 gutter of the roof when rain falls after a drought in summer, 

 and so on. The organic machine therefore does not perish 

 every time it stands quite still any more than the clock 

 breaks down every time the pendulum ceases to swing. 



The frozen and desiccated animals, destitute of all trace of 

 circulation, are not dead, but merely do not live until enabled 

 to do so by anabiosis. 



Berlin, 

 Dec. 4, 1890. 



LX. — New Scarabaeida; in the British Museum : a Fifth 

 Contribution. By Chaeles O. Wateehouse. 



Since my last contribution I have been determining the 

 species of Heliocopris, Catharsius, and Copris. This is a 

 difficult task at any time, and is rendered ten times more so 

 by entomologists who have attempted to found species on 



