SEVEN-YEAR SLEEPERS 75 



of ten years old, except perhaps for purposes of psychological 

 research) ; and so forth, ad infinitum. And the worst of it 

 all is that the unliappy experimenter is bound himself to 

 admit that every one of the objections is perfectly valid, and 

 that he very likely never really saw what with perfect 

 confidence he thought and said he had seen. 



This being an unbelieving age, then, when even the 

 book of Deuteronomy is * critically examined,' let us see how 

 much can really be said for and against our old friend, the 

 toad-in-a-hole ; and first let us begin with the antecedent 

 probabihty, or otherwise, of any animal being able to live 

 in a more or less torpid condition, without air or food, for 

 any considerable period of time together. 



A certain famous historical desert snail was brought 

 from Egypt to England as a conchological specimen in the 

 year 1846. This particular mollusk (the only one of his 

 race, probably, who ever attained to individual distinction), 

 at the time of his arrival in London, was really alive and 

 vigorous ; but as the authorities of the British Museum, 

 to v^hosG tender care he was consigned, were ignorant of 

 this important fact in his economy, he was gummed, mouth 

 downward, on to a piece of cardboard, and duly labelled 

 and dated with scientific accuracy, ^ Helix descrtorum, 

 March 25, 184G.' Being a snail of a retiring and con- 

 tented disposition, however, accustomed to long droughts 

 and corresponding naps in his native sand-wastes, our 

 mollusk thereupon simply curled himself up into the top- 

 most recesses of his own whorls, and went placidly to sleep 

 in perfect contentment for an unlimited period. Every 

 conchologist takes it for granted, of course, that the sliells 

 which he receives from foreign parts have had their inhabi- 

 tants properly boiled and extracted before being exported ; 

 for it is only the mere outer shell or skeleton of the animal 

 that we preserve in our cabinets, leaving the actual flesh 



