261- STATES OT INSECTS. 



hastened their maturity more than as many weeks would 

 have done in the open air. The disclosed insects were 

 in every respect perfect, and the females, after pairing, 

 laid their eggs, and then died, just as if they had not 

 been thus prematurely forced into existence. The con- 

 verse of this experiment equally succeeded:— by keeping 

 pupae the whole summer in an icehouse, Reaumur caused 

 them to produce the fly one full year later than their or- 

 dinary period a . 



This extraordinary fact leads us to a very singular and 

 unexpected conclusion — that we have the power of 

 lengthening or shortening the life of many insects at 

 pleasure ; that we can cause one individual to live more 

 than twice as long as another of the same species, and 

 vice versa. Had Paracelsus made this discovery, it would 

 have led him to pursue his researches after the elixir of 

 immortality with redoubled confidence, and would have 

 supplied him with an argument for the possibility of pro- 

 longing the life of man beyond its usual term, which his 

 sceptical opponents would have found some difficulty in 

 rebutting. Even the logical Reaumur seems inclined to 

 infer from it, that this object of the alchemists was not so 

 chimerical as we are wont to conclude b . He confesses, 

 however, if it were to be attained only by the same pro- 

 cess as effects the extension of an insect's life — by pro- 

 longing its state of torpor and insensibility, — that few 

 would choose to enjoy it on such conditions. The man 

 of pleasure, blunted by excess of use to all modern sti- 

 muli, might perhaps not object to a sleep of a hundred 

 years, in the hope of finding something new under the 



* Reaum. ii. 10—-. *> Ibid. 24, 



