134 



ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, Sic. 



grown as large as the glass globe that contained it. Several species of the 

 carp kind, and especially the gold-fish, have a similar power ; and even the 

 pike, the most gluttonous, perhaps, of the whole class, will both live and 

 thrive upon water alone in a marble basin. 



The bee, and various other insects, derive their nutriment from the nectar 

 and effluvium of flowers. So also does the trochilus genus, or humming- 

 bird, which appears to be the connecting link between the two classes ; buzz- 

 ing like the bee itself with a joyous hum around the blossom on which it 

 lights ; and in one of its species, t. minimus, not exceeding it in size, and 

 only weighing from 20 to 45 grains. 



Air alone appears sufficient for the support of animals of other kinds. 

 Snails and chameleons have been known repeatedly to live upon nothing else 

 for years.* Garman asserts that it is a sufficient food for spiders ; and that 

 though they will devour other food, as fishes will that may be maintained alone 

 on water, they do not stand in need of any other. Latreille confirms this 

 assertion to a considerable extent, by informing us that he stuck a spider to a 

 piece of cork, and precluded it from communication with any thing else for 

 four successive months, at the end of which time it appeared to be as lively 

 as ever.f And Mr. Baker tells us, in the Philosophical Transactions, that he 

 had a beetle that lived in a glass confinement for three years without food, 

 and then fled away by accident. 



The larves of ants, as well as of several other insects of prey, are not only 

 supported by air, but actually increase in bulk, and undergo their metamor- 

 phosis without any other nourishment. It is probable, also, that air is at times 

 the only food of the scolopendra pJiosphorea, or luminous centipede, which 

 has been seen illuminating the atmosphere, and sometimes falling into a ship, 

 a thousand miles from land. 



Amphibious animals have a peculiar tenacity to life under every circum- 

 stance of privation ; and not only frogs and toads, but tortoises, lizards, and 

 serpents are well known to have existed for months, and even years, without 

 other food than water — in some instances, without other food than air. 



Mr. Bruce kept two cerastes, or horned snakes, in a glass jar for two years, 

 without giving them any thing. He did not observe that they slept in the 

 winter-season ; and they cast their skins, as usual, on the last day of April. J 



Lizards, and especially the newt species, have been found imbedded in a 

 chalk-rock, apparently dead and fossilized, but have reassumed living action on 

 exposure to the atmosphere.^ On their detection in this state the mouth is 

 usually closed with a glutinous substance, and closed so tenaciously, that 

 they often die of suff'ocation in the very etl'ort to extricate themselves from 

 this material. II 



In respect to toads the same fact has been ascertained, for, nearly two 

 years, by way of experiment ;ir and has been verified, by accident, for a much 

 longer term of time. The late Edward Walker, Esq., of Guestingthorpe, 

 Essex, informed me, not long since, that he had found a toad perfectly alive 

 in the midst of a full-grown elm, after it was cut down by his order, exactly 

 occupying the cavity which it appeared gradually to have scooped out as it 

 grew in size, and which had not the smallest external communication by any 

 aperture that could be traced. And very explicit, and apparently very cau- 

 tious, accounts have been repeatedly published in different journals, of their 

 having been found alive, imbedded in the very middle of trunks of trees and 

 blocks of marble, so large and massy, that, if the accounts be true, they 

 must have been in such situations for at least a century.** There is a very 

 particular case of this kind given by M. Seigue, in the Memoirs of the Royal 

 Academy of Paris. ft 



* Encyclop. Brit. art. Physiol, p. 679. t Monthly Rev. Appx. Iv. 494. 



I Voyages, Appendix, p. 296, 8vo. edit. ^Wilkinson, Tilloch's Phil. Mag, Dec. I81& 



II Journal of Science, No. xii. p. 375. 



"TT See Dalyell's Introd. to his Translation of Spallanzani's Tracts, p. xliii. 1803. 

 ** See various instances, Encycl. Brit. art. Physiol, p. 681. 



Tt Mem. 1731, H. 24. Dr. Edwards, of Paris, has sufficiently ascertained of late, that blocks of mortM 



