Some facts recently stated to the British Association may, perhaps,
shake faith in the "corporal sufferance" of the beetle, whose cause has
been so eloquently pleaded by Shakspeare. Sir G. Richardson has
exhibited a beetle found imbedded in some artificial concrete, where it
must have been at least sixteen years; yet, when the animal was brought
to him, it was alive, and lived for six weeks after--the ordinary
duration of the life of this species of beetle being but two or three
years. Mr. Darwin left one of the same kind of beetles in a covered
vessel for a year, without its being killed; he also dropped upon one
hydrocyanic acid, but it walked off, quite unaffected by the poison.
------------------