Singular to add, some insects in the perfect state do not eat at all. The silk-worm moth, and the _Ephemeræ_, are amongst this number; they live so short a time, as not to require food. Some insects also possess a most extraordinary power of abstaining from food. There have been at different times wonderful tales related of human beings, who, in a supposed trance, have endured the privation of food for an extremely long time,--weeks, and even months. And more recently we have an account of an Indian who suffered himself to be buried alive, built over with bricks and mortar, and a great seal set upon the only opening to his tomb, a guard being also set; and, after the expiration of a certain time, before agreed upon, the sepulchre was opened, and he was taken out--alive! All this is extremely wonderful, if we could only feel certain that there was no deception in the case. But it is nothing to what can be adduced from the insect world. The ant-lion has been known to endure a fast of _six entire months_, and to be as lively as possible at their termination. An author quoted by Messrs. Kirby and Spence kept a spider in a sealed glass for _ten months_, at the end of which time, though shrunk in size, it was as vigorous as ever. And Mr. Baker relates that he once kept a beetle alive for three years without food of any kind whatever!
When we call to memory the intense voracity of the insect while a larva,--how insatiable its appetite, how extensive its ravages,--and contrast it with the perfect insect, we are struck with astonishment. Why is this, we ask, that in all cases insects eat less when they are fully developed, than when in their infancy and youth? It is as if a full-grown healthy man were to eat less than his little child a year or two old. The reason appears to be, that in the imago state no further changes (which consume a great deal of material, as may be imagined when we remember the loss of substance in every cast of the skin) are necessary; the insect only requires food sufficient to preserve its life and activity in the state to which it has come, and needs no laying up of stores of fat for future consumption. Fluttering awhile in glorious apparel, through a world of flowers and sunshine, the period of its life runs out, and its only further change is--to die, and return to its kindred dust.