This narrative certainly belongs to the very first part of the very first book of very wonderful things. But this marvellous book is no longer a closed volume. Millions of ingenious fingers have, for fifty years, been busily employed, in breaking its mysterious seals, one after another. Demonstration has trampled upon doubt, and the world is rapidly coming to my shrewd old grandmother's conclusion, that nothing is so truly wonderful, as that we wonder at all. There is nothing more difficult, than to exonerate the mind from the weight of its present consciousness, and to wonder by rule. We readily lose the recollection of our doubt and derision, upon former occasions, when matters, apparently quite as absurd and impossible, are presented for contemplation, _de novo_. If putrefaction can be kept off, mere animal life, the vital principle, may be preserved, for a prodigious length of time, in the lower ranks of animal creation, while in a state of torpidity. Dr. Gillies relates, that he bottled up some _cerastes_, a species of small snakes, and kept them corked tight, with nothing in the bottle, but a little sand, for several years; and, when the bottle was uncorked, they came forth, revived by the air, and immediately acquired their original activity. More than fifty years ago, having read Dr. Franklin's account of the flies, which he discovered, drowned, in a bottle of old wine, and which he restored to life, by exposure to the sun's rays; I bottled up a dozen flies, in a small phial of Madeira--took them out, at the expiration of a month--and placed them under a glass tumbler, in a sunny window. Within half an hour, nine revived; got up; walked about, wiped their faces with their fore legs; trimmed their wings, with their hinder ones; and began to knock their heads, against the tumbler, to escape. After waiting a couple of hours, to give the remaining three a fair chance, but to no purpose, and expecting nothing from the humane society, for what I had already accomplished, I returned the nine to their wine bath, in the phial. After rather more than three months, I repeated the experiment of resuscitation. After several hours, two gave evidence of revival, got upon their legs, reeled against each other, and showed some symptoms of _mania a potu_. At length they were fairly on their trotters. I lifted the tumbler; they took the hint, and flew to the window glass. It was fly time. I watched one of those, who had profited by the revival--he got four or five flies about him, who really seemed to be listening to the account of his experience.