The survival after death of something commonly supposed to be dependent on vitality is another phenomenon which, like that of the divisibility of the life-principle, affects us disagreeably. The continued growth of the hair of dead men is an instance in point. It is, we know, an error, caused by the shrinking of the flesh; and as for the accounts of coffins being found full of hair when opened, they are inventions, though still believed in by some persons. Another instance, which is not a fable, is that of a serpent's skin. When properly and quickly dried after removal, it will retain its bright colours for an indefinite time--in some cases for many years. But at intervals the colours appear to fade, or become covered with a misty whiteness; and the cause, as one may see when the skin is rubbed or shaken, is that the outer scales are being shed. They come off separately, and are very much thinner than when the living serpent sheds his skin, and they grow thinner with successive sheddings until they are scarcely visible. But at each shedding the skin recovers its brightness. One in my possession continued shedding its scale-films in this way for about ten years. I used it for a book-marker and often had it in my hands, but not until it ceased shedding its {78} scale-coverings, and its original bright green colour turned to dull blackish-green, did I get rid of the feeling that it had some life in it. But the most striking instance of the continuance or survival long after death of what has seemed an attribute or manifestation of life remains to be told. [Sidenote: A dead glow-worm's light] One cloudy, very dark night at Boldre, I was going home across a heath with some girls from a farmhouse where we had been visiting, when one of my young companions cried out that she could see a spark of fire on the road before us. We then all saw it--a small, steady, green light--but on lighting a match and looking closely at the spot, nothing could we see except the loose soil in the road. When the match went out the spark of green fire was there still, and we searched again, turning the loose soil with our fingers until we discovered the dried and shrunken remains of a glow-worm of the previous year. It had been trodden into the sand, and the sand driven into it, until it was hard to make out any glow-worm shape or appearance in it. It was like a fragment of dry earth, and yet, so long as it was in the dark, the small, brilliant green light continued to shine from one end of it. Yet this dried old case must have been dead and blown about in the dust for at least seven or eight months.