After all the admirable things that have been said by Léon Dufour upon the long and wonderful preservation of the insects destined for the flesh-eating larvæ, it is almost needless to add that the Weevils, both those whom I dug up and those whom I took from between the legs of their kidnappers, were always in a perfect state of preservation, though deprived for ever of the power of motion. Freshness of colour, flexibility of the membranes and the lesser joints, normal condition of the viscera: all these combine to make you doubt that the lifeless body before your eyes is really a corpse, all the more as even with the magnifying-glass it is impossible to perceive the smallest wound; and, in spite of yourself, you are every moment expecting to see the insect move and walk. Nay more: in a heat which, in a few hours, would have dried and pulverized insects that had died an ordinary death, or in damp weather, which would just as quickly have made them decay and go mouldy, I have kept the same specimens, both in glass tubes and paper bags, for more than a month, without precautions of any kind; and, incredible though it may sound, after this enormous lapse of time the viscera had lost none of their freshness and dissection was as easily performed as though I were operating on a live insect. No, in the presence of such facts, we cannot speak of the action of an antiseptic and believe in a real death: life is still there, latent, passive life, the life of a vegetable. It alone, resisting yet a little while longer the all-conquering chemical forces, can thus preserve the structure from decomposition. Life is still there, except for movement; and we have before our eyes a marvel such as chloroform or ether might produce, a marvel which owes its origin to the mysterious laws of the nervous system.