The functions of this vegetative life are no doubt enfeebled and
disturbed; but at any rate they are exercised in a lethargic fashion. I
have as a proof the evacuation performed by the Weevils normally and at
intervals during the first week of this deep slumber, which will be
followed by no awakening and which nevertheless is not yet death. It
does not cease until the intestines are emptied of their contents, as
shown by autopsy. Nor do the faint glimmers of life which the insect
still manifests stop at that; and, though irritability of the organs
seems annihilated for good, I have nevertheless succeeded in arousing
slight signs of it. Having placed some recently exhumed and absolutely
motionless Weevils in a bottle containing sawdust moistened with a few
drops of benzine, I was not a little astonished to see their legs and
antennæ moving a quarter of an hour later. For a moment I thought that
I could recall them to life. Vain hope! Those movements, the last
traces of a susceptibility about to be extinguished, soon cease and
cannot be excited a second time. I have tried this experiment in some
cases a few hours after the murderous blow, in others as late as three
or four days after, and always with the same success. Still, the
movement is feeble in proportion to the time that has elapsed since the
fatal stroke. It always spreads from front to back: the antennæ first
wave slowly to and fro; then the front tarsi tremble and take part in
the oscillation; next the tarsi of the second pair of legs and lastly
those of the third pair hasten to do likewise. Once movement sets in,
these different appendages execute their vibrations without any order,
until the whole relapses into immobility, which happens more or less
quickly. Unless the blow has been dealt quite recently, the motion of
the tarsi extends no farther and the legs remain still.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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