A Dutch girl of the name of Eve Hergen is reported to have lived from the year 1597 to 1611 with no other support than the scent of flowers. The magistrates of Meurs suspecting imposition, had her closely watched for thirteen successive days, without being able to detect any fraud. Over her picture were affixed some Latin verses, of which the following translation was given in a book called "An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, by George Hakewell, 1635:" This maid of Meurs thirty-six yeares spent, Fourteen of which she tooke no nourishment; Thus pale and wan, she sits sad and alone, A garden's all she loves to looke upon. According to Pliny, the _Astoni_ had no other food than this Batavian maiden, being unfortunately born without mouths. Sauvages mentions an academician of Toulouse who never thirsted, and passed his summers, notwithstanding the intense heat, without drinking. In most of the recorded cases of total or nearly total abstinence, water has been found more or less necessary, but not invariably. That some animals can thrive upon water, and even upon air, is demonstrated by naturalists. Snails and chameleons have been known to exist upon air for years. Garman has found that this nutriment is sufficient for the support of spiders; and Latreille has confirmed the experiment by fixing a spider to a piece of cork, and precluding it from any communication. Every entomologist repeatedly sees insects living in their cases, although pinned down for an incredible length of time. Mr. Baker relates that he kept a beetle shut up for three years without any food. Mr. Bruce kept two cerastes, or horned snakes, in a glass jar for two years, without any apparent food; he did not observe that they slept in the winter season, and they cast their skin as usual on the last day of April. Rudolphi kept a _Proteus Anguinus_ five years, and Zoys had one for ten years living on spring water renewed from time to time. Redi found that birds could sustain the want of food from five to twenty-eight days. A seal lived out of the water and without nourishment for four weeks. Four individuals of a large species of larval shell, (_Bulimus_,) from Valparaiso, were brought to England by Lieut. Graves. They had been packed up in a box, and enclosed in cotton; two for a space of thirteen, one for seventeen, and a fourth for upwards of twenty months; but on being exposed to the warmth of a fire in London, and provided with tepid water and leaves, they revived and lived for several months in Mr. Loddige's palm house, till accidentally drowned. Dogs can live without food from twenty-five to thirty-six days, but man does not easily support starvation more than a week, except in disease or insanity.