fifteen times consecutively, at the will of
the naturalist. One dries up a rotifer: good night to him; somebody
soaks him a little, and he wakes up to bid you good day. All depends
upon taking great care while he is dry. You understand that if any one
should merely break his head, no drop of water, nor river, nor ocean
could restore him.

"The marvellous thing is, that an animal which cannot live more than a
year, like the minute worm in grain-smut, can lie by twenty-four years
without dying, if one has taken the precaution of desiccating him.

"Needham collected a lot of them in 1743; he presented them to Martin
Folkes, who gave them to Baker, and these interesting creatures revived
in water in 1771. They enjoyed a rare satisfaction in elbowing their own
twenty-eighth generation. Wouldn't a man who should see his own
twenty-eighth generation be a happy grandfather?

"Another no less interesting fact is that desiccated animals have vastly
more tenacity of life than others. If the temperature were suddenly to
fall thirty degrees in this laboratory, we should all get inflammation
of the lungs. If it were to rise as much, there would be danger of
congestion of the brain. Well, a desiccated animal, which is not
absolutely dead, and which will revive to-morrow if I soak it, faces
with impunity, variations of ninety-five degrees and six-tenths. M.
Meiser and plenty of others have proved it.

"It remains to inquire, then, if a superior animal, a man for instance,
can be desiccated without any more disastrous consequences than a little
worm or a tardigrade. M. Meiser was convinced that it is practicable; he
wrote to that effect in all his books, although he did not demonstrate
it by experiment.

"Now where would be the harm in it, ladies? All men curious in regard to
the future, or dissatisfied with life, or out of sorts with their
contemporaries, could hold themselves in reserve for a better age, and
we should have no more suicides on account of misanthropy.
Valetudinarians, whom the ignorant science of the nineteenth century
declares incurable, needn't blow their brains out any more; they can
have themselves dried up and wait peaceably in a box until Medicine
shall have found a remedy for their disorders. Rejected lovers need no
longer throw themselves into the river; they can put themselves under
the receiver of an air pump, and make their appearance thirty years
later, young, handsome and triumphant, satirizing the ag