Note 39 — Chapter XI · BEGINS TO PUBLISH HIS OBSERVATIONS.

“The superstitious notion, that a spider shut up without food for a year is transformed into a diamond, has probably cost many of these insects their lives; and if the eradication of ancient prejudices be as serviceable to science as the discovery of new truths, the poor spiders may console themselves with the honour of martyrdom as justly as the innumerable frogs, who betrayed, amid their tortures, the mystery of galvanism. In this, as in other things, people have obtained a very different and perhaps more important result than they had expected. It appears that though spiders do not turn to diamonds, they can live a long time without food. An insect of this species, inclosed in a box for this rational purpose, was found alive after the poor sufferer had been forgotten for five years.”—Ackermann’s Repository, January 1815.