"How long do they live normally?"
"About twenty to thirty hours. At the outside their life is not more than thirty-six hours. These are somewhat older."
I gazed at the little creatures crawling aimlessly about. Aimless, did I say? There they were, filling up the floor of the glass case, moving with difficulty, getting in each other's way, sprawling and colliding, apparently without aim or purpose. At that spectacle my thoughts might well have taken a leap into the future and seen, instead of a crowded mass of butterflies, a crowded mass of humanity. I asked Sarakoff a question.
"How old are they?" I expected to hear they had existed perhaps a day or two beyond their normal limit.
"They are almost exactly a year old," was the reply. I stared, marvelling. A year old! I bent down, gazing at the turbulent restless mass of gaudy colour. A year old—and still vital and healthy!
"You mean these insects have lived a whole year?" I exclaimed, still unconvinced.
He nodded.
"But that is a miracle!"
"It is, proportionately, equal to a man living twenty-five thousand years instead of the normal seventy."
"You don't suggest——?"