brevitic

— If the life of some animals is short, so is their office small. The frame of a living thing seems proportional in duration, elegance, and strength, to the object of its life. The more perfect, according to our notions, the mechanism of a creature, the more important seems its operations. Some live but one summer ; some only a day ; many are born, grow old, and die, all in the space of an hour. Still how important, in the whole, may these brevitic existences be !