This to my mind gives us a most vivid picture of the conditions of latent life in seeds and many rotifera.
"The Mechanism of Life"
Stéphane Leduc
If they had exhausted their lives all at once and without these intermissions, these rotifera and paste-eels would not have lived beyond sixteen or eighteen consecutive days.
"Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon"
J. Emerson Tennent
I cannot resist, although it is rather long, quoting the following description from Hudson and Gosse's beautiful work on the rotifera:- On the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and not far from Clifton, is a little combe, at the bottom of which lies an old fish-pond.
"The Pleasures of Life"
Sir John Lubbock