factories which in the
course of the year cut up one million and eighty thousand bullocks and
seventeen hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of machinery alive
and issue transformed into cans of preserved meat, sausages, lard, and
rolled hams. I am reminded of these establishments because the beetle I
am about to speak of will show us a compatible celerity of butchery.

In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati. At
present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave
them for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed
by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their
food. By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in
process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for
burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis. Here is
an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.

I capture them and place them in the insectorium. The procession is
quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred
and fifty, move forward in an undulating line. They pass near the piece
of board, one following the other like the pigs at Chicago. The moment
is propitious. I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war: that is to
say, I remove the plank.

The sleepers immediately awake, scenting the abundant prey. One of them
runs forward; three, four, follow; the whole assembly is aroused; those
who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the
passing flock. It is a sight never to be forgotten. The mandibles of the
beetles are at work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the
van, in the rear, in the centre; the victims are wounded on the back or
the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their
contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment,
the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with
loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and
gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately
in the attempt to take refuge underground. Not one succeeds. They are
scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them
by an eviscerating wound.

If this massacre did not occur in a dumb world we should hear all the
horrible tumult of the slaughter-houses of Chicago. But only the ear of
the mind can hear the shrieks and lamentations