means of attacks which the
assailant renews as soon as they are repulsed by the assailed, the
Carabus contrives to raise the cuirass slightly and to slip his head
beneath it. From the moment that the pincers have made a gash in the
vulnerable skin, the Rhinoceros is lost. Soon there will be nothing
left of the colossus but a pitiful empty carcase.

Those who wish for a more hideous conflict must apply to _Calosoma
sycophanta_, the handsomest of our flesh-eating insects, the most
majestic in costume and size. This prince of Carabi is the butcher of
the caterpillars. He is not to be overawed even by the sturdiest of
rumps.

His struggle with the huge caterpillar of the Great Peacock Moth[2] is
a thing to see once, not oftener: a single experience of such horrors
is enough to disgust one. The contortions of the eviscerated insect,
which, with a sudden heave of the loins, hurls the bandit in the air
and lets him fall, belly uppermost, without managing to make him
release his hold; the green entrails spilt quivering on the ground;
the tramping gait of the murderer, drunk with slaughter, slaking his
thirst at the springs of a horrible wound: these are the main features
of the combat. If entomology had no other scenes to show us, I should
without the least regret turn my back upon my insects.

[Footnote 2: Cf. _The Life of the Caterpillar_: chap.
xi.--_Translator's Note_.]

Next day, offer the sated Beetle a Green Grasshopper or a White-faced
Decticus, serious adversaries both, armed with powerful lower jaws.
With these big-bellied creatures the slaughter will begin anew, as
eagerly as on the day before. It will be repeated later with the Pine-
chafer and the Rhinoceros Beetle, accompanied by the usual atrocious
tactics of the Carabi. Even better than these last does the Calosoma
know the weak point of the armoured Beetles, concealed beneath the
wing-cases. And this will go on so long as we keep him provided with
victims, for this drinker of blood is never satiated.

Acrid exhalations, the products of a fiery temperament, accompany this
frenzy for carnage. The Carabi elaborate caustic humours; the
Procrustes squirts a jet of vinegar at any one who takes hold of him;
the Calosoma makes the fingers smell of mouldy drugs; certain Beetles,
such as the Brachini,[3] understand explosives and singe the
aggressor's whiskers with a volley of musketry.

[Footnote 3: Or Bombardier Beetles. When disturbed, they eject a fluid
which