of the slope is the vestibule of the horizontal
gallery. Here, as a rule, the hunter lurks, motionless, with his
pincers half open. He is waiting.

There is a sound overhead. It is a specimen of game which I have just
introduced, a Cicada, a luscious morsel. The drowsy trapper at once
wakes; he moves his palpi, which quiver with cupidity. Cautiously,
step by step, he climbs his inclined plane. He takes a glance outside
the funnel. The Cicada is seen.

The Scarites darts out of his pit, runs forward, seizes the Cicada and
drags her backwards. The struggle is brief, thanks to the trap of the
entrance, which yawns like a funnel to receive even a bulky quarry and
contracts into a crumbling precipice that paralyses all resistance.
The slope is fatal: who crosses the brink can no longer escape the
murderer.

Head first, the Cicada dives into the abyss, down which the spoiler
drags her by successive jerks. She is drawn into the low-ceilinged
tunnel. Here the wings cease to flutter, for lack of space. She
reaches the knacker's cellar, at the end of the corridor. The Scarites
now works at her for some time with his pincers, in order to reduce
her to complete immobility, fearing lest she should escape; then he
returns to the mouth of the charnel-house.

It is not everything to possess plenty of game; the question next
arises how to consume it in peace. The door is therefore closed
against importunate callers, that is to say, the insect fills the
entrance to the tunnel with his mound of rubbish. Having taken this
precaution, he goes back again and sits down to his meal. He will not
reopen his hiding-place nor remake the pit at the entrance until
later, when the Cicada has been digested and hunger makes its
reappearance. Let us leave the glutton with his quarry.

The brief morning which I spent with him in his native place did not
enable me to watch him at his hunting, on the sands of the beach; but
the facts gathered in captivity are enough to tell us all about it.
They show us in the Scarites a bold hero who is not to be intimidated
by the biggest or strongest adversary.

We have seen him coming up from underground, falling on the
passers-by, seizing them at some distance from the burrow and dragging
them forcibly into his cut-throat den. The Rose-chafer, the Common
Cockchafer are but small deer for him. He dares to attack the Cicada,
he dares to dig his hooks into the corpulent Pine-chafer. He is a
fearless ruffian, rea