did creature grips my fingers, grips my tweezers
and insists on getting up the moment that I lay it on its back. The
second readily becomes immobile; but how brief is its attitude of
death! Four or five minutes at most.

A Melasoma-beetle, _Omocrates abbreviatus_, OLIV., whom I frequently
discover under the broken stones on the neighbouring hills, continues
motionless for over an hour. He rivals the Scarites. We must not
forget to add that very often the awakening takes place within a few
minutes.

Can he owe his long period of inertia to the fact that he is one of
the Tenebrionidae, or Darkling Beetles? By no means, for here in the
same group is _Pimelia bipunctata_, who turns a somersault on his
round back and finds his feet the moment he has turned over; here is a
Cellar-beetle (_Blaps similis_, LATR.), who, unable to turn with his
flat back, his big belly and his welded wing-cases,[1] struggles
desperately after a minute or two of inertia.

[Footnote 1: The Cellar-beetle is one of the wingless
Beetles.--_Translator's Note_.]

The short-legged Beetles, trotting along with tiny steps, ought, one
would think, to make up in cunning, more fully than the others, for
their incapacity for rapid flight. The facts do not correspond with
this apparently well-founded forecast. I have consulted the genera
Chrysomela,[2] Blatta,[3] Silpha, Cleonus,[4] Bolboceras,[5] Cetonia,
Hoplia, Coccinella,[6] and so on. A few minutes or a few seconds are
nearly always long enough for the return to activity. Several of them
even obstinately refuse to sham death.

[Footnote 2: Golden-apple Beetles.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 3: Blackbeetles or Cockroaches.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 4: A genus of Weevils.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 5: A mushroom-eating Beetle. Cf. _The Life of the Fly_:
chap. xviii.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 6: Ladybirds.--_Translator's Note_.]

As much must be said of the Beetles well-equipped for pedestrian
escape. Some remain motionless for a few seconds; others, more
numerous still, behave in an ungovernable fashion. In short, there is
no guide to tell us in advance:

"This one will readily assume the posture of a dead insect; this one
will hesitate; that one will refuse."

There is nothing but shadowy probabilities, until experiment has given
its verdict. From this muddle shall we draw a conclusion which will
set our minds at rest? I hope so.

CHAPTER XV
SUICIDE OR HYPN