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.
3 Or Bombardier Beetles. When disturbed, they eject a fluid which volatilizes, on contact with the air, with a slight report.—Translator's Note.
Distillers of corrosives, gunners throwing lyddite, bombers employing dynamite: what can all these violent creatures, so well equipped for battle, do beyond committing slaughter? Nothing. We find no art, no industry, not even in the larva, which practices the adult's trade and meditates its crimes while wandering under the stones. Nevertheless it is to one of these dull-witted warriors that I am deliberately proposing to apply to-day, prompted by the wish to solve a certain question. Let me tell you what it is.
You have surprised this or that insect, motionless on a bough, blissfully basking in the sun. Your hand is raised, open, ready to descend on it and seize it. Hardly have you made the movement when the insect drops to the ground. It is a wearer of armoured wing-cases, slow to disengage the wings from their horny sheath, or perhaps an incomplete form, with no wing-surfaces. Incapable of sudden flight, the surprised insect lets itself fall. You look for it in the grass, often in vain. If you do find it, it is lying on its back, with its legs folded, without stirring.
It is shamming dead, people will tell you; it is pretending, in order to escape its enemy. Man is certainly unknown to it; we count for nothing in its little world. What does it care for our hunting, whether we be children or scientists? It does not fear the collector with his long pin; but it realizes danger in general; and it dreads its natural enemy, the insectivorous bird, which swallows it with a single snap. To outwit the assailant, it lies upon its back, draws up its legs and simulates death. The bird, or any other persecutor, will despise it in this condition; and its life will be saved.
This, we are assured, is how the insect would reason if suddenly surprised. The trick has long been famous. Once upon a time, two friends, at the end of their resources, sold the skin of a Bear before they had killed the brute. The encounter was unfortunate: they had to take to their heels. One of them stumbled, fell, held his breath and shammed dead. The Bear came up, turned the man over and over, explored him with his paw and his muzzle, sniffed at his face:
"He smells already," he said and, without more ado, turned away.
That Bear was a simpleton.