In order fully to understand his mode of procedure, however, I must first call your attention to another animal which really is what the Devil's Coach-horse mendaciously pretends to be: and that is the common scorpion. His mode of fighting is well known to most of us. In illustration No. 1 Mr. Enock has given us a delineation of a frantic death-struggle between such a scorpion and a large and powerful southern spider. The venomous creature with the stinging tail is on the left; the spider is on the right. As far as mere size goes, the antagonists are fairly well matched: but the scorpion is the best armed, both with offensive and defensive armour. His lobster-like or crab-like claws enable him to hold his enemy's limbs in his grip as in a vice: then, at the critical moment, he bends over his tail, in the extremity of which his sting is situated, and plunges it with force through the comparatively slight skin of the spider's body or thorax, injecting at the same moment a pungent drop of his deadly poison. This characteristic action of the scorpion in curving its tail over its body and raising its sting in a menacing attitude is well known to birds and other enemies of the species: often the mere threat of a thrust is a sufficient deterrent: the dangerous beast just elevates its poisonous appendage or assumes an angry mien, and the inquisitive intruder is frightened away immediately. It is the same with ourselves. The bare sight of that uplifted sting suffices to repel us. Even a child who saw a scorpion once arch its back and prepare to strike with its reversed tail would instinctively understand that there was danger ahead, and would withdraw its hand before the venomous creature had time to pounce upon it.
Owing to these unamiable personal traits of the scorpion race, it is not popular among other animals. But to be feared is to be respected; and scorpions for the most part are left severely alone, under the stones where they love to lurk, by the various denizens of the districts they inhabit. Now, it is a fact in nature as in human life that to be successful is to have many imitators. Thus a number of harmless flies dress up like wasps in black and yellow bands, and so escape the too pressing attentions of insect-eating birds and other enemies. They have no stings, to be sure, but they look so like the wasps, and flaunt about so fearlessly in their borrowed uniform, that they are universally taken for the insects they mimic; even the cautious entomologist himself stares at them twice and makes quite sure of his specimen before he ventures to lay hands on any such doubtful masquerader. I hope in a future article to give some further account (with illustrations) of these facts of mimicry, as it is called: for the present we will stick close to our text, the Devil's Coach-horse. For this familiar English beetle is an imitator of the scorpion, and obtains immunity from the attack of enemies to a great extent by pretending to powers which are not his in reality.
2.—THE DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE IN HIS HOURS OF EASE.
In No. 2 we have a portrait of the Coach-horse in his hours of ease, seen from above, engaged in doing nothing in particular. He does not look like a flying insect, but he is. He has a long pair of wings tucked away in folds under his horny wing-cases, and he can use them with great effect, for he is one of our swiftest and strongest fliers—the long-distance champion, I almost fancy, among the beetles of England, unless indeed the tiger-beetle be pitted against him. But when crawling on the ground, and attacked or menaced, he does not take to flight or show the white feather: being a pugnacious and spirited little beast, he bridles up at once, and endeavours incontinently to terrify his assailant. In No. 2 you see him from above when he is merely engaged in crawling along the ground, looking as mild as milk, and as gentle as any sucking dove: you would hardly suppose he could show fight or raise his hand—I mean his antennæ—to injure anyone. But in No. 3 he is represented in his favourite act of attacking a caterpillar: for he is really a very voracious and courageous carnivore. In the autumn, when Devil's Coach-horses are usually most abundant, you can easily catch them by putting a piece of meat or a dead frog under an empty flower-pot, and then tilting the edge up with a stone, so that the beetles can crawl in and get at the food thus temptingly laid out for them.
3.—THE DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE SAMPLING A CATERPILLAR.
If you disturb the Coach-horse, however, while he is engaged in eating his quiet meal, or even when he is walking at leisure along a country road, he puts himself at once into his "terrifying" attitude, and imitates the scorpion. No. 4 exhibits him in this military character, cocking up his tail and pretending he can sting—which is only his brag: he just does it to frighten you. But the attitude is so exactly like that of the scorpion, that it almost always produces an immediate effect: hardly anybody likes to molest a Devil's Coach-horse. If you put down your hand to touch him, and he rears in response, ten to one you will withdraw it in alarm at sight of him. In England these beetles often enough find their way into larders or cellars, seeking whom or what they may devour; and when the servants light upon them, they almost invariably decline to touch them: there is a general opinion about that the ugly and threatening black beasts are uncanny and poisonous, or else why should they turn up their tails at you in such an insulting fashion?
4.—THE DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE PRETENDS TO BE A SCORPION.