158 ' INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



beetles. Having thus acquired a taste for insect food, 

 we found it not a little difficult to prevent them from 

 destroying our whole collection by eating through the 

 wood-work of the drawers. Rabbits, however, are 

 occasionally much more carnivorous. A poulterer, 

 near Covent Garden, having some live rabbits in a 

 hutch, upon the top of which he had placed some 

 fowls ready for the spit, with their heads hanging 

 down over the bars, and within reach of the rabbits, 

 we remarked that they had gnawed away almost the 

 whole head of one. The poulterer told us that this, 

 which appeared so anomalous to us, was by no means 

 of uncommon occurrence. What is still more remark- 

 able, however, a friend of ours had a litter of rabbits, 

 about two months old, which were not separated from 

 their dam; when she unexpectedly produced a second 

 litter. But the elder brood, as if determined not to 

 be supplanted by their younger brethren, fell upon 

 them, and, tearing off their limbs, devoured them with 

 evident relish.* Even the mother rabbit will some- 

 times also eat some of her own offspring, particularly 

 should these appear sickly ; and the same unnatural 

 appetite has been observed among cats and swine. | 



It has never occurred to us to witness any of the 

 dragon-Hies {LibelluUna, Mac Leay) preying upon 

 their own kindred, though they will often drive away 

 intruders from their hawking stations ; yet it is by no 

 means improbable that they may, upon occasion, 

 make a meal of a conquered relative. Their habits 

 very much resemble those of the flycatchers {Miisci- 

 capidce, Vigors), among birds, as, like them, they 

 frequently select a post, or a leafless branch, as a 

 station from which they make frequent excursions 

 upon the insect tribes on the wing around them. 



* J. R. 



t Architecture of Birds, chap, xiv, Parasite Birds. Darwin, 

 Zoonomia, xvi, 5. 1. 



