NOTES ON ANTS' NEST BEETLES. 79 



pleasure and profit which I had culled in a path previously 

 untrodden in this country, little expecting that sordid amor 

 habendi, which rampant and strong as I well know it to be 

 in the majority of collectors, would have led them to exclude 

 me henceforth from all participation in the dainty dish 

 which I had set before them. And what has science gained 

 at the hands of these unprincipled waste-laying free- 

 booters ? 



Have they contributed one solitary fact to our store, 

 thrown one dim ray of light on the mysterious relationship 

 between the ant and its beetle guest ? 



Science to these men is a mere outward garb, a sort of 

 west-end paletot, which imparts an air of respectability to 

 the wearers, and to their sordid selfish acts the semblance 

 of scientific research. 



But, granting in full to these buccaneers the validity of 

 the plea, that they, albeit unconsciously, further science, — 

 since when " they to sorrow come," or he who waits for no 

 man clutches them in his iron grasp, their ill-gotten gain 

 passes into other, mayhap better, hands, — I will stoop to 

 their grovelling understandings, and view the matter in a 

 business light. 



What then have they gained commensurate with the dire 

 destruction they committed, and the imminent risk they in- 

 curred of an apprenticeship to the art of oakum-picking ? 



Not one species have they added to the List, or, I trow, 

 the sycophant the captain of the gang, the ant's nest 

 ravager par excellence, would long since have announced 

 his fig with smiles benign, and the pseudo-suavity and 

 affected modesty common to his class, yet in degree pe- 

 culiarly his own, and which have won for him both tuft 

 and place. 



" nimium ne credere colori." — Virg. Eccl. ii. 27. 



