CHAPTER VIII 



THE GOLDEN GARDENER. — ITS NUTRIMENT 



In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded 

 of the slaughter-pens of Chicago ; of those horrible 

 meat factories which in the course of the year cut up 

 one million and eighty thousand bullocks and seventeen 

 hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of 

 machinery alive and issue transformed into cans of 

 preserved meat, sausages, lard, and rolled hams. I am 

 reminded of these establishments because the beetle I 

 am about to speak of will show us a compatible 

 celerity of butchery. 



In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty- 

 five Carabi aurati. At present they are motionless, 

 lying beneath a piece of board which I gave them 

 for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their 

 backs warmed by the board, which is visited by the 

 sun, they slumber and digest their food. By good 

 luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in 

 process of descending from their tree in search of a 

 spot suitable for burial, the prelude to the phase of the 

 subterranean chrysalis. Here is an excellent flock for 

 the slaughter-house of the Carabi. 



I capture them and place them in the insectorium. 



102 



