50 SINGULAR LARVA OF 



withered grass sticking up out of it, the runners of which 

 crawled along the top, or just below the top, as the case 

 might be, now and then shooting down a root to hold fast 

 by; and looking altogether something as though an old 

 tanned fishing-net had been thrown over the soil to keep it 

 from blowing away, and had shot out and taken root at the 

 knots, just for its own amusement, or as a hold, in case the 

 sea-breezes should be too much for it. In this place, stop- 

 ping to pick up a feather, I saw something move in the 

 sand, but as soon as I could fix my eye on it, all was still, 

 and I could only find a little hole, as round as though some 

 one had stuck a common lead pencil into the sand and ta- 

 ken it out again. There was a neat and perfect roundness 

 in the hole, which told me at once it was a tenement of 

 some kind ; and sundry cases of beetles, legs of gnats, and 

 dried dew-moths, scattered round it, signified, moreover, 

 that it was inhabited by some sort of inhuman Polyphemus. 

 I was soon down on my knees, and had my knife out ready 

 for digging, when, within a foot of the first, I saw another 

 stir and another round hole instantly appeared. It now 

 occurred to me that I might, with quietness and patience, 

 get a sight of one of these hermits while he was sunning 

 himself: I therefore lay as still as a cat watching at a 

 mouse-hole, and was soon rewarded by seeing the gentle- 

 man make his appearance almost close under my nose. 

 Unluckily, like Alexander, I had placed myself between 

 the sun and my Diogenes, and this seemed to make him 

 very fidgetty and uneasy, so I obliged him by moving qui- 

 etly out of the way, and letting the sun shine on him, by 

 the same movement bringing my eye within about fifteen 

 inches of him. Nothing appeared but a broad flat head, 

 which fitted very accurately the mouth of the hole, and 



