102 LONDON INSECTS 



If it were the case, no Londoner possessing ordinary 

 feelings and a taine Hedgehog would be able to sleep 

 a wink for thought of the wholesale tortures of which 

 his kitchen would be every night the scene. The 

 services of the Hedgehog in keeping within bounds 

 the rather disgusting flabby Orthoptera familiarly 

 known to cooks and housemaids as ' Black-beetles,' but 

 not in the true sense of the word ' Beetles ' at all 

 cannot, sentiment notwithstanding, be spoken of too 

 highly. 



As a matter of fact, Beetles have extraordinary 

 tenacity of life, and apparently very little sense of 

 pain. A good little boy, who combined with a passion 

 for collecting insects a tender heart the two qualities 

 are apt to clash at times, but a boy may be taught to 

 study Nature and make collections without any pro- 

 miscuous killing caught and brought home in triumph 

 one day a big Beetle, the catch of his season. It was 

 consigned to a poison bottle, strong enough to have 

 exterminated a family of Butterflies, and taken out in 

 due course dead. But as after a time there was a 

 suspicion of something like galvanic movement in one 

 leg, to make assurance doubly sure, it was put into 

 boiling water, and when all possibility of latent life was 

 past, pinned for the cabinet. Some days afterwards 

 the Beetle was met deliberately walking down the front 

 stairs, carrying with it the pin, which it had drawn 

 from the cork for itself, with as much sangfroid as if 

 it had been a smart gentleman strolling down St. James's 

 Street with a gold-headed cane under his arm. Had 



