54 OUT OF DOORS. 



that I opened a gleam of rich metallic purple caught 

 my eye. It was well below the bark, and buried in the 

 soft decayed wood, and had it not been that a bright 

 ray of sunshine happened to light upon it, I should 

 perhaps have missed it altogether. On picking away 

 the wood a fine specimen of the Purple Ground Beetle 

 (Carabus catenulatus) was disclosed in my opinion 

 one of the handsomest of our British beetles, with its 

 rich purple thorax, and the purple edging of its beauti- 

 fully sculptured and elegantly shaped elytra. 



To find one of these beetles is easy enough, because 

 it is one of our commonest species. But I certainly 

 never expected to find it in such a position. It is one 

 of the predacious beetles, and both in its larval and 

 perfect condition is a destroyer of other insects, so that 

 unless it fed while in the larval state upon the wood- 

 eating insects that inhabited the stump, I can scarcely 

 account for its presence. It was not a beetle which 

 had merely hidden itself under the bark by way of 

 finding shelter, for the beautifully perfect condition of 

 the insect showed that it had not as yet undergone any 

 battle with the world. Moreover, it was hidden rather 

 deeply in the wood, and was not merely lying under 

 the bark. I think, therefore, that it must have fed 

 while in the larval state upon the insects which in- 

 habited the stump, and have crawled into the spot 

 where it lay for the purpose of undergoing its trans- 

 formation. Under the bark of the same stump, and in 



