WATER-TIGERS. 61 



the dark and narrow tomb had no attractions for 

 him. He refused to act as his own sexton, so I 

 returned him to the water, where, in spite of the 

 earth, with which he was furnished a few days 

 after, and which he manipulated with his jaws, 

 seeming to have a sort of cobwebby substance be- 

 tween them, he at last apparently drowned. Tak- 

 ing him out, I placed him on the earth again, but 

 he was too far gone to do more than faintly wrig- 

 gle his feet and tail, perchance, in token of adieu, 

 for he died in truth this time and never had the 

 pleasure of burying himself. Ah, well ! " The 

 good die young." 



The full-grown, perfect beetles that come from 

 these larvse have a habit, when sitting still, of 

 holding their long oar-like hind-legs curved up 

 over their backs, instead of letting them lie 

 stretched out in the water, the way the water-boat- 

 men do with their oars. Another peculiarity of 

 the DytisddcB is their bubbles. You should see a 

 dozen dark-brown beetles, some of them perhaps 

 an inch long, standing on their heads at the bot- 

 tom of a jar of water, each beetle having at its 

 posterior end a shining round bubble of air. Oc- 

 casionally, from some collision or sudden calam- 

 ity, one of the beetles looses his bubble. Up the 

 round thing flies through the water to the surface, 

 and the bubble-less beetle is seldom long in rush- 

 ing up to protrude the end of his body and grasp 

 another round bubble with which he comes rush- 



