WATER-TIGERS. 73 



Water -tigers will probably be when I can af- 

 ford to hire a small boy to bring me a small pail- 

 ful of black toad-polliwogs daily. 



Dytiscus pupa. 

 The Monarch at rest. 



I have read that in 1258 the commons of Cas- 

 tile bluntly required the king " to bring his ap- 

 petite within a more reasonable compass." And 

 the king meekly assented to the proposition. But 

 what is a king compared with a Water - tiger ? 

 The former might agree to being deprived of any- 

 thing he wanted to eat, but the latter would rebel. 

 Pliny tells of men living on the smell of the river 

 Ganges. But though the odor arising from some 

 of the pools in which Water-tigers live is quite 

 perceptible at times, yet the creatures hardly seem 

 to thrive on that alone. For Water -tigers are 

 not candidates for Nirvana, and therefore do not 

 subsist on " insipid food," as those worthies were 

 expected to. Like the Macdonalds of Glencoe, 

 the Tigers have, indeed, " been guilty of many 

 black murthers." But then, one can hardly ex- 

 pect the Water-tigers to practise such abstinence 



