WHIRLIGIGS. 83 



lies in your hand, stiff, with his legs folded in 

 death. But if the beetle himself is solemn, some- 

 times his eyes are ghastly. The compound eyes 

 of these Whirligigs are very curious objects. One 

 would surely think in looking at the dead beetle 

 that he had four distinct eyes, two in the usual 

 place, and two others under his chin, so to speak. 

 In one beetle, long-dead, that I examined, the 

 under eyes were the more ghastly. They looked 

 white, like a human eye that had neither iris nor 

 pupil, while the pair of eyes above showed black 

 inside a rim of the same whitish color. In a bee- 

 tle just dead both pair of eyes look black. The 

 eyes under the chin, of course, are the ones that 

 the Whirligig always keeps under water to see if 

 any enemy is coming up from below. 



How can a beetle be sensitive to knocks when 

 he is incased in such an armor as this ? The Gy- 

 rinidce look as if they had suits of steel. Not for 

 them are the scratches and bumps of life. It 

 is enough to make human beings wonder how it 

 would seem to be so safely shut in from all pricks, 

 and one looks at one's finger-nails, remembering 

 the old Jewish tradition that Adam and Eve at 

 first were entirely covered with finger-nail, but, 

 after the fall, this invulnerable panoply dropped 

 off, and mortals since then have had skins that 

 could be hurt. Nevertheless the finger-nails were 

 left that the first pair might always remember 

 Eden's freedom from pain, when they looked at 

 their hands. 



