378 PICCOLETTA AND THE PECGHIO. 



entrance into, and her exit from, the wonderful ball ; but its 

 chief mysteries were still unravelled. Who could tell what 

 that ball had to do with the Ogre and his pitfall? how it 

 first came there? how a winged shape, with pinions of ex- 

 pansion many times wider than itself, could have issued, 

 apparently, from the globe? and how the Ogre's remains were 

 found in its interior? 



Not, certainly, the citizens of Monticello, to whom all these 

 things were as the work of a magician. 



A pantomime with its machinery exposed would be a sorry 

 spectacle, stripped at once of its amusing and surprising cha- 

 racter ; but there are certain pantomimic incidents of which 

 the theatre is the insect world, and in which the part of 

 harlequin is played by Nature, that cannot be thus marred, for 

 the more they are elucidated the more do they raise our admira- 

 tion. Of this description are the marvels which compose the 

 history of the " Formica Leo/' " Ant-lion," or Ogre of Ants, 

 on which our " Tale of an Ogre " has its foundation. 



The Ant-lion is not a frequenter, now-a-days, of Britain ; 

 not exactly, therefore, a subject for our exhibition ; but it has a 

 place in British catalogues, and having, as it would thence 

 appear, been found once, it may still have lurking-places in our 

 island. This conjecture is considered the more probable from 

 its being a native of central France and Switzerland as well as 

 more southern Europe. At all events, it is sufficiently rare in 

 this country to constitute a " Lion " indeed among English 

 insects, and, as such, better worth the seeking. The wily and 

 cruel grub of the Ant-lion 1 (the Ogre of the pitfall) is a grey- 

 coloured ring-bodied insect, in form not very dissimilar to a 

 woodlouse, only much larger, and with six, instead of many 

 legs ; but its most conspicuous distinction consists in a pair of 

 tremendous jaws, each pointed and curved like a sickle, and 

 forming together a forceps-like weapon, wherewith, being 

 tubular, it can at once seize, pierce, and suck the blood, or, 

 1 See Vignette. 



