CHAPTER IV 



The stag-beetle Evening flight Appearance 011 the wing Seek- 

 ing a mate Stag and doe in a hedge The ploughman and 

 the beetle A stag-beetle's fate Concerning tenacity of life 

 Life appearances after death A serpent's skin A dead glow- 

 worm's light Little summer tragedies A snaky spot An 

 adder's basking place Watching adders The adder's senses 

 Adder's habits not well known A pair of anxious peewits 

 A dead young peewit Animals without knowledge of death 

 Removal of the dead by ants Gould's observations on ants. 



DURING the last week in June we can look for the 

 appearance of our most majestical insect; he is an 

 evening flyer, and a little before sunset begins to 

 show himself abroad. He is indeed a monarch among 

 hexapods, with none to equal him save, perhaps, the 

 great goblin moth ; and in shape and size and solidity 

 he bears about the same relation to pretty bright flies 

 as a horned rhinoceros does to volatile squirrels and 

 monkeys and small barred and spotted felines. This 

 is the stag-beetle " stags and does " is the native 

 name for the two sexes ; he is probably more abundant 

 in this corner of Hampshire than in any other locality 

 in England, and among the denizens of the Forest 

 there are few more interesting. About four or five 

 o'clock in the afternoon, the ponderous beetle wakes 

 out of his long siesta, down among the roots and 

 dead vegetable matter of a thorny brake or large 



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