218 NATURES STORY OF THE YEAR 



One could not easily discover how this noise was 

 made. At last, however, the long spiny legs were 

 seen to be raised sideways and pressed against the 

 hard wing-cases at the moment of the snapping. 

 The flight alone was engrossing to watch some- 

 times a glide, sometimes as devious as that of a 

 scared butterfly, and it would be extended to a 

 distance of a hundred yards or more. 



One day, when a snapper was playing about the 

 road in front of the house where I lived at Van- 

 couver, a fowl thought to " put him in her crop " 

 and chased him. The insect went off at speed, 

 but so did the fowl, using her wings to help her 

 along. The insect dodged up and down, but the 

 fowl nearly had him ; and then he began snapping 

 loudly. The fowl was confounded ; she stopped, 

 shook her head, meditated for a few seconds, and 

 turned away. So our black friend escaped. 



We well knew that insect. When the sun 

 peeped over the eastern mountains he would come 

 to our verandah and bask on the warming boards. 

 Often during the day would he go snapping by, or 

 make little excursions over the shrubs in a vacant 

 plot on the other side of the road. He soon 



