

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 155 



CHAPTER IV. 



HUNTING INSECTS. 



MANY insects live solely by hunting, and the measures 

 they resort to in this pursuit would justify a division into 

 distinct classes. 



Some pursue their prey over hills and thickets, and at- 

 tack it with the courage of a lion. The Carabi, their robes 

 gleaming with gold and blue, and the active tiger beetles, 

 are of this class. And yet neither their beauty nor their 

 unappreciated services find favor with man ; instead of pro- 

 tecting these useful auxiliaries of agriculture, which every 

 day annihilate so many of the destructive species, he de- 

 stroys them without pity. 



Others, not less ardent in the pursuit of prey, but much 

 more ingenious, stretch out nets or construct insidious 

 snares, into which their victims inevitably plunge. 



The life of insects presents some anomalies which are not 

 seen in other animals ; totally different habits being met 

 with in species almost physically identical. Thus we have 

 seen that the nymph of our magnificent dragon-fly (Libel- 

 lula) lives in the mud of the marshes ; on the other hand, 

 the larva of another kind, which resembles it in every re- 



the sacred dung-beetle in the environs of Rome, occupied on the little hills of 

 Tivoli in rolling its balls, and in Upper Egypt I found them at the same task in 

 November. Perhaps, also, on the borders of the Nile they do not all make use 

 of dung, as in Europe. In the part where I saw them busy forming their balls, 

 the river was bordered by a wide desert, so that it was difficult to see where they 

 could have found dung. Their balls seemed entirely made of Nile mud. 



