The Simulation of Death 



not to move, if really your chief resource, 

 when danger threatens you, is to simulate 

 death. 



On the contrary, at those critical moments, 

 you give a start; you move, you resume your 

 normal attitude, you run away. Your fraud 

 is discovered; or, to put it more plainly, 

 there is no trick. Your inertia is not simu- 

 lated; it is real. It is a condition of tempo- 

 rary torpor into which you are plunged by 

 your delicate nervous organization. A 

 mere nothing makes you fall into it; a mere 

 nothing withdraws you from it, above all a 

 bath of light, that sovran stimulus of activity. 



In respect of prolonged immobility as the 

 result of emotion, I find a rival of the Giant 

 Scarites in a large black Buprestis, with a 

 flour-speckled corselet, a lover of the black- 

 thorn, the hawthorn and the apricot-tree. 

 His name is Capnodis tenebrionis, LIN. 

 At times I see him, with his legs closely 

 folded and his antennae lowered, prolonging 

 his motionless posture upon his back for more 

 than an hour. At other times the insect is 

 bent upon escaping, apparently influenced by 

 atmospheric conditions of which I do not 

 know the secret. One or two minutes' im- 

 mobility is as much as I can then obtain. 



Let me recapitulate: in my various sub- 

 381 



