COLLOQUIA ENTOMOLOGICA. 



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curl up, grows in size as well as in height, sometimes reach- 

 ing sixty feet, and being visible at a distance of two or three 

 miles. In the course of a few hours after we started the 

 second day we found two of these pillars ; the finders then 

 marked the stems of fir-trees as we passed along, so as to in- 

 sure the finding of them again without any trouble, and we got 

 back before night to the hut of the wolf slaughter. 



Erro. And did they visit you again ? 



Rus. Which ? the manes of the departed pack, or their 

 companions that escaped? Ay! {Erro smiled blandly.) We 

 heard them howling at a distance, but saw none ; I had, how- 

 ever, the good luck to bring down an enormous elk, as he was 

 gamboling by at a three-quarter gallop, and in the morning, 

 when we turned out, he was devoured all except the horns and 

 a part of the skull, which I brought home as a trophy. 



Erro. What do they measure ? 



Rus. Seven feet one inch and an eighth from tip to tip. 



Ent. Less than the extinct Irish elk : that spans eleven 

 feet and three-eighths of an inch. 



Rus. What giants there must have been on the earth in 

 those days ! Mammoths big as houses ; crocodiles as long as 

 the monument, and flying, fiery, scaly dragons, horrible enough 

 to make one shudder : think of their toothed bills ! 



Erro. Pterodactyliis. 



Rus. The same : geology has disclosed wonders. 



Erro. It has, indeed; I used to underrate it, but I have 

 read Charles Lyell's book now, and I have altered my opinion; — 

 but we are losing sight of the bear-hunt. 



Rus. O the rest is not worth telling ; the pomp of the 

 court, and parade of wealth and splendour, of gold, and green, 

 and ermine, and all manner of furs, you may imagine ; — then 

 the old father bear issues from his den and stands upright on 

 his hind legs like a human bear ; then the firing of rifles, often 

 twenty or thirty before he drops on all-fours ; then the spatter- 

 ing of his blood, glistening in the languid sunshine, as it drops 

 on the snow ; then his bounding like a calf up to the imperial 

 retinue ; then his rearing up again for the attack ; then the 

 cleaving of his head by a peasant with an axe ; then his exit 

 from the strife, interspersed with an account of his invincible 

 courage, his stoical endurance of pain without a whisper of 

 repining, and the excellence of his hams, scientifically cured ; 



