THE BEETLES. 347 



it in a very ingenious fashion without danger to their soft 

 bodies. They dig chimney-shaped pits in the ground willi 

 their strong pointed-feet, in and out of which they climb by 

 alternate motions of tHeir bodies, like a sweep in a chimney. 

 Holding their heads quietly at the entrance of their hole 

 and to a certain extent stopping it up thereby, they wait 

 with th'eless patience for insects running over. As soon as 

 one of these treads oil the dangerous spot the larva pulls its 

 head back quickly and the insect falls into the hole and 

 becomes the prey of the robber. This game is continually 

 repeated. When the larva is ready to spin its cocoon, it 

 simply walls in the entrance of its hole. 



If the field Cicindela is put with other insects which serve 

 it as food, as house-flies, worms, caterpillars, other beetles, 

 etc., it tries first of all to sever the head from the body of 

 its victim, or to tear and bite off wings and legs, so that it 

 cannot escape. It then cuts from within outwards, so that 

 only the empty shell remains. The murderer often tears 

 open the abdomen of its prey, and devours the entrails while 

 the latter is still alive and trying to escape. Caterpillars, 

 worms, or soft larvae are also gnawed from the abdomen 

 upwards, and slowly eaten up from behind forwards while 

 still alive. 



The predacious and greedy Staphylinus species also, which 

 show much resemblance in their life-habits with the running- 

 beetles, act in the same way as the Cicindela;. Dr. Nagel, 

 of Schmolle, watched the fight of Stajihylinus maxillosus with 

 the larva of a Tenebrio molitor, the so-called meal-worm. 

 At first the grasp of the beetle slid off from the hard, 

 smooth, chitinous somites of the worm. At last, however, 

 it caught the worm so tightly by the neck that it could not get 

 free, spite of all twistings and turnings. They both wrestled 

 together like two dogs, which seize each other by the fore- 

 feet and rise on their hind-legs. At last they fell, and the 

 head of the worm was torn from the convulsively twisting 

 body. The beetle now devoured the worm, with great 

 anatomical skill twisting off one somite after another from 

 the soft abdominal wall, so as to be able to get at the 

 inside. In other cases the beetle at once gnawed at the 

 abdominal wall, and began thence its work of destruction. 



An artificially-induced fight between a Cicindela and a 

 running-beetle (Caralus) had no result, both creatures 



