50 
SINGULAR LARVA OF 
withered grass sticking up out of it, the runners of which 
crawled along the top, or just below the top, as the case 
might be, now and then shooting down a root to hold fast 
by ; and looking altogether something as though an old 
tanned fishing-net had been thrown over the soil to keep it 
from blowing away, and had shot out and taken root at the 
knots, just for its own amusement, or as a hold, in case the 
sea-breezes should be too much for it. In this place, stop- 
ping to pick up a feather, I saw something move in the 
sand, but as soon as T could fix my eye on it, all was still, 
and I could only find a little hole, as round as though some 
one had stuck a common lead pencil into the sand and ta- 
ken it out again. There was a neat and perfect roundness 
in the hole, which told me at once it was a tenement of 
some kind ; and sundry cases of beetles, legs of gnats, and 
dried dew-moths, scattered round it, signified, moreover, 
that it was inhabited by some sort of inhuman Polyphemus. 
I was soon down on my knees, and had my knife out ready 
for digging, when, within a foot of the first, I saw another 
stir — and another round hole instantly appeared. It now 
occurred to me that I might, with quietness and patience, 
get a sight of one of these hermits while he was sunning 
himself : I therefore lay as still as a cat watching at a 
mouse-hole, and was soon rewarded by seeing the gentle- 
man make his appearance almost close under my nose. 
Unluckily, like Alexander, I had placed myself between 
the sun and my Diogenes, and this seemed to make him 
very fidgetty and uneasy, so I obliged him by moving qui- 
etly out of the way, and letting the sun shine on him, by 
the same movement bringing my eye within about fifteen 
inches of him. Nothing appeared but a broad flat head, 
which fitted very accurately the mouth of the hole, and 
