CICINDELA CAMPESTRIS. 
51 
which was furnished with hriglit shining eyes, and a pair 
of horrible jaws, held wide apart : these shears had doubt- 
less cut the thread of existence for many a poor wanderer, 
whose luckless star had led him to the abode of this child 
of Erebus. 
I cut off the gentleman's retreat by passing a stick into 
the sand sideways, so as to cross his burrow, and then with 
a bit of a jerk unearthed him and laid him sprawling. O, 
such a beauty ! the Parcae, sweet creatures, the Eumeni- 
des, gentle turtle-doves, were lovely in comparison : I'll 
describe the animal, with an eye to entomological science. 
Aspect, vicious : temper, ferocious : jaws, stuck on the 
wrong way, like a figure-head shipped looking aft : head, 
big : back, humped, the hump adorned with two hooks. 
When first unearthed, he was monstrous sulky, and lay 
twisted in a kind of half-kink, for all the world like a 
pot-hook : but he soon found the inconvenience of this, 
and set to work to make another hole, for which he used 
his feet and jaws, loosening the sand with his feet, and 
fetching it out with his jaws ; in this way he got down 
about half an inch, and then adroitly hanging himself to 
the edge of the hole by the hook in his back, he continued 
his labours in this droll position : at last he got quite out 
of sight, and as he did not come up again, I concluded he 
was taking a nap after his labour, and so I would not again 
disturb him. 
This ugly grub, as my friend tells me, is the larva of 
CiciNDELA CAMPESTRIS, a bcauliful green beetle, which 
is common in all sandy places in the summer, and pursues 
the whole insect race with unceasing ferocity. The gen- 
tleman runs and flies so fast as to puzzle the hunter, and, 
most commonly, to get away from him ; and when you do 
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