178 
DR. ADAMS’S CAPTURE OF 
Chap. XI. 
study, smoking a little clay cutty-pipe, and think- 
ing chiefly of the contempt in which I should be 
held if some of my ‘ very particular ’ friends saw 
me in this very disreputable ‘ rig,’ for my neck 
was hare, and my coat was an old blue serge, and 
as for my hat, it was brown felt, and, I must say, 
a ‘shocking bad one.’ However, the sun was 
bright, the clear blue rippling sea was calm, the 
little island was clear and verdurous, and I smoked 
serenely. On a sudden my abstract downward 
gaze encountered a grotesque Coleopteron in a suit 
of black, stalking slowly and deliberately among 
the driftwood at my feet — stepping cautiously 
over the spillacan twigs, like a Catholic priest in 
a crowded thoroughfare. At once I knew my 
coleopterous friend to be Damaster blaptoides ; for 
although my eyes are small, yet I have been 
assured by a young lady friend of mine — some- 
times irreverently called ‘Polly’ — that they are 
penetrating ; and my friend Adam White, when 
he warned me not to forget my ‘Carabs,’ had 
sent me a rough outline of the ‘ corpus ’ of Da- 
master. So I carefully lifted my unresisting sable 
friend from his native soil, and, after giving him 
a good long stare, I deposited him in a bottle. 
From his name and appearances, I judge him to 
be cousin to Blaps, and I turned over the rockweed 
for his brothers and other relations; but though 
Helops was there, Damaster was not. Puzzled, but 
not baffled, I conceived his taste might be more 
particular, so I ascended the steep green sides of 
