extremity the flying members are neatly folded up and placed under their covers.

Parents and offspring are alike remarkable for the fierceness of their temperament. They attack and devour all kinds of insects. Worms they much enjoy, and pursue them through their long holes which to the gardener's great disgust, so often undermine the ground. The earthworms. are, however, very wary, and here and there make traps of dead leaves which greatly perplex the cocktail and often cause it to retreat. Such is the appetite of our beetle of the diabolical name and nature that it will devour its brothers and sisters, and even a decaying mouse or bird is regarded as a delicate banquet.

STAPHYLINUS
HIRTUS.

It is to this appetite of theirs that man is partially indebted for the sweetness and purity of the fields and lanes. The number of creatures which must of necessity die and fall to the earth every day would greatly mar the beauty of the country, to say nothing of the disease their putrefying bodies would scatter far and wide. Numbers of insects help, partly by taking a meal from them, partly by making them the provision for their offspring, and sometimes even by burying them, to remove the objectionable carcases.

The devil's coach-horse belongs to a family of rove beetles, whose wandering habits in search of prey have given them their name. The instincts of

the creature are such that, when attacking an enemy, it never fails to seize it in its most vulnerable spot; that is, between the head and the thorax. While holding on to this soft part with its strong jaws, it sucks the juices from its victim's body and never drops the unfortunate creature till nothing but the empty skeleton remains.

When its appetite as a larva is satisfied it burrows underground, and turns into the living death of a chrysalis. After it has lain wrapped in the shroud of the pupa covering for two or three weeks, it again comes forth into the light of day, and is distinguished from all other beetles by the swiftness of its running and flying.

Such is the appearance and life history of the most defiant and useful of insects. In its form and daring it may well justify its popular name; but, to the respect that must be felt for the great courage encased in the comparatively tiny body, may well be added a feeling of gratitude to the little creature who, throughout its active existence, devotes its life and strength to the sweetening of the earth and to the destruction of some of man's greatest pests. It looks like an enemy, and apparently acts like an enemy, but in reality its "bark is worse than its bite." Like the jolly miller of the Dee it goes on with its business, and seems to say—

"I care for nobody, no, not I,

And nobody cares for me."

ICHNEUMON.

CHAPTER XXXII.

ICHNEUMONS.

"THERE'S many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip," and there's many a peril 'twixt the egg and the insect. There goes a little beetle to deposit her ova. She walks round the stump of a tree; she penetrates to the inside

of the bark; she is evidently afraid that her brood will not be safe if laid in a conspicuous place, so, in the darkness of the rind-protected trunk, she deposits her young, and retires to die, under the impression that they are in an impregnable retreat.

Scarcely visible, by reason of the thinness of its body and the rapid

motion of its four filmy wings, an

ichneumon-fly has watched the whole proceeding. She wishes to dispose of her eggs, and at the same

time, to provide nourishment for the legless grubs that will develop therefrom. She thinks the embryo beetles will suit her children's appetite, but she is not

certain of the exact spot in which their mother has placed them. She does not seem inclined to go inside the bark on a voyage of discovery; so she taps on the outside with her quickly-moving, many-jointed,

thread-like antennæ, and evidently, by these organs, at last perceives their whereabouts. It is necessary that she should find them, because they are to serve as food for her own young. At last the place is found, and with her ovipositor she pierces the hard covering of the tree, and places her eggs amid those of the unconscious beetle. The young ichneumons devour the eggs which the beetle-mother took such pains to conceal.

Most of us enjoy a nicely-boiled cabbage with our

CATERPILLAR OF CABBAGE BUTTERFLY.

meat at dinner, but we little dream to what we are indebted for its preservation from the ravages of a certain green caterpillar, possessed of great nibbling powers, who is much fonder of cabbage than we are. Look at the ugly fat thing making havoc with the produce of the kitchen garden. What is there that will keep within bounds the destruction which would be caused were all the eggs laid by butterflies and moths developed into this voracious larvæ state?

The hair-like ovipositor of a female ichneumon-fly penetrates the delicate shell of these eggs, and places in the centre of each an ova of her own. When the outer shell is broken, instead of the grub that should