I move ten paces farther from him, to the other end of the room. I hide, I do not move a muscle, for fear of breaking the silence. Will the insect pick itself up? No, my precautions are superfluous. Alone, left to itself, perfectly quiet, it remains motionless for as long a time as when I was standing close beside it.
Perhaps the clear-sighted Scarites has seen me in my corner, at the other end of the room; perhaps a subtle scent has revealed my presence to him. We will do more, then. I cover him with a bell-glass which will save him from being worried by the Flies and I leave the room; I go downstairs into the garden. There is no longer anything likely to disturb him. Doors and windows are closed. Not a sound from without; no cause for alarm indoors. What will happen in the midst of that profound silence?
Nothing more and nothing less than usual. After twenty, forty minutes' waiting out of doors, I come upstairs again and return to my insect. I find him as I left him, lying motionless on his back.
This experiment, many times repeated with different subjects, throws a vivid light upon the question. It expressly assures us that the attitude of death is not the ruse of an insect in danger. Here there is nothing to alarm the creature. Around him all is silence, solitude, repose. When he persists in his immobility it cannot now be to deceive an enemy. I have no doubt about it: there is something else involved.
Besides, why should he need special defensive artifices? I could understand that a weak, pacific, ill-protected insect might resort to ruses when in danger; but in him, the warlike bandit, so well armoured, it is more than I can understand. No insect on his native sea-shore has the strength to resist him. The most powerful of them, the Sacred Beetle and the Pimelia, are easy-going creatures which, so far from molesting him, are fine booty for his burrow.
Can he be threatened by the birds? It is very doubtful. As a Carabus, he is saturated with acrid humours which must make his body a far from pleasing mouthful. For the rest, he lives hidden from the light of day in a burrow where no one sees him; he emerges only at night, when the birds are no longer inspecting the beach. There are no beaks about for him to fear.