Fonder of shady nooks, the Procrustes form a separate company. They drag the Snail into their lair, under the shelter of a potsherd, and there, peacefully and in common, dismember the mollusc. They love the Slug, as easier to cut up than the Snail, who is defended by his shell; they regard the Testacella,[1] who bears a chalky shell, shaped like a Phrygian cap, right at the hinder end of her foot, as a delicious tit-bit. The game has firmer flesh and is less nauseously slimy.
[Footnote 1: Or Shell-bearing Slug, found along the shores of the Mediterranean.--_Translator's Note_.]
To feast gluttonously on a Snail whom I myself have rendered defenseless by breaking her shell is nothing for a warrior to boast about; but we shall soon see the Carabus display his daring. I offer a Pine-chafer, in the pink of strength, to the Golden Beetle, whose appetite has been whetted by a few days' fasting. The victim is a colossus beside the Golden Carabus; an Ox facing a Wolf.
The beast of prey prowls round the peaceful creature and selects its moment. It rushes forward, recoils, hesitates and returns to the charge. And lo, the giant is overthrown! Incontinently the other devours him, ransacking his belly. If this had happened in a higher order of the animal world, it would make one's flesh creep to watch the Carabus half immersed in the big Cockchafer and rooting out his entrails.
I test the eviscerator with a more difficult quarry. This time the victim is _Oryctes nasicornis_, the powerful Rhinoceros Beetle, an invincible giant, one would think, under the shelter of his armour. But the hunter knows the weak point of the horn-clad prey, the fine skin protected by the wing-cases. By means of attacks which the assailant renews as soon as they are repulsed by the assailed, the Carabus contrives to raise the cuirass slightly and to slip his head beneath it. From the moment that the pincers have made a gash in the vulnerable skin, the Rhinoceros is lost. Soon there will be nothing left of the colossus but a pitiful empty carcase.
Those who wish for a more hideous conflict must apply to _Calosoma sycophanta_, the handsomest of our flesh-eating insects, the most majestic in costume and size. This prince of Carabi is the butcher of the caterpillars. He is not to be overawed even by the sturdiest of rumps.