Something in the appearance of the big beetle, both flying and when seen on the ground in his wrathful, challenging attitude, strikes the rustics of these parts as irresistibly comic. When its heavy flight brings it near the labourer in the fields, he knocks it down with his cap, then grins at the sight of the maltreated creature's amazement and indignation. However weary the ploughman may be when he plods his homeward way, he will not be too tired to indulge in this ancient practical joke. When the beetle's flight takes him by village or hamlet, the children, playing together in the road, occupied with some such simple pastime as rolling in the dust or making little miniature hills of loose sand, are suddenly thrown into a state of wild excitement, and, starting to their feet, they run whooping after the wanderer, throwing their caps to bring him down. [Sidenote: A stag-beetle's fate] One evening at sunset, on coming to a forest gate {75} through which I had to pass, I saw a stag-beetle standing in his usual statuesque, angry or threatening attitude in the middle of the road close to the gate. Doubtless some labourer who had arrived at the gate earlier in the evening had struck it down for fun and left it there. By-and-by, I thought, he will recover from the shock to his dignity and make his way to some elevated point, from which he will be able to start afresh on his wanderings in search of a wife. But it was not to be as I thought, for next morning, on going by the same gate, I found the remains of my beetle just where I had last seen him--the legs, wing-cases, and the big, broad head with horns attached. The poor thing had remained motionless too long, and had been found during the evening by a hedgehog and devoured, all but the uneatable parts. On looking closely, I found that the head was still alive; at a touch the antennæ--those mysterious jointed rods, toothed like a comb at their ends--began to wave up and down, and the horns opened wide, like the jaws of an angry crab. On placing a finger between them they nipped it as sharply as if the creature had been whole and uninjured. Yet the body had been long devoured and digested; and there was only this fragment left, and, torn off with it, shall we say? a fragment of intelligent life!