One day, then, in July, in the cool stillness of the dawn, I was botanizing on the foreshore at Cette. For the first time I plucked the _Convolvulus soldanella_, which trails along the high-water mark its ropes of glossy green leaves and its great pink bellflowers. Withdrawn into his white, flat, heavily-keeled shell, a curious Snail, _Helix explanata_, was slumbering, in groups, on the bent grasses. The dry shifting sands showed here and there long series of imprints, recalling, on a smaller scale and under another form, the tracks of little birds in the snow which used to arouse a delightful flutter in my youthful days. What do these imprints mean? I follow them, a hunter on the trail of a new species. At the end of each track, by digging to no great depth, I unearth a magnificent Carabus, whose very name is almost unknown to me. It is the Giant Scarites (_S. gigas_, FAB.). I make him walk on the sand. He exactly reproduces the tracks which put me on the alert. It was certainly he who, questing for game in the night, marked the trail with his feet. He returned to his lair before daylight; and now not a single Beetle is to be seen in the open. Another characteristic thrusts itself upon my notice. If I shake him for a moment and then place him on the ground upon his back, he remains a long time without stirring. No other insect has yet displayed such persistent immobility, though I confess that my investigations in this respect have been only superficial. The detail is so thoroughly engraved on my memory that, forty years later, when I want to experiment on the insects which are experts in the art of simulating death, I at once think of the Scarites. A friend sends me a dozen from Cette, from the very beach on which I once passed a delightful morning in the company of this skilful mimic of the dead. They reach me in perfect condition, mixed up in the same package with some Pimeliae (_P. bipunctata_, FAB.), their compatriots in the sands beside the sea. Of these last, a pitiable crew, many have been disembowelled, absolutely emptied; others have merely stumps instead of legs; a few, but only a few, are unwounded. It was what one might have expected of these Carabidae, lawless hunters one and all. Tragic events took place in the box during the journey from Cette to Serignan. The Scarites gormandized riotously on the peaceable Pimeliae. Their tracks, which I followed long ago on the actual spot, bore evidence to their nocturnal rounds, apparently in search of their prey, the pot-bellied Pimelia, whose sole defence consists of a strong armour of welded wing-cases.[4] But what can such a cuirass avail against the bandit's ruthless pincers? [Footnote 4: The Pimelia is a wingless Beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]