The Cicada, [27] another spendthrift of energy, who from morning till night, in the dog-days, never ceases singing by jerking his abdomen up and down, beating time to the cadence of his cymbals, likewise dies very speedily. Talents have to be paid for: where the dull-witted hold out, the gifted succumb. The large Beetles, in their horny armour, are invulnerable. Never will the Scorpion, a clumsy fencer who lunges at random, find the narrow joints in their breast-plates. As for piercing the hard wrapper at some spot or another, this would need a protracted effort, which the patient would hardly permit in the scuffle of his defence. Besides, these boring-tactics are unknown to the brutal Scorpion, who delivers a sudden stab. One region alone lends itself to the sudden onslaught of the sting. This is the upper surface of the abdomen, which is quite soft and protected by the wing-cases. I uncover this region by holding up the wings and wing-cases with a pair of tweezers; or again I first remove both with the scissors. This mutilation is not a serious matter and would not prevent the patient from surviving quite a long time. The insect is presented to the Scorpion in this condition. It is chosen among the largest, Oryctes, [28] Capricorn, [29] Scarab, [30] Carabus, [31] Cetonia, [32] Cockchafer, [33] Geotrupes. [34] All perish by the sting, but the length of the death-struggle varies very greatly. To give a few examples: after convulsive stretching of the limbs, the Scarab Beetle hoists himself on his legs as high as he can, hunches his back and marks time, for lack of co-ordination in the locomotor mechanism. He capsizes, incapable of recovering his footing; he kicks wildly. At length, in a few hours, immobility sets in; the insect is dead. The Capricorns, Cerambyx heros, who lives in the oak, and C. cerdo, who lives in the hawthorn and the cherry-laurel, begin in the same way with a sort of cataleptic fit which sometimes lasts for a fairly long time. To some of them death does not come until the next day; others are unable to hold out for more than three or four hours. The result is the same with the Cetonia or Rose-chafer, the Common Cockchafer, and the magnificently antlered Pine-chafer. [35] A pitiful sight is that of the Golden Carabus, or Gold Beetle, [36] dying of the sting. Unable to stand on its legs convulsively extended into stilts, the insect tumbles over, picks itself up again, again falls down and again hoists itself to its feet, only to fall once more. The tip of the intestine, with its horny armour, sticks out and swells as though the creature were about to discharge its entrails; the crop belches a black torrent that swamps the head; the golden wing-cases, lifting their cuirass, reveal the poor nudities of the abdomen. Next morning, the tarsi are still quivering. Death is not far off. The swarthy Procrustes, the Gold Beetles’s near kinsman, comes to his end in the same wretched fashion. To him we shall return.