He is a flesh-eater. Let us take a small piece of meat or fish in a pair of forceps, or stuck on a pointed stick, and hold it at a little distance from his great eyes. The chances are that he will not see it. Even if we put it in front of him, he is quite likely to disregard it, for he has nothing corresponding to a nose, with which he may smell. From his head there spring a pair of long feelers--the antennae--and by means of these we will let him know that his dinner is ready. That is effected by drawing the food along the side of one of the antennae. The creature undergoes a sudden change. Till the antenna was touched with the food he was resting on his swimming legs. But in a moment down goes his tail and up goes his head, he stretches out his raptorial legs, and clutches wildly at the forceps or stick, as the case may be, holding so tight that he may be dragged round and round the glass vessel. Let go he will not, of his own accord; and it would be a difficult matter to shake him off. Similar experiments may be tried with other Beetles, and the result will be to impress on the mind the fact that the feelers are capital sense-organs. If we are to turn our Beetle to the best account, we shall need to handle him. It may be inconvenient to wait till he dies, so we will kill him quickly and painlessly by plunging him into boiling water, and he may be preserved by putting him into a tube containing about equal parts of water and spirit, or a five per cent. solution of formalin. Dissections should properly be made under water. The Beetle should be fastened, back upwards, to a piece of cork weighted with lead, and placed in a deep saucer, or dissecting dish, and covered with water. But a good deal of rough dissection, as is ours, may be done in air, and the Beetle may be fastened to any convenient piece of board, or even held in the palm of the left hand. Very little practice is needed to run over the external parts of a large Beetle in this manner. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--Outline of Dytiscus (male). _a_, antenna; _b_, maxillary palp; _c_, eye; _d_, fore-leg; _e_, thorax; _f_, middle leg; _g_, elytron; _h_, suture; _i_, hind leg; _j_, claw; _k_, tarsus or foot; _l_, tibia or shank; _m_, femur or thigh; _n_, first three joints of foot, widened into a plate with suckers beneath.] First, let us look over our Beetle, and get some general notions of its make. As it lies, back upwards, it is clear that it consists of three parts or regions------------[image], the first of which is the head, the second the thorax, and the third the abdomen. Not only in our Beetle, but in Insects generally, these parts correspond to the words that denote them, in that the thorax is longer than the head, and the abdomen longer than the thorax, as shown by the three dashes, a few lines above.