In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati.  At present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave them for shelter.  Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their food.  By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis.  Here is an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.

I capture them and place them in the insectorium.  The procession is quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred and fifty, move forward in an undulating line.  They pass near the piece of board, one following the other like the pigs at Chicago.  The moment is propitious.  I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war:  that is to say, I remove the plank.

The sleepers immediately awake, scenting the abundant prey.  One of them runs forward; three, four, follow; the whole assembly is aroused; those who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the passing flock.  It is a sight never to be forgotten.  The mandibles of the beetles are at work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the van, in the rear, in the centre; the victims are wounded on the back or the belly at random.  The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles.  Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to take refuge underground.  Not one succeeds.  They are scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them by an eviscerating wound.

If this massacre did not occur in a dumb world we should hear all the horrible tumult of the slaughter-houses of Chicago.  But only the ear of the mind can hear the shrieks and lamentations of the eviscerated victims.  For myself, I possess this ear, and am full of remorse for having provoked such sufferings.

Now the beetles are rummaging in all directions through the heap of dead and dying, each tugging and tearing at a morsel which he carries off to swallow in peace, away from the inquisitive eyes of his fellows.  This mouthful disposed of, another is hastily cut from the body of some victim, and the process is repeated so long as there are bodies left.  In a few minutes the procession is reduced to a few shreds of still palpitating flesh.

There were a hundred and fifty caterpillars; the butchers were twenty-five.  This amounts to six victims dispatched by each beetle.  If the insect had nothing to do but to kill, like the knackers in the meat factories, and if the staff numbered a hundred—­a very modest figure as compared with the staff of a lard or bacon factory—­then the total number of victims, in a day of ten hours, would be thirty-six thousand.  No Chicago “cannery” ever rivalled such a result.