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In vain I turned over the ground and the prey, but I could only find four of them. On a path leading to a glen, we noticed some cicindelas. Lucien began chasing them, but the agility of his enemies soon baffled him. "How malicious these flies are!" he cried; "I can't succeed in catching one of them." "They are not flies, but coleoptera, allied to the Carabus family. Give me your net."
While observing my cicindelas on that morning, my attention was at length diverted by an old friend of mine, who gave promise of much entertainment a tiny black wasp, whose restless, rapid, zigzag, apparently aimless wanderings over the ground brought him into continual danger of contact with the snatching jaws of the cave-dwelling tiger, from which, however, he somehow escaped, though I distinctly heard the occasional clicking of the eager jaws.
Lucien was anxious to obtain one of them, and at length was successful. He was delighted with the beautiful metallic color of their brown elytra, dotted over with yellow spots; but the insect, after having bitten him, escaped. "What jaws they have!" he said, shaking his fingers; "it's a good thing those creatures are very small. Do cicindelas live in woods?"
For my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they were fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea, or lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as ripe barley does o' nights in my country.
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