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The topmost one, curiously enough, contained a small crab, together with a large water-beetle at the farther end. Both seemed rather self-conscious, and there was no hint of fraternizing. The beetle seemed to be merely existing until darkness, when he could fly to more water and better company; and the crab appeared to be waiting for the beetle to go.
The great carnivorous water-beetle, the dytiscus, after catching and eating other creatures all day, with two-minute intervals to come up, poke the tips of its wings out of the water and jam some air against its spiracles, before descending once more to its subaqueous hunting-grounds, will rise by night from the surface of the Thames, lift again those horny wing-cases, unfold a broad and beautiful pair of gauzy wings, and whirl off on a visit of love and adventure to some distant pond, on to which it descends like a bullet from the air above.
Why, it's all vanity, dandy habits, fatuity. He should have continued his career in Petersburg, if that's his bent. But there, enough of him! I've found a rather rare species of a water-beetle, Dytiscus marginatus; do you know it? I will show you. 'I promised to tell you his story, began Arkady. 'The story of the beetle? 'Come, don't, Yevgeny. The story of my uncle.
Presumably rites of a similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do not eat flies or beetles. Their original purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for a totem.
The little salmon, a plucky fellow, fought hard for his life, and swam round and round, up and down, hither and thither, trying to escape from this terrible murderer; but it was no use, he could not free himself from his grip; and while the poor little wretch was giving the last few flutterings of his tail, the water-beetle proceeded coolly to peck out his left eye, and to devour it at once."
The wide eye noted everything, and considered it, even to the hairy red fly alit on the fern frond, or the skirring progress of the black water-beetle across the pale surface of the Perdu.
One was a sort of water-beetle that swam near the surface; while the other was a winged insect that occasionally rose into the air, but more generally crawled along the water making short runs from place to place, then stopping a moment, and then darting on again.
Its appearance alone was enough to daunt all rivals. Even the great black carnivorous water-beetle, with all its strength and fighting equipment, was careful to give wide berth to that dreadful, quick-darting mask. Had these little wolves been as numerous as they were rapacious, there would soon have been left no life at all in the pool but theirs and that of the frogs.
This is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation seems at first confined to the elements of air and water.
He knew my advantages as well as I knew them myself, and bore me no ill-will for them. "The Dyticus marginalis, or Great Water-Beetle," I have heard him say, in the handsomest manner, "is equally at home in the air, or in the water. Like all insects in the perfect state, it has six legs, of which the hindmost pair are of great strength, and fringed so as to serve as paddles.
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