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.
The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the difficulties of attack.

The beetle has no endless chain to seize its victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and avoid its feet and its mandibles.

Moreover, the beetle eats its prey on the spot as it kills.

What slaughter there would be if the insect confined itself to killing! What do we learn from the slaughter-houses of Chicago and the fate of the beetle's victims?
This: That the man of elevated morality is so far a very rare exception.