118 THE BURYING BEETLE. 



always a sort of sadness in its sound, perhaps because it 

 reminds us of Gray's ' Elegy/ perhaps because, being most 

 often heard towards autumn, it comes like a requiem of 

 departing summer. 



Allied to the above, as belonging to the useful company of 

 insect scavengers, are the " Burying Beetles,"* so called from 

 their being accustomed to perform the office of grave-diggers 

 to defunct frogs, birds, moles, " mice, and such small gear/ 7 

 whose bodies would else cumber the ground more extensively. 

 A common species of this serviceable family of the Coleop- 

 terous order is a pretty-looking insect, considerably smaller 

 than the " great dor/ 7 and easily distinguishable from that and 

 other black beetles by two broad scalloped bands of deep 

 orange-colour painted across its black wing-cases, which are 

 a good deal shorter than the body, and have the appearance of 

 being truncated, or abruptly cut across the ends. The thorax, 

 head, and legs are of a deep black, also the body ; the latter 

 fringed at the sides and articulations with yellowish hairs ; the 

 antennae knobbed and foliate at the tips. 



We must inquire now into the " burying beetle's " motive 

 of incitement to its laborious occupation of interment. It is 

 not certainly the promotion of our sanitary benefit that the 

 creature has in view ; neither, we suppose, has respect for the 

 dead or their families much to do with its burial of animal re- 

 mains. The incentive to the work is not to be found in mere 



* Necrophorus vesjnlfo. See Vignette. 



