138 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



and on examining it again at the end of six days, he found it 

 swarming with maggots apparently the issue of the beetles, 

 which, M. Gleditsch now naturally concluded had buried the 

 carcase for the food of their future young. To determine these 

 points more clearly, he put four of these insects into a glass 

 vessel half filled with earth, and properly secured, and upon 

 the surface of the earth two frogs. In less than twelve hours 

 one of the frogs was interred by two of the beetles : the other 

 ran about the whole day as if busied in measuring the dimen- 

 sions of the remaining corpse, which, on the third day, was 

 also found buried. He then introduced a dead linnet. A pair 

 of the beetles were soon engaged upon the bird. They began 

 their operations by pushing out the earth from under the 

 body so as to form a cavity for its reception ; and it was cu- 

 rious to see the efforts which the beetles made by dragging at 

 the feathers of the bird from below to pull it into its grave. 

 The male having driven the female away, continued the work 

 alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place, 

 turned it and arranged it in the grave, and from time to time 

 came out of the hole, mounted upon it, and trod it under foot, 

 and then retired below and pulled it down. At length, ap- 

 parently wearied with this uninterrupted labour, it came forth 

 and leaned its head upon the earth beside the bird, without 

 the smallest motion, as if to rest itself, for a full hour, when 

 it again crept under the earth. The next day, in the morn- 

 ing, the bird was an inch and a half under ground, and the 

 trench remained open the whole day, the corpse seeming as 

 if laid out upon a bier, surrounded with a rampart of mould. 

 In the evening it had sunk half an inch lower, and in another 

 day the work was completed and the bird covered. M. Gle- 

 ditsch continued to add other small dead animals, which were 

 all, sooner or later, buried ; and the result of this experiment 

 was, that in fifty days four beetles had interred, in the very 

 small space of earth allotted to them, twelve carcases, viz. 

 four frogs, three small birds, two fishes, one mole and two 

 grasshoppers, besides the entrails of a fish and two morsels 

 of the lungs of an ox. In another experiment a single beetle 

 buried a mole forty times its own bulk and weight in two days. 

 It is plain that all this labour is incurred for the sake of pla- 

 cing in security the future young of these industrious insects 

 along with a necessary provision of food. One mole would 

 have sufficed a long time for the repast of the beetles them- 

 selves, and they could have more conveniently fed upon it 

 above ground than below. But if they had left thus exposed 

 the carcase in which their eggs were deposited, both would 

 have been exposed to the imminent risk of being destroyed at 

 a mouthful by the first fox or kite that chanced to espy them. 



