SANITARY OFFICERS 239 



are pests ; from Nature's point of view all stored-up 

 animal remains, whether hams, skins or feathers, 

 fresh joints, fish or poultry, from which life has 

 departed, are fair game for beetles, blow flies, and 

 other scavengers. It is useless to rail against 

 natural laws ; they have been evolved not for 

 man's convenience, but for the proper governance 

 of the world as a whole. We must either submit 

 to them or set our wits to work to suspend their 

 operation so far as our property is concerned. 



The naturalist has a special pest of the same 

 tribe of beetles. From Nature's point of view the 

 naturalist is a great accumulator of rubbish, and 

 in consequence these sanitary officers keep a very 

 strict eye upon him. What though he puts away 

 his hoards in glazed cases that are guaranteed 

 air-tight by the makers, and pins nice little blocks 

 of camphor in the corners ? The glass lids have 

 to be lifted sometimes to take out or put in " speci- 

 mens," and now and then a watchful inspector 

 in the shape of a House Moth or a Museum Beetle 

 contrives to drop in an egg or two — perhaps con- 

 cealed in the fur of a new specimen — and when 

 the case is inspected a few months later the opera- 

 tions of the resulting grub are evident. 



This Museum Beetle {Anthrenus musceorum) is one 

 of the most efficient of these sweepers-away of 

 dead matter, though not when it is in the beetle 

 stage. Then it has a fondness for the open air and 

 fresh flowers ; it is as a grub that it performs its 

 important work. 



