BURYING-BEETLE. 217 



their future yonng. To determine these points more clearty, 

 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 two 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 curious 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, 

 continu-ed 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, apparently 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 morning, 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. Gleditsch con- 

 tinued to add other small dead animals, which were all 

 sooner or later buried; and the result of his experiment 

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

 small space of earth allotted to them, twelve carcasses, 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."* 



* Act. Acad. Berolin. 1752, et Gleditsch, Pliys. Botan,, quoted by 

 Kirby and Spence, ii. 353. ^ ' 



