506 PRIVATE LIVES OF INSECTS. 



premium-ize essays on the turnip fly. I think mine contains 

 all that is known on the subject; — I don't say this as a boast, 

 but because mine is genuine experiment; and though the Society 

 may write and write till Cockneyland is drained of ink, they 

 can't experiment; they can't live six or eight years in the 

 country ; they can't trace the grub upwards from the eggs, as 

 I have done, watching them shift their skins, and go through 

 every process : they can't do this ; the essays, though ever so 

 ingenious, must be smoke, because the means — the capability 

 — there's a word ! — of observation, is not within their reach. 

 Yet the Society is right in this, right at bottom ; but who are 

 to be the judges ? I'll tell you, Mr. Editor ; the judges will be 

 persons who don't know a turnip flea or a turnip by sight, 

 unless they see the latter at a greengrocer's, or on the table ; 

 and these persons will decide on the essays by the length 

 thereof, and the learning thereof, and the one that is most pro- 

 found, and most above their comprehension, will receive the 

 prize. But gently ! the Society means well, and I leave no safe 

 ground for these comments. I know neither the proposer nor 

 the writer, nor the judge of the prize; for decency sake, I sup- 

 pose these to be two persons at least. I shall certainly come 

 to the Society's meeting when they are to be read; in the 

 mean time, I will hint to the candidate for fame that the eggs 

 are not laid on the seed, as I once supposed. All this is a 

 preface to two little stories. 



Private Life of the Burying Beetle. 



Ever since I first wore that garment, which in this privileged 

 country is supposed to imply that the wearer thereof is, or is 

 to be, one of the lords of the creation, the house and premises 

 situate to the west of Godalming, and extending from the town 

 to the Gill property at Eshing, have been known by the name 

 of Godbold's : before that great era in the affairs of men, when 

 it pleased my mother to clothe me in the noble garb before 

 alluded to, it was denominated Oglethorpe's. On these subjects, 

 bursting, as they seem to be, with all those factelli, or little 

 facts, which make a story pleasant, I must be silent for the pre- 

 sent; the only object I have in mentioning Godbold's, is to say 

 that it was there I watched the manoeuvres of the burying 



