INSECT VAEIETY. 133 



pleasantly coloured with orang-e ; and these nocturnally bury 

 dead birds and mice in our gardens, for which task the sexes wing 

 at evening in pairs, guided by scent. This occupation, as with 

 fossorial bees, is mainly undertaken to form a nidus for their 

 ova, and it is performed mostly, as Gleditsh has long ago 

 recorded, by the male, who laboriously shovels out the earth 

 beneath the carcase with his head and thorax. On picking up a 

 belated Burying Beetle, fresh from his work, we find it invariably 

 exudes a musky aroma and produces a buzzing sound — provisions 

 that doubtless supplement colour in effecting companionship and 

 gregariousness. And in this case it is evident, from a protrusion 

 and contraction of the abdominal segments accompanying the 

 music, that when the breathing is augmented and accelerated, 

 as in the exertion of excavation, the beetle must be most pre- 

 disposed to stridulation. The limae [1) of these Burying Beetles 

 (Plate III., Figs. 6 and 1), are two somewhat posteriorly con- 

 verging, rounded and slightly lenticular, parallel striated ridges, 

 situated centrally on the dilated and horny fifth dorsal arc. 

 They creak by moving these against a raised indurated ridge [s] 

 about '86 Mm. long, situated at a slight distance from the 

 sinuated extremity of the elytron beneath; and this musical 

 movement is favoured by the membranous condition of the 

 sub-elytral dorsal arcs. The stridulation, which can in a measure 

 be reproduced in dry specimens from the cabinet, is strongest. 

 Dr. Landois fancies, during the protrusion of the abdomen. 

 The same writer enumerates 153 striae in the limse of N. mor- 

 tuorum, 126 to 140 in those of N. vesjnllo, and 133 only in 

 those of the large black N. humator (Fig. 7), and gives their 

 length and maximum breadth from •23 x 1*95 Mm. to '2 x 2*2 

 Mm. ; they likewise converge about "S — "l^B Mm. posteriorly. 

 So that we have here ample reason for specific sound colour in 

 each kind. These beetles appear confined to Paliearctic and 

 Nearctic regions. 



We are able in Lamellicornia to trace further the opera- 

 tion of the stimuli to the emotions of fear, love, and rivalry, and 

 the files or limse show every degree of development, and are veiy 

 variously situated at the apex or base of the abdomen, on the 

 elytra or coxae of the hinder legs, on the pro thorax beneath. 

 The stercorarious groups of Dung Beetles exhibit pageants 



