254 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



devour it, others depositing in it eggs from which are 

 soon hatched larvcB that concur in the same office with 

 tenfold voracity: and thus every particle of dung, at 

 least of the most oftensive kinds, speedily swarms with 

 inhabitants which consume all the liquid and noisome 

 particles, leaving nothing but the undigested remains, 

 that soon dry and are scattered by the winds, while the 

 grass upon which it rested, no longer smothered by an 

 impenetrable mass, springs up with increased vigour. 



Numerous are the tribes of insects to which this of- 

 fice is assigned, though chiefly if not entirely selected 

 from the two orders Coleoptera and Diptera. A large 

 proportion of the genera formed, by different authors, 

 from Scarahwus of Linne, viz. Scarabceus, Copria, Ateu- 

 chus, Sist/phits, Oniiis, Onthophagus and Aphodius^ and 

 Psammodius ; also Histcr, Sphmridium, F. and amongst 

 the Staph?/linidcB, the majority of Sfaphj/lini, many Ale- 

 ocharce^ especially of Gravenhorst's third family, many 

 Oxt/teli and some Omalia, Tachini and Tachi/pori, of 

 that author, including in the whole many hundred spe- 

 cies of beetles — unite their labours to effect this useful 

 purpose : and what is remarkable, though they all work 

 their way in these filthy masses, and at first can have no 

 paths, yet their bodies are never soiled by the ordure 

 they inhabit. Many of these insects content themselves 

 with burrowing in the dung alone ; but Ateuchiis pilu- 

 larius % a species called in America the Tumble-diwg, 



^ The Coprion, Cantkarus, and Heliocantharus o{ the ancients was evi- 

 dently this beetle, or one nearly related to it, which is described as rolling 

 backwards large masses of dung, and attracted such general attention as 

 to give rise to the proverb Cantharus pilulam. It should seem from the 

 name, derived from a word signifying an ass, that the Grecian beetle made 

 its pills of asses' dung; and this is confirmed by a passage in one of the 



