352 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



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 bud. 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 Avhich 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 continued 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, appa- 

 rently 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 un- 

 der ground, and the trench remained open the whole 

 day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a bier, sur- 

 rounded 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. Gle- 

 ditsch continued 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 in- 

 terred in the very small space of earth allotted to them, 

 twelve carcases : 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 



