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of the Burying Beetles at work, busy in the process of interring a 

 female yellowhammer, but still life falls a long way short of nature. 

 You need hardly expect naturally to find all the beetles on one 

 bird; but in the district of the true burying beetles, the 

 one you will commonly find is the handsome black and orange 

 insect JSJecrophorus ruspator; one of them is set with elytra 

 raised and wings spread, to give yoii an idea of the extent 

 of them. The pair in deep black are N. humator, the most 

 common sexton beetle, we believe, in the south of England. 

 The other two pairs are Silpha thoracica and Silpha obscura. 



In the autumn months of the year, just when slight frosts are 

 changing the color of the leaves, numbers of the common Shrew 

 (Sarex araneus) may be found lying dead in the fields and 

 pathways without any apparent injury, as if some disease had 

 swept them off. We have examined a great number of these in 

 search of the Burying Beetle, but have never yet been successful in 

 finding it. Dogs, we believe, will not touch the dead shrew. 



In the next section of beetles, the Lamellicornia or Chafers, we 



have to introduce to you a rather handsome, quiet and harmless 



looking insect, but one which is not to be judged by its looks. 



Taking the Cock Chafer (Melolontha vulgaris) in all the stages of 



its existence, we should think that the insect world could hardly 



produce a greater destroyer of vegetable life. Though in this part 



of the country it does not exist in sufficient numbers to cause its 



^ ravages to be felt ; yet in some of our southern counties, whole 



H cornfields and pasture lands will be completely ruined by the larva 



■ , of the Cock Chafer, which feeds on the roots of grasses and grass- 



' like plants. The perfect insect is quite as destructive as the grub, 



and in certain years when it is plentiful, rows of trees may be seen 



I with not a leaf on them, but their branches covered with Cock 



Chafers. And yet this is nothing to the damage they do in France, 

 districts being completely laid bare as if a plague of locusts had 

 swept over them. The children of one small town caught fourteen 

 thousand in a few days, the farmers got tired of counting them after 

 I that and measured them by the bushel. There, their bodies are 



not allowed to waste, but boiled down for a coarse kind of fat, 



15 



