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A EOMANCE OF BEETLE LIFE." 



[By Mr. Thomas Blashill.] 



A few years ago, being at Naples with my wife, we went out to wander for a day 

 among the ruins of Pompeii. Whether you like it or not (and as it happened we 

 did not need it) you must be guided and guarded there by a Government official, 

 responsible that no mischief is done by you to the contents of the exhumed city. 

 The guide allotted to us spoke a sort of French, but we found that he had 

 increased the difficulties of communication between us by getting under the 

 influence of liquor, though the day was still young. He was shocked when this 

 was pointed out to him, and entered into such ingenious explanations of the 

 peculiarities in his gait, speech, and countenance, that I was in danger of losing 

 my case against him, and perhaps my temper too. Our discussion was, however, 

 cut short by an attack of illness that compelled him to recline under the shade of 

 a large monument in the Street of the Tombs, where he soon fell fast asleep. A 

 condition so unusual with these sober Italians surprised us, and we could only 

 conjecture that he had learnt this bad habit where he learnt his French — our 

 opinion of the French nation falling a little in consequence. However that might 

 be, we were, through no fault of our own, left free to roam about the city as 

 we would ; and yet, I will say, that my collection of Pompeiiau antiquities is 

 smaller than that of any other visitor whom I know. 



It was a brilliant day towards the end of April ; the sun brought out 

 everything in bright light and black shadow. Passing over a paved space, once 

 the atrium of a lajge house, we noticed something moving among the fragments 

 of brick thinly scattered about the surface. It proved to be a dirty-looking, 

 whitish brown, irregularly round ball that was being pushed along by a pair of 

 large-sized black beetles. It was, perhaps, an inch and a half in diameter, and 

 had the appearance of a small potato, but was, evidently, rather light. What 

 struck us particularly was the intense expression of energy and haste in the 

 movements of the beetles. They stood well up to their ball, much as a pair of 

 boys might do against a snowball half as high again as themselves. They seemed 

 to push with intelligence and in concert. One of us thought they applied their 

 shoulders to it. When it swerved aside, or was checked by an obstacle, or shot 

 ahead more freely than they had foreseen, one, if not both, would fall down, or be 

 even overturned, and then the struggles he would make to right himself, and the 

 scrambling to make up lost ground, were a sight to witness. Upon the same 

 paved space three or four solitary beetles were seen, each engaged in the same 

 task, and looking like a pigmy Sisyphus rolling his stone. Indeed we could 

 imagine that we had come upon a race of Lilliputians, and could almost fancy we 

 heard the panting and the words of mutual encouragement that with human 

 beings would have accompanied such exertions. So, when the inevitable impulse 

 to capture and kill came upon me — the desire to exhibit the beetles and their 

 ourdens to the members of this Club — I was checked by a sentiment of brotherhood, 



