78 INSECTS. 



side, forming a deeply-notched knob or club (fig, 31,6). 

 The antennae in these is also geniculated, or bent like a 

 knee. The fine stag-like " horns" of this beetle are in 

 reality the mandibles, which are enormously enlarged in 

 the males. 



In the dung-beetles and chafers the antennas are 

 lamellate (fig. 31, 5, p. 65), the terminal joints are leaf- 

 like, and lie over one another like the sticks of a fan, 

 having the same power of being spread and contracted. 

 They are not geniculated, as are those of the stag-beetle. 



There is a species of dung-beetle (Geotrupes ster- 

 corarius, PI. II., fig. 2), so common on heaths, on roads, 

 in fields, and wherever else its peculiar food is to be found, 

 that it can hardly be unknown to the reader. It is hump- 

 backed, slow, and of a bluish-black colour, and is 

 nearly as often to be found kicking on its back and dis- 

 playing a burnished blue underside profusely garnished 

 with pale-brown parasites, as pursuing its business or its 

 pleasure right side uppermost. In the latter case it may 

 be met crawling slowly along, and occasionally stopping 

 to give one or other leg a sort of weak flourish in the 

 air, like an old gentleman talking to himself, and suiting 

 the action to the word. 



Like the sextons, this insect buries the offensive sub- 

 stance which it is its office to render harmless, and in so 

 doing performs the further office of rendering it useful. 

 It forms burrows beneath the masses of dung, carrying 

 into them small pellets in which its eggs are enclosed, 

 and thus separates and spreads the manure in the 

 ground. 



The Geotrupes is related, and not very distantly, to 

 the sacred Scarabseus of the Egyptians, and their per- 

 sonification of the sun under the figure of a winged 



