More Beetles 



an appetite for game, but how moderate 

 compared with the other's! I see her wan- 

 dering over my specimens in search of a de- 

 nuded bone bleached by the sun. After 

 finding a suitable point she applies the tip of 

 her rostrum to it and for some time remains 

 motionless. 



With her rigid implement, fine as a horse- 

 hair, what can she extract from that bone? 

 I ask myself in vain, so dry does the surface 

 exploited appear to be. Perhaps she col- 

 lects the vestiges of grease left by the Derm- 

 estes' conscientious tooth. Quite a secon- 

 dary worker, she gleans where others have 

 reaped. I should have liked to follow this 

 bone-sucker's habits more closely and above 

 all to obtain her eggs, in the hope of dis- 

 covering some little mechanical secret at the 

 moment of hatching. My attempts failed. 

 When imprisoned in a glass jar with the 

 victuals which she requires, the Alydus al- 

 lows herself to pine away from one day to 

 the next. She needs to fly in freedom over 

 the neighbouring rosemary-bushes, after her 

 sojourn in the retting-vats. 



We will close this list of undertakers' 

 assistants with the Staphylini,^ the tribe with 



1 Or Rove-beetles. — Translator's Note. 

 48 



