THE BURY1NG-BEETLE. 211 



at once understanding what was going on, we called our bairns, 

 a couple of girls and a boy, who were raking and laughing a la 

 Madame de Sevigne in the field beside us, to give them a lesson 

 on entomology; and as our lesson was fresh and to the point, 

 and interesting, though we say it ourselves, and rather out of 

 the common track of entomological experience, we give it to the 

 reader, that he may know and believe, and reverently ponder, a 

 truth that has never been so well expressed as by St. Augustine, 

 the sturdy, old, bellicose Bishop of Hippo, who of all the Fathers 

 had the most sensitive nose for the out-ferreting of a heretic, and 

 who, when he got hold of one, treated him very much as a Scotch 

 terrier does a rat but who could say and do good things not- 

 withstanding. Deus magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis. 

 God is great, that is, in great things, but greatest of all in least 

 things. The mole, as we have said, was lying on his side on a 

 grassy patch of fast-growing aftermath, and our glimpse of the 

 beetle beneath showed us that it was the Necrophonis vespillo, or 

 burying-bsetle, rare anywhere in Britain, and so rare in Lochaber 

 and the west coast, that this was only the third or fourth instance 

 in which we had met with it. It is a black beetle, rather more 

 than an inch in length, with two bright orange-coloured bands 

 across the back, and more active in all its movements than any 

 of its congeners. There were just two beetles, observe a pair, 

 male and female engaged upon the mole, and the " mole " of 

 Adrianus, when a-building, showed not more labour and not half 

 the mechanical skill or indomitable perseverance on the part of 

 its constructors exhibited by these tiny but thoroughly skilled 

 excavators in the case of their mole. " You see that mole," we 

 said to our attentive audience, leaning upon our rake for the 

 moment, as if it were a sceptre of prerogative and power, as in 

 truth it was. "It is almost as big as an ordinary sized rat bigger, 

 you will confess, than three full-grown mice. It has only been 



