214 NETHER LOCHABER. 



sides, showing that the Vespillones are practised grave-diggers. 

 Averse to disturbing a work that had cost the tiny excavators so 

 much labour, we only removed the earth sufficiently to bring a 

 small patch of the mole's fur to view, in proof to those accompany- 

 ing us that the animal had really been buried by the beetles, as we 

 had said it would be. A full-grown elephant buried by a pair of 

 field mice would hardly be a more wonderful labour. The rationale 

 and raison d'etre of the whole labour thus carried out with so much 

 diligence and engineering skill is this : the carrion of the dead 

 mole, mouse, or bird thus operated upon, serves in the first instance 

 partly as food for the beetles themselves (and they richly deserve 

 a feast, such as it is, in reward for their arduous labours), after 

 which the female lays her eggs in the fast-rotting carcase, and it is 

 then left as the doubtless savoury banquet of the larvae, while the 

 parent pair cruise about in search of another dead bird or quadruped 

 of the proper size, whereupon to bestow similar attentions. It is 

 principally owing to the labours of these beetles that it happens 

 that although you may see a dead mole, mouse, or bird lying in 

 the corner of a field to-day, you shall look for it in vain next 

 morning elsewhere than in a beetle-dug grave, as in the above 

 instance. That a single pair of these comparatively small insects 

 should be able to perform such a gigantic task in so short a time is, 

 in truth, very wonderful, and must seem incredible to any one un- 

 acquainted with the habits and economy of the order. 



There are doubtless many odd and curious ways of earning even 

 an honest livelihood in this world, but the oddest, and to us, while 

 uninitiated, the most puzzling we have met with for a long time, 

 was the following : On a fine day lately, we took our boat to the 

 mouth of the Coe, and were leisurely proceeding up the far-famed 

 glen, when we saw, a little before us, a diminutive but still active 

 old man, whom, from his peculiar style of dress, we had no 

 difficulty in recognising as a peripatetic vendor of ballads, letter- 



