The Burying-Beetles: The Burial 



An elegant, almost sumptuous costume, very 

 superior to that of the others, but yet lugu- 

 brious, as befits your undertaker's man. 



He is no anatomical dissector, cutting his 

 subject open, carving its flesh with the scalpel 

 of his mandibles; he is literally a grave-dig- 

 ger, a sexton. While the others — Silphae, 

 Dermestes, Cellar-beetles — gorge them- 

 selves with the exploited flesh, without, of 

 course, forgetting the interests of the fam- 

 ily, he, a frugal eater, hardly touches his find 

 on his own account. He buries it entire, on 

 the spot, in a cellar where the thing, duly 

 ripened, will form the diet of his larvae. 

 He buries it in order to establish his progeny. 



This hoarder of dead bodies, with his stiff 

 and almost heavy movements, is astonish- 

 ingly quick at storing away wreckage. In a 

 shift of a few hours, a comparatively enor- 

 mous animal, a Mole, for instance, disap- 

 pears, engulfed by the earth. The others 

 leave the dried, emptied carcass to the air, 

 the sport of the winds for months on end; 

 he, treating it as a whole, makes a clean 

 job of things at once. No visible trace of 

 his work remains but a tiny hillock, a burial- 

 mound, a tumulus. 



With his expeditious method, the Necro- 

 phorus is the first of the little purifiers of the 

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