146 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



fore, proceed to point out the more evident benefits which we derive from 

 insects, arranging them under the two great heads of direct benefits, and 

 those which are indirect ; beginning with the latter. 



The insects which are indirectly beneficial to us may be considered 

 under three points of view ; first, as removing various nuisances and de- 

 formities from the face of nature ; secondly, as destroying other insects, that 

 but for their agency would multiply so as greatly to injure and annoy us ; 

 and, thirdly, as supplying food to useful animals, particularly to fish and 

 bird** 



To advert in the first place to the former. All substances must be 

 regarded as nuisances and deformities, when considered with relation to 

 the whole, which are deprived of the principle of animation. In this 

 relation stand a dead carcass, a dead tree, or a mass of excrement, which 

 are clearly incumbrances that it is desirable to have removed ; and the 

 office of effecting this removal is chiefly assigned to insects, which have been 

 justly called the great scavengers of nature. Let us consider their little 

 but effective operations in each of their vocations. 



How disgusting to the eye, how offensive to the smell, would be the 

 whole face of nature, were the vast quantity of excrement daily falling to 

 the earth from the various animals which inhabit it, suffered to remain 

 until gradually dissolved by the rain, or decomposed by the elements ! 

 That it does not thus offend us, we are indebted to an inconceivable host 

 of insects which attack it the moment it falls ; some immediately beginning 

 to devour it, others depositing in it eggs from which are soon hatched 

 larvae that concur in the same office with tenfold voracity; and thus every 

 particle of dung, at least of the most offensive kinds, speedily swarms with 

 inhabitants which consume all the liquid and noisome particles, leaving 

 nothing but the undigested remains, that soon dry, and are scattered by 

 the winds, while the grass upon which it rested, no longer smothered by 

 an impenetrable mass, springs up with increased vigour. 



Numerous are the tribes of insects to which this office is assigned, 

 though chiefly, if not entirely, selected from the two orders, Coleoptera and 

 Diptera. A large proportion of the genera formed, by different authors, 

 from Scarabceus of Linne, viz. Scarabteus, Copris, Ateuchus, Sisyphus, Onitis, 

 Onthophagus, Aphodius, and Psammodius; also Hister, Sphceridium; and 

 amongst the Brachyptera, the majority of the StaphylinidtB, many Aleo- 

 char<s, especially of Gravenhorst's third family, many Oxyteli, and some 

 Omalia, Tachini, and Tachypori, of that author, including in the whole 

 many hundred species of beetles, unite their labours to effect this useful 

 purpose : and what is remarkable, though they all work their way in these 

 filthy masses, and at first can have no paths, yet their bodies are never 

 soiled by the ordure they inhabit. Many of these insects content them- 

 selves with burrowing in the dung alone ; but Ateuchus pilularius 1 , a species 



* The Coprion, Cantharus, and Heliocaniharus of the ancients was evidently this 

 beetle, or one nearly related to it, which is described as rolling backwards 'large 

 masses of dung, and attracted such general attention as to give rise to the proverb 

 Cantharus pilulam. It should seem from the name, derived from a word signifying 

 an ass, that the Grecian beetle made its pills of asses' dung ; and this is confirmed 

 by a passage in one of the plays of Aristophanes, the Irene, where a beetle of this 

 kind is introduced, on which one of the characters rides to heaven to petition Jupiter 

 for peace. The play begins with one domestic desiring another to feed the Can- 

 tharus with some bread, who afterwards orders his companion to give him another 

 kind of bread made of asses' dung. 



