AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOE, THEIR YOUNG. 199 



this tribe of beetles ( sacer] whose image is so often met with amongst 

 the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, with whom it was a symbol of the 

 world, of the sun, and of a courageous warrior. Of the ivorld, as P. Vale- 

 rianus supposes, on account of the orbicular form of its pellets of dung, and 

 the notion of their being rolled from sunrise to sunset ; of the sun, because 

 of the angular projections from its head resembling rays, and the thirty 

 joints of the six tarsi of its feet answering to the days of the month ; and 

 of a warrior, from the idea of manly courage being connected with its sup- 

 posed birth from a male only. 1 It was as symbolical of this last that its 

 image was worn upon the signets of the Roman soldiers ; and as typical 

 of the sun, the source of fertility, it is yet, as Dr. Clarke informs us, eaten 

 by the women to render them prolific.^ 



These beetles, however, in point of industry must yield the palm to one 

 (Necrophorus Vespillo), whose singular history was first detailed by M. 

 Gleditsch in the Acts of the Berlin Society for 1752. He begins by inform- 

 ing us that he had often remarked that dead moles when laid upon the 

 ground, especially if upon loose earth, were almost sure to disappear in 

 the course of two or three days, often of twelve hours. To ascertain the 

 cause, he placed a mole upon one of the beds in his garden. It had 

 vanished by the third morning ; and on digging where it had been laid, 

 he found it buried to the depth of three inches, and under it four beetles, 

 which seemed to have been the agents in this singular inhumation. Not 

 perceiving any thing particular in the mole, he buried it again ; and on 

 examining it at the end of six days he found it swarming with maggots 

 apparently the issue of the beetles, which M. Gleditsch now naturally con- 

 cluded had buried the carcass for the food of- their future young. To 

 determine these points more clearly, he put four of these insects into a 

 glass vessel half filled with earth and properly secured, and upon the sur- 

 face of the earth two frogs. In less than twelve hours one of the frogs 

 was interred by two of the beetles : the other two ran about the whole 

 day as if busied in measuring the dimensions of the remaining corpse, which 

 on the third day was also found buried. He then introduced a dead linnet. 

 A pair of the beetles were soon engaged upon the bird. They began their 

 operations by pushing out the earth from under the body so as to form a 

 cavity for its reception ; and it was curious to see the efforts which the 

 beetles made by dragging at the feathers of the bird from below to pull it 

 into its grave. The male having driven the female away, continued the 

 work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place, turned 

 it, and arranged it in the grave, and from time to time came out of the 

 hole, mounted upon it and trod it under foot, and then retired below and 

 pulled it down. At length, apparently wearied with this uninterrupted 

 labour, it came forth and leaned its head upon the earth beside the bird 

 without the smallest motion as if to rest itself, for a full hour, when it 

 again crept under the earth. The next day in the morning the bird was an 

 inch and a half under ground, and the trench remained open the whole 

 day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a bier, surrounded with a 

 rampart of mould. In the evening it had sunk half an inch lower, and in 



1 J. Pierii Valerian! Hieroglyphica, 93 95. Mouffet, 156. 



2 Travels, ii. 306. Compare M. Latreille's learned Memoir entitled Des Insectes 

 peints ou sculptes sur les Monumens antiques de VEgypte. Ann. du Mus. 1819 ; and 

 also the Rev. F. W. Hope's Observations in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond.ii. 172. 



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