222 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



Astonishing but well-authenticated accounts have been given 

 of the sagacious industry with which these little creatures ac- 

 complish labours which must be to them enormous. They will 

 bury not one but a whole series of corpses; and in the well- 

 known experiments of Mr. Gleditsch, four beetles buried in a 

 small piece of earth four fishes, three birds, two grasshoppers, 

 one mole, the entrails of a fish, and part of the lungs of an ox. 

 Now the mole is at least forty times as large as the beetle, so 

 that we can estimate the strength and perseverance of the beetle 

 by calculating the labour which would be necessary for a man 

 to inter in two days an animal forty times as large as himself. 



But these indefatigable insects are remarkable not only for 

 their industry but also for their intelligence, of which truly sur- 

 prising instances have been observed. 



Thus Clairville once saw a sexton-beetle, which, finding a dead 

 mouse too heavy to be removed, flew away and soon after re- 

 turned with four others, who with united strength now dragged 

 away and buried the mouse. 



Grleditsch relates that one of his friends being desirous to 

 dry a toad tied it to the upper end of a stick, which he fixed in 

 the ground to prevent the necrophori from getting hold of it. 

 But this precaution proved perfectly vain ; for the intelligent 

 insects, finding the toad beyond their reach, dug up the earth 

 round the stick, and having thus caused it to fall, buried it 

 together with the toad. 



The same intelligence was shown by a dung-beetle (Gymno- 

 pleurus pUlularius), who being unable to move a stercoraceous 

 ball on which he had been labouring from a hole into which it- 

 had fallen, immediately flew to a neighbouring heap of dung, 

 whence he fetched three other beetles, who having lent their 

 assistance returned to their own work. 



Like their parents, the larvae of the necrophori live only upon 

 animal substances, so that the mother has merely to provide her 

 offspring with the food she relishes herself; but in other cases 

 we find, by a still more astonishing instinct, insects herbivorous 

 in the perfect state supplying in a similar manner the wants of 

 their carnivorous larvae. 



In her full-grown state the sand-wasp (Sphex) lives upon the 

 nectareous secretions of flowers, but her larvas have a far grosser 

 appetite, and, like the meat-fly, delight in sipping animal juices. 



