BURYING BEETLES AT WORK. 217 



In the vicinity of towns they feed on all manner of 

 garbage, hunting in couples and chiefly at night, the male 

 insect wheeling round and round in the air like an eagle 

 before pouncing on his prey. After a careful examination 

 of their booty (perhaps a dead bird), they proceed to make 

 a hearty meal, and then explore the immediate neighbour- 

 hood for a spot where the ground is soft enough in which 

 to bury the remainder. This found, they drag the body 

 with much labour to the place, and the male insect begins 

 operations by digging a furrow all round the body at the 

 distance of half an inch, using his head as a spade. Another 

 furrow is dug within the outer one, and so on, until after 

 several hours' most laborious work, during which the insect 

 has been obliged at times to rest from sheer fatigue, he at 

 length goes underneath the body and pulls it by its feathers 

 into the hole scraped beneath. His wife, meanwhile, has 

 been quietly seated among the bird's feathers, and now 

 allows herself to be buried with it. Her husband treads 

 down the body, shovels back the earth, treads it well in, 

 scrutinises it carefully to make sure all is right, then makes a 

 hole in the still loose earth and, burying himself, rejoins his 

 wife. The great object of all this hard labour has been to 

 secure a proper place for her in which to lay her eggs, 

 which she does in a number proportioned to the size of 

 the bird, after which the two creep out and fly away. 

 The great business of the larvae, as we have said, is to 

 eat, and the parents are careful to- provide them with food 

 enough, though not too much, to last them until they are 

 full grown. And the larvae do their work well, wasting 

 nothing, but consuming even the skin and bones. 



