218 THE WORLD'S LUMBER ROOM. 



Sometimes, so Miss Stavely tells us, the Sexton beetle 

 makes a hole nearly a foot deep to receive the carrion, and 

 will bury creatures many times larger than himself, such as 

 birds, frogs, and even rabbits. If the body is too large for 

 one, others come to help and to feast with him. In Ceylon, 

 one beetle has been seen to bury a mole forty times its own 

 weight, without assistance, and four together will bury a 

 crow. The Phanseus, a beetle one inch and three-quarters 

 long, with one large horn, buries dead snakes in a few 

 hours. 



Mr. West wood mentions that in the course of fifty 

 days he has known four beetles to bury four frogs, three 

 small birds, two fishes, one mole, two grasshoppers, the 

 entrails of a fish, and two pieces of ox liver. It is, indeed, 

 chiefly owing to their burying habits that we may wander 

 for hours in the woods or fields without seeing such a 

 thing as a dead bird, mouse, rat, &c. 



Some of the burying beetles work in company, others 

 alone, and while some, as we have seen, dig with their 

 broad- flat heads, others do so with their fore legs. Their 

 scent is so keen that they can detect their food from a 

 wonderful distance, and they have been known to under- 

 mine the stick to which a dead mole was fastened, in order 

 to bring the dainty morsel within their reach. 



Besides the Sextons, there are in England alone many 

 hundred species of beetles which feed on carrion without 

 burying it, and, as soon as the flies have opened the way. 

 they arrive in hosts, accompanied by wasps, hornets, and 

 ants, the last relics of the feast being consumed by a 

 tribe of small beetles, so that nothing is wasted. 



