184 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



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Mode of this insect's interring bodies. 



again for the space of six days. In about three 

 weeks he again took up the same carcase, 

 which he found in the highest state of corrup- 

 tion, swarming with small, thick, whitish worms, 

 that appeared to be the family of the beetles. 

 These circumstances induced him to suppose that 

 it was the beetles that had thus buried the mole, 

 and that they had done this for the sake of lodg- 

 ing in it their offspring. Our author then took 

 a glass cucurbit, and half filled it with moist 

 earth ; into this he put the four beetles with their 

 young, and they immediately concealed them- 

 selves. This cucurbit, covered with a cloth, was 

 placed on the open ground, and in the course of 

 fifty days the four beetles interred the bodies of 

 four frogs^three small birds, two grasshoppers, and 

 one mole, besides the entrails of a fish, and two 

 small pieces of the lungs of an ox. 



The following is an account of the extraordi- 

 rlary mode in which they performed this singu- 

 lar operation. A linnet that had been dead six 

 hours was placed in the middle of the cucurbit; 

 in a few moments the beetles quitted their holes, 

 and traversed the body. After a few hours one 

 pair of the beetles only was seen about the bird, 

 the largest of which was suspected to be the fe- 

 male. They began their work by hollowing out 

 the earth from under the bird. They arranged a 

 cavity the size of the bird, by pushing all around 

 the body the earth which they removed. To 

 succeed in these efforts, they leaned them selves 



