Field-Labourers 7 1 



In tropical countries, where animal life is abundant, 

 dun.^' beetles of many species arc especially plentiful. 

 The great Scaraba^us of Ej;ypt, which is common 

 throughout Africa, as well as in the south of Europe, 

 may be looked upon as the head of the family, some of 

 the members of which are of very large size. Some of 

 the family, hke the Carrion-eaters, bury the dead 

 bodies of small animals, which, though small, are many 

 times larger than themselves. 



Burying beetles, of one species or other, are every- 

 where plentiful, so plentiful indeed that we very seldom 

 meet with the dead bodies of bird, mouse, or mole, or 

 any other animal, in our walks in field or wood. All 

 have been cleared away and buried several inches, 

 sometimes nearly a foot, underground, where they 

 benefit the soil, besides providing food for the beetle's 

 family — this latter being of course the only object which 

 the beetle has in view. They work sometimes singly, 

 sometimes in company, scraping the earth away from 

 beneath the carcase with their forelegs, and then care- 

 fully covering it up ; after which they burrow down and 

 lay their eggs. One beetle alone has been known to 

 bury a mole forty times its own weight ; while four 

 together have been seen burying a crow ; and if we 

 consider for a moment what a task it would be for a 

 man, alone and unaided, to bury an animal weighing 

 forty times as much as himself — say four hundred 

 stone — we may gain some idea of the vast amount of 

 work performed by these insects. Four beetles which 

 were kept and watched for fifty days, buried in that 

 time four frogs, three small birds, two fish, one mule, 

 two grasshoppers, the entrails of a fish and two pieces 

 of o.\ liver. But even rabbits are not too large for 



