SANITARY OFFICERS 239 



are pests ; from Nature's point of view all stored-up 

 animal remains, whether hams, skins or feathers, 

 fresh joints, fish or poultr)^, from which life has 

 departed, are fair game for beetles, blow flies, and 

 other scavengers. It is useless to rail against 

 natural laws ; they have been evolved not for 

 man's convenience, but for the proper governance 

 of the world as a whole. We must either submit 

 to them or set our wits to work to suspend their 

 operation so far as our property is concerned. 



The naturalist has a special pest of the same 

 tribe of beetles. From Nature's point of view the 

 naturalist is a great accumulator of rubbish, and 

 in consequence these sanitary officers keep a very 

 strict eye upon him. What though he puts away 

 his hoards in glazed cases that are guaranteed 

 air-tight by the makers, and pins nice little blocks 

 of camphor in the corners ? The glass lids have 

 to be lifted sometimes to take out or put in " speci- 

 mens," and now and then a watchful inspector 

 in the shape of a House Moth or a Museum Beetle 

 contrives to drop in an egg or two — perhaps con- 

 cealed in the fur of a new specimen — and when 

 the case is inspected a few months later the opera- 

 tions of the resulting grub are evident. 



This Museum Beetle {Anthrenus musceorum) is one 

 of the most efficient of these sweepers-away of 

 dead matter, though not when it is in the beetle 

 stage. Then it has a fondness for the open air and 

 fresh flowers ; it is as a grub that it performs its 

 important work. 



