124: BEETLE SCAVENGERS. 



like the Histeridce, to draw in their legs and simulate death on 

 being touched : while, acting as their assistants in discussion 

 of bones and other desiccated remains, there come (in the form 

 of larvae) certain other consumers. These, when they arrive 

 at their maturity as pretty little coloured beetles* (some black 

 and gray and red), accustomed to frequent flowers and fragrant 

 places, we should hardly suspect of the unpleasing but useful 

 habitudes of their earlier days. These also put on death's 

 semblance to escape death or danger. 



Let us take now a general and conclusive view of the grand 

 company of beetle scavengers, as instrumental to the benefit 

 of mankind. We must have seen already the importance of 

 their operations, even as we have slightly sketched only a few 

 of them, and as performed only on the narrow theatre of our 

 native soil, and must have noticed also the wondrous order 

 observable in their sanitary works. But it is requisite to look 

 farther to cast an eye over the whole habitable globe before 

 we can perceive, in anything like its true extent, the magni- 

 tude and method of insect agency, that, especially, of beetles, 

 as assistant to carrion-birds in the business of removing of- 

 fensive objects. In this survey, there becomes apparent one 

 beneficent provision of Nature (more properly of Nature's 

 God), which cannot but excite our admiration, that, namely, 

 of the geographical distribution of insect scavengers, as 

 observed always to be in exact accordance with the need for 



* Of the genus Anfkrenus. 



