NATURAL HISTORY. 487 



not only remove putrefying substances from the surface of the 

 ground, but bury them beneath. 



The STAG-BEETLE is the largest of British insects. Although 

 so formidably armed, it is quite harmless, and only uses its enor- 

 mous jaws to break the tender bark of trees, in order that the 

 sap, on which it feeds, may exude. The mouth of this beetle 

 is very small, and is furnished with a brush, with which it licks 

 up the food. Several of these beetles lived for some time on 

 moist sugar. During the winter, it hides in the earth, making 

 for itself a kind of cave, very smooth inside.^ This beetle is 

 common in the New Forest. 



The DOR-BEETLE is a very common English insect. At the 

 approach of evening, it may be seen whirling round in the air 

 with a dull humming sound. The country children call it the 

 Watchman, comparing it to a watchman going his rounds in 

 the evening. It usually lays its eggs on a rounded mass of cow- 

 dung, and then buries the whole mass in the ground. When 

 caught, it pretends to be dead.f 



The COCKCHAFFER needs not much description. Its larva 

 works great mischief during the spring, as it feeds on the roots 

 of plants, and cuts them off with its sharp sickle-like jaws. 

 Where many of these " grubs" have been, the grass curls up, 

 and dries like hay. One farmer actually collected eighty bush- 

 els of the grubs of the Cockchaffer on his farm. Fortunately 

 the thrushes, blackbirds, rooks, and many other birds are invete- 

 rate destroyers of the grubs, and devour myriads of them. It 

 is for this purpose that these birds pull up the grass, and not to 

 spoil or devour the herbage, as is generally supposed. 



The huge Hercules and Atlas Beetles, and larger still, the 

 Goliath Beetle, belong to the Lamellicorns. 



* In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is an excellent specimen of the winter hab- 

 itation of this beetle, with the beetle itself enclosed. 



t The Dor-beetle is very tenacious of life. I have now in my cabinet a specimen 

 of this insect, which 1 took on the wing. It had lost several legs, one wing-cover or 

 elytron, the whole of the contents of the abdomen, and part of the thorax. I suppose 

 that a bird must have been eating it, and have been disturbed, for when thrushes, 

 blackbirds, jackdaws, &c. eat large beetles, they begin by picking off the wings, limbs, 

 &c. I also took, in May 1852, a cockchaffer walking along very unconcernedly, who 

 had lost both his wings and elytra, and all the contents of the abdomen. 



