PRIVATE LIVES OF INSECTS, 507 



beetle. Waving Kidd had shot a bulfinch, but it was spoiled 

 for stuffing, and thrown down as useless by the side of the 

 path just by the bath. Waring Kidd, the prince of bird-stuffers, 

 the man who not only puts wires and cotton wool into the birds, 

 but life and sight, and motion and music! that figure of speech 

 is, I believe, termed hyperbole ! It was on this bulfinch, and 

 in this situation, that I had the pleasure of seeing the burying 

 beetle at work. 



Two days after, I was again in Godbold's ; and seeing the 

 bulfinch lie where he had been left, 1 lifted him up by a leg, 

 intending to make a present of him to a fine colony of ants 

 established a little further on, in the days of General Ogle- 

 thorpe, and which had maintained their station ever since. 

 They had made many a pretty skeleton for me, and I intended 

 to add that of a bulfinch to the store, but the buzz of a beetle 

 round my head caught my ear; he flew smack against the bul- 

 finch which I was holding up by the leg, and fell at my feet. 

 I knev.7 that the gentleman was a burying beetle, and as I put 

 the bird down for him, he soon found it, mounted upon it, and, 

 after much examination, opened out his wing cases, and flew 

 away. I will profit by his absence, to tell you a bit of his 

 history. 



The burying beetle is about an inch in length ; he is black, 

 with two bands across his back of a bright orange-colour ; 

 these bands are formed by two blotches of orange-colour on 

 each of the wing-cases : he is a disgusting creature, though in 

 such a gay dress, being so fetid, that one's hands smell for 

 hours after handling him ; and if he crawls on one's coat, or 

 other garments not often washed, the smell continues for days. 

 The whole tribe of burying beetles lay their eggs in the bodies 

 of dead animals, which, when possible, they bury for the pur- 

 pose. In Russia, where death itself does not do away with 

 distinctions, the poor people are buried but a few inches under 

 ground, the coffin consisting of four boards roughly nailed 

 together, and not particularly well fitted ; the operation of 

 burying is often at the expense of the country, and therefore 

 done from necessity, not love. This mode affords great plea- 

 sure to the burying beetles, as it saves them the labours of the 

 gravedigger. They avail themselves of the bodies placed so 

 nicely within their reach, and the graves are pierced with their 

 holes in every direction; at evening hundreds of these beetles 



