ON THE CLAVICORNES. 417 



disappear in the course of two or three days, often of twelve 

 hours. To ascertain the cause, he placed a male upon one 

 of the beds in his garden. It had vanished by the third 

 morning ; and on digging where it had been laid, he found 

 it buried to the depth of three inches, and under it four 

 beetles, which seemed to have been the agents in this sin- 

 gular inhumation. Not perceiving any thing particular in 

 the mole, he buried it again ; and on examining it at the 

 end of six days, he found it swarming with maggots, appa- 

 rently the issue of the beetles, which M. Gleditsh now natu- 

 rally concluded had buried the carcase for the food of their 

 future young. To determine those points more clearly, he 

 put four of these insects into a glass vessel, half filled with 

 earth, and properly secured, and upon the surface of the 

 earth two frogs. In less than twelve hours one of the frogs 

 was interred by two of the beetles ; the other two ran about 

 the whole day, as if busied in measuring the dimensions of 

 the remaining corpse, which on the third day was also found 

 buried. He then introduced a dead linnet. A pair of the 

 beetles were soon engaged upon the bird. They began 

 their operations by pushing out the earth from under the 

 body, so as to form a cavity for its reception ; and it was 

 curious to see the efforts which the beetles made, by drag- 

 ging at the feathers of the bird from below, to pull it into 

 its grave. The male having driven the female away, con- 

 tinued the work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, 

 changed its place, turned it, and arranged it in the grave, 

 and from time to time came out of the hole, mounted upon 

 it, and trod it under foot, and then retired below and pulled 

 it down. At length, apparently wearied with this uninter- 

 rupted labour, it came forth, and leaned its head upon the 

 earth beside the bird, without the smallest motion, as if to 

 rest itself, for a full hour, when it again crept under tlie 

 earth. The next day in the morning the bird was an inch 



vol,. XIV. 2 E 



