4 I 8 SUPPLEMENT 



and a half under ground, and the trench remained open the 

 whole day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a bier, 

 surrounded with a rampart of mould. In the evening it 

 had sunk half an inch lower, and in another day the work 

 was completed, and the bird covered. M. Gleditsh contin- 

 ued to add other small dead animals, which were all sooner 

 or later buried ; and the result of his experiment was, that 

 in fifty days four beetles had interred, in the very small space 

 of earth allotted to them, twelve carcases: viz., four frogs, 

 three small birds, two fishes, one mole, and two grasshop- 

 pers, besides the entrails of a fish, and two morsels of the 

 lungs of an ox. In another experiment a single beetle buried 

 a mole forty times its own weight and bulk in two days. It 

 is plain that all this labour is incurred for the sake of placing 

 in security the future young of these industrious insects, along 

 with a necessary provision of food. One mole would have 

 sufficed a long time for the repast of the beetles themselves, 

 and they could have more conveniently fed upon it above 

 ground than below. But if they had left thus exposed the 

 carcase in which their eggs were deposited, both would have 

 been exposed to the imminent risk of being destroyed at a 

 mouthful, by the first fox or kite that chanced to espy 

 them." 



The same learned author observes, that this insect must of 

 necessity be gifted with a very acute sense of smelling, which 

 enables it to scent out putrid carcases at a remarkable dis- 

 tance. What seem to him to be the organs of smell we have 

 already noticed in our Supplement on Insects in General. 



The larvae of the necrophori are long, of a greyish white, 

 with the head brown. Their body is composed of twelve 

 rings, furnished anteriorly at their upper part, with a small 

 scaly plate of a ferrugineous brown. The plates of the last 

 rings are provided with small elevated points. The head is 

 hard, scaly, armed with mandibles tolerably strong and 



