ENTOMOLOGICAL CABINET. 



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 un- 

 interrupted 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 the earth. The next day in the 

 morning the bird was an inch 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. 

 Gleditsch continued 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 grasshoppers, 

 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 bulk and 

 weight 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." 

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