154 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



the loose Boil, walk round the bird, mount it as if to see how the 

 work is proceeding, and then disappear afresh and renew their 

 labours. Sometimes they dig rather too much on one side, and 

 then they appear sadly puzzled, running round and round the 

 bird, getting on it as if to press it down with their weight, 

 pulling it this way and that way ; and at last they do what they 

 ought to have done at first, namely, disappear under the bird and 

 scrape away the earth until the hole is large enough to allow the 

 bird to sink into the required position. 



The time occupied in the transaction necessarily varies, accord- 

 ing to the size of the buried object and the condition of the 

 beetle ; but on the average an ordinary finch, or a mouse, can be 

 buried in the course of a day. When the task is completed, a 

 number of eggs are laid upon the buried animal, and then the 

 beetles emerge, cover it with earth, and then fly away. In some 

 cases they will bury a whole series of corpses ; and in the well- 

 known experiments of M. Gleiditsch, four beetles buried, in a 

 small piece of earth, four frogs, three birds, two fishes, one mole, 

 two grasshoppers, the entrails of a fish, and two pieces of meat. 

 And so strong and persevering are these insects, that a single 

 beetle succeeded in burying a mole in two days. Now the mole 

 is at least forty times as large as the beetle, so that we can esti- 

 mate the strength and perseverance of the beetle by calculating 

 the labour which would be necessary for a man to inter, in two 

 days, an animal forty times as large as himselC 



Perhaps the reader may remember a curious analogy between 

 the mode of sepulture employed by these beetles, and the mode 

 of sinking wells in sandy soil Instead of digging a hole, and 

 then building a brick-lining to it, a circular tower is first built, 

 and then, by scraping away the sand from within, the workmen 

 cause it to sink into the ground. When it has sunk sufiQciently, 

 some twelve or fourteen feet are added, and the sand again 

 scraped out ; and in this manner the brick tube sinks gradually 

 down, and becomes the lining of the well. 



The beetle just mentioned conveys into its bun-ow the whole 

 of the substance on which the grub is intended to feed ; but 

 those which we shall now examine select only a portion for that 

 purpose. There is a very large tribe of .beetles, of which the 

 British type is the common Doe Beetle {Geotrupes vulparis), 



