THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 195 



upon the little animal, which is as completely entombed as 

 if it had been placed in a liquid paste. ^ 



Thus ends the task which I have several times seen 

 executed with my own eyes, and which some persons have 

 called in question on account of its being so extra- 

 ordinary. 



Other insects only hollow out the ground in order to 

 find their food there, and construct a lodging for their 

 offspring. These are true miners in the strict sense of 

 the Avord. 



INIany belong to this category, but there are scarcely 

 any the Avork of which is so dreaded by the farmer as 

 that of the mole-cricket. In some parts of Germany the 

 alarm which this insect inspires is such, that a popular 

 saying warns the driver of any vehicle to kill without i^ity 

 all those he finds, should he even have to check his team 

 on the slope of a mountain or the edge of a precipice) 



This orthopter, the name of which recalls at the same 

 time its subterranean habits and its family, often causes 

 disastrous havoc in our gardens by hollowing out its 

 galleries, and cutting through the roots of plants which 

 cross its path.- 



Nature has for this purpose endowed it with formidable 

 Aveapons. These are its fore-paws, the outspread end of 

 which has the greatest analogy, both as to the form and 

 the Avay in which the insect uses it, to the large hands 



1 The English hiirying-beetle {Necrophorus Vespillo), almost, if not quite, 

 identical with that of France, certainly inters birds. Eennie found four hard 

 at work on Putney Heath, burying a dead crow ; and M. Gleditsch says that in 

 fifty days four beetles interred 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. — Act. Acad. Berolin. 17.53. — Tr. 



2 Possibly in pursuit of worms and ants, on which it feeds. It eats on an 

 average about three worms a day, sucking out the flesh and leaving the skin entire. 



• — Science Gossip, 1867, p. 232. Mr. Gould fed one for several months on ants. — Tr.- 



