352 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG, 



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 an- 

 other day the work was completed and the bird covered. 

 — M. Gleditsch continued to add other small dead ani- 

 mals, which were all sooner or later buried ; and the re- 

 sult 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 a . 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 immi- 

 nent risk of being destroyed at a mouthful by the first 

 fox or kite that chanced to espy them. 



At the first view I dare say you feel almost inclined 

 to pity the little animals doomed to exertions apparently 

 so disproportioned to their size. You are ready to ex- 

 claim that the pains of so short an existence, engrossed 

 with such arduous and incessant toil, must far outweigh 

 a Gleditsch Phi/sic. Bot. Oecon. Abhandl. iiL 200-227. 



