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146 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 
fore, proceed to point out the more evident benefits which we derive from 
insects, arranging them under the two great heads of direct benefits, and 
those which are indirect ; beginning with the latter. 
The insects which are indirectly beneficial to us may be considered 
under three points of view ; first, as removing various nuisances and de« 
formities from the face of nature ; secondly, as destroying other insects, that 
but for their agency would multiply so as greatly to injure and annoy us ; 
and, thirdly, as supplying food to useful animals, particularly to fish and 
birds. 
To advert in the jirst place to the former. All substances must be 
regarded as nuisances and deformities, when considered with relation to 
the whole, which are deprived of the principle of animation. In this 
relation stand a dead carcass, a dead tree, or a mass of excrement, which 
are clearly ineumbrances that it is desirable to have removed ; and the 
office of effecting this removal is chiefly assigned to insects, which have been 
justly called the great scavengers of nature. Let us consider their little 
but effective operations in each of their vocations. 
How disgusting to the eye, how offensive to the smell, would be the 
whole face of nature, were the vast quantity of ewerement daily falling to 
the earth from the various animals which inhabit it, suffered to remain 
until gradually dissolved by the rain, or decomposed by the elements! 
That it does not thus offend us, we are indebted to an inconceivable host 
of insects which attack it the moment it falls; some immediately beginning 
to devour it, others depositing in it eggs from which are soon hatched 
larvee that concur in the same office with tenfold voracity; and thus every 
particle of dung, at least of the most offensive kinds, speedily swarms with 
inhabitants which consume all the liquid and noisome particles, leaving 
nothing but the undigested remains, that soon dry, and are scattered by 
the winds, while the grass upon which it rested, no longer smothered by 
an impenetrable mass, springs up with increased vigour. 
Numerous are the tribes of insects to which this office is assigned, 
though chiefly, if not entirely, selected from the two orders, Coleoptera and 
Diptera. A large proportion of the genera formed, by different authors, 
from Scarabeus of Linné, viz. Scarabeus, Copris, Ateuchus, Sisyphus, Onitis, 
Onthophagus, Aphodius, and Psammodius; also Hister, Spheridium; and 
amongst the Brachyptera, the majority of the Staphylinide, many Aleo- 
chare, especially of Gravenhorst’s third family, many Owyteli, and«some 
Omalia, Tachini, and Tachypori, of that author, including in the whole 
many hundred species of beetles, unite their labours to effect this useful 
purpose: and what is remarkable, though they all work their-way in these 
filthy masses, and at first can have no paths, yet their bodies are never 
soiled by the ordure they inhabit. Many of these insects content them- 
selves with burrowing in the dung alone; but Ateuchus pilularius}, a species 
1 The Coprion, Cantharus, and Heliocantharus of the ancients was evidently this 
beetle, or one nearly related to it, which is described as rolling backwards large 
masses of dung, and attracted such general attention as to give rise to the proyerb 
Cantharus pilulam. It should seem from the name, derived from a word signifying 
an ass, that the Grecian beetle made its pills of asses’ dung; and this is confirmed 
by a passage in one of the plays of Aristophanes, the rene, where a beetle of this 
kind is introduced, on which one of the characters rides to heaven to petition Jupiter 
for peace. The play begins with one domestic desiring another to feed the Can- 
tharus with some bread, who afterwards orders his companion to give him another 
kind of bread made of asses’ dung, 
