294 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



for food, they also, cuckoo -like, insinuate their own eggs, 

 (imitating in this respect the carnivorous parasites lately 

 noticed,) the larvas from which live at the cost of the right- 

 ful occupants. 



No circumstance connected with the storge of insects is 

 more striking than the herculean and incessant labour which 

 it leads them cheerfully to undergo. Some of these exertions 

 are so disproportionate to the size of the insect, that nothing 

 short of ocular conviction could attribute them to such an 

 agent. A wild bee or a Sphex, for instance, will dig a hole 

 in a hard bank of earth some inches deep and five or six times 

 its own size, and labour unremittingly at this arduous under- 

 taking for several days, scarcely allowing itself a moment for 

 eating or repose. It will then occupy as much time in 

 searching for a store of food ; and no sooner is this task fin- 

 ished, than it will set about repeating the process, and before 

 it dies will have completed five or six similar cells or even 

 more. If you would estimate this industry at its proper 

 value, you should reflect what kind of exertion it would re- 

 quire in a man to dig in a few days out of hard clay or sand, 

 with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or six caverns 

 twenty feet deep and four or five wide — for such an under- 

 taking would not be comparatively greater than that of the 

 insects in question. 



. Similar laborious exertions are not confined to the bee or 

 Sphex tribe. Several beetles in depositing their eggs exhibit 

 examples of industry equally extraordinary. The common 

 dor or clock {Geotrupes stercorarius), which may be found 

 beneath every heap of dung, digs a deep cylindrical hole, and 

 carrying down a mass of the dung to the bottom, in it deposits 

 its eggs. And many of the species of the Scarahceidce^ roll 

 together wet dung into round pellets, deposit an egg in the 

 midst of each, and when dry push them backwards by their 

 hind feet, sometimes three or four assisting, into holes of the 

 surprising depth of three feet, which they have previously dug 

 for their reception, and which are often several yards distant. 



1 Mr. W. S. MacLeay in his very remarkable and learned work {Horce Ento- 

 mologicoi) has very properly restored its name to the true Scarahceus oi the an- 

 cients, which gives its name to this group. 



