AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 297 



trod it under foot, and then retired below and pulled it down. 

 At length, apparently wearied with this uninterrupted labour, 

 it came forth and leaned its head upon the earth beside the 

 bird without the smallest motion as if to rest itself, for a full 

 hour, when it again crept under the 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 another day the work was completed and the bird 

 covered. — M. Gleditsch continued to add other small dead 

 animals, which were all sooner or later buried ; and the result 

 of his experiment was, that in fifty days four beetles had in- 

 terred in the very small space of earth allotted to them, twelve 

 carcasses ; 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.^ It is plain that all this labour is in- 

 curred 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 sufificed 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 carcass 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 dis- 

 proportioned to their size. You are ready to exclaim that the 

 pains of so short an existence, engrossed with such arduous 

 and incessant toil, must far outweigh the pleasures. Yet the 

 inference would be altogether erroneous. What strikes us 

 as wearisome toil, is to the little agents delightful occupation. 

 The kind Author of their being has associated the perform- 

 ance of an essential duty with feelings evidently of the most 



1 Gleditsch, Fhysic. BoL GEcon, AbhanclL iii. 200 — 227, 



