i6q Nature’s Scavengers . L April, 
he made, however, no attempt to swallow it. The alligators 
of the western hemisphere are said to bury their prey in the 
mud of the beds of rivers for some time before they devour 
it — a notion which is strenuously combatted by Waterton ; 
but this habit, even if verified, scarcely entitles them to be 
regarded as regular eaters of carrion. 
The amphibians do not appear to consume any putrescent 
or putrid matter, whether of animal or vegetable origin. 
The more widely spread are scavenging habits among 
fishes, a very large proportion of which partake almost in- 
differently of organic matter, whether living or lifeless, fresh 
or decomposing. 
It is, however, not amongst vertebrate animals, but 
among the Articulata, and especially among inserts, that we 
find the most adtive and powerful scavengers. Here im- 
mense numbers and great voracity more than compensate 
for smallness of size. 
The most numerous and the most efficient of insedl sca- 
vengers are to be found in the so-called “ order” Coleoptera.* 
Amongst these inserts it is easier to particularise those 
which do not, wholly or in part, subsist upon vegetable and 
animal refuse than those which do. We shall, therefore, 
not furnish a catalogue of scavenging families and genera, 
but merely point out the most important. Perhaps the 
highest rank may be claimed by the Silphidse. These in- 
serts not merely feed upon carrion, both when larvae and in 
the adult state, but one of their genera — the Necrophori, or 
sexton-beetles — bury putrescent animal matter as food for 
their young. Wherever they find a small dead animal — 
mouse, frog, bird, &c. — or a fragment of some larger carcase 
which has been neglected by hyaenas, jackals, vultures, and 
the like, they deposit their eggs therein, and then dig away 
the earth from below it, and cover it up. Their manner of 
proceeding has been so well described in various works on 
Natural Historyt that it need not be repeated here. But 
the quantity of matter which they thus inter deserves parti- 
cular attention. A single sexton-beetle has been known to 
bury a mole forty times its own weight. Four beetles have 
been seen burying a crow, which would certainly exceed 
their united weights in a still higher ratio. Thus not only 
is nuisance prevented, but the earth is enriched with an 
* It must be ultimately admitted that the divisions Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, 
&c., are of far higher rank than orders. The coleopterous group Adephaga 
(Clairville) seems to be an order, equal in rank to Carnivora amongst 
mammals. 
f For instance, Rennie’s Insedt Architecture, p. 233, and Kirby and Spence, 
ii ., 350. See also Adi. Acad. Rerolin, 1752. 
