INSECT-SCAVENGERS. 
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useful, has treated them truly as her favourites, honouring them with 
splendid costumes, and making them both industrious and ingenious 
in the discharge of their functions. It is a remarkable circumstance 
that, notwithstanding their sinister office, they are far from being wild, 
but are very sociable if the need arises, and understand how to unite 
their forces, combine their energies, and act in concert. In brief,—these 
honest undertakers and grave-diggers are the brilliant aristocracy of 
the insect nation. 
It is evident that Nature’s ideas are not the same as ours. She 
loads the most useful with rewards, whatever the nature of their work. 
For instance, the Geotrupes, which clears away the dung, is clothed in 
sapphire in payment of its service. The celebrated Coleopteron of Egypt, 
the sacred Ateuchus of the tombs,* appears glorified with an emerald 
aureola. 
Who shall describe all the services rendered by these scavengers ? 
Yet we are not just in our dealings with them. It happened to me, 
one April, when I was about to transplant to my garden some 
dahlias which had passed the winter in the orchard, to discover 
that the humidity of the air of Nantes, and the compact and im- 
porous clayey soil, had rotted the tubers. A bevy of insects were at 
Avork upon them, and usefully engaged in purging this shocking 
centre of dissolution. The gardener was very indignant, and ready 
enough to accuse them of the evil which they were endeavouring to 
remedy. 
The enemy of damp gardens, the snail ( Helix ), is pursued by an 
insect,j* the Drylus, which lies in wait for it, and, the better to hunt it 
up, mounts on its back, and makes it carry him, seizes a favourable 
opportunity, and on the snail re-entering its shell, enters also, lives with 
it and upon it. A snail lasts him about a fortnight. Then he passes 
on to another and a larger, and then to a third still larger. He requires 
three in all. In the third, as he is about to change into a pupa, the 
drylus makes the place clean, and, to sleep conveniently, seizes on the 
substantial house of the enemy which has nourished him. 
* The Ateuchus sacer, or Sacred Scarabteus of the Egyptians. 
f The larva of the Drylus Jiavescens. 
