26o LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
fishes, one mole, two grasshoppers, the entrails of a 
fish, and two pieces of ox-liver ! Which among us 
works harder than this to provide food for the little 
ones who come after us ? Or who can say that 
these little beetles do not do their share of good in 
the world, when they clear away masses of decaying 
matter which would poison the air, burying it in the 
best of all purifiers, our mother earth ? 
So feeding on plant or animal, in the land or in 
the water, the beetles, with their strong -jointed legs 
and powerful jaws, make their way in life. You 
have only to watch a beetle forcing its way under a 
clod of earth, to see how powerful their muscles are ; 
indeed, it has been estimated that a cockchafer can 
draw a weight fourteen times as heavy as itself, 
while the bee-beetle* can draw forty times its own 
weight, and many of the feats of beetle -life beat 
those of any athlete among men. Yet we find that 
they are not wanting in cunning too, for who has 
not seen the common skip-jack beetle drop on the 
ground when alarmed, and drawing in its legs and 
antennae, lie on its back, and pretend to be dead 
till the danger is past, and then with a sudden click 
of its breast-plate, spring up in the air and come 
down upon its legs ? But we must pass by many of 
these curious histories, such as that of the parasitic 
beetles which introduce the eggs of their young into 
the bee's nest, where they feed upon the honey, and 
of the blind beetles which live among the ants, and 
must even neglect the soft-skinned glow-worms with 
their phosphorescent light in the last three rings 
of the abdomen, and the beautiful fireflies of warm 
* Trichius fasciatus. 
