The following account of the BURYING BEETLE is given by M. Gleditsch, a
foreign naturalist. He often remarked that dead moles, when laid upon
the ground, especially if upon loose earth, were almost sure to
disappear in the course of two or three days, often of twelve hours. To
ascertain the cause, he placed a mole upon one of the beds in his
garden. It had vanished by the third morning; and, on digging where it
had been laid, he found it buried to the depth of three inches, and
under it four beetles, which seemed to have been the agents in this
singular inhumation. To determine the point more clearly, he put four
of these insects into a glass vessel, half filled with earth, and
properly secured, and upon the surface of the earth, two frogs. In less
than twelve hours, one of the frogs was interred by two of the beetles;
the other two ran about the whole day, as if busied in measuring the
dimensions of the remaining corpse, which on the third day was also
found buried. He then introduced a dead linnet. A pair of the beetles
were soon engaged upon the bird. They began their operations by pushing
out the earth from under the body, so as to form a cavity for its
reception; and it was curious to see the efforts which the beetles
made, by dragging at the feathers of the bird from below, to pull it
into its grave. The male, having driven the female away, continued the
work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place,
turned it, and arranged it in the grave, and from time to time came out
of the hole, mounted upon it, and trod it under foot, and then retired
below, and pulled it down. At length, apparently wearied with this
uninterrupted labor, 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 interred, 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.
The QUEEN BEETLE is about one inch and a quarter in length; she carries
by her side two brilliant lamps, which she lights up at pleasure with
the solar phosphorus furnished her by nature. These lamps do not flash
and glimmer like those of the fire-fly, but give as steady a light as
that of gas, exhibiting two glowing spheres as large as a minute pearl,
which affords light enough, in the darkest night, to enable one to read
by them. The queen beetle is found only in tropical climates.