Southern Standard

The Church-yard Beetle

Frazer's Magazine has lately contained a number of very interesting papers called "Episodes of Insect Life;" from the last published one of which, we make an extract, as follows:

A German named Gleditsch, who had laid some dead moles upon the beds in his garden, whether as examples of retributive justice for their defacement of his borders and walks, or for other good reasons, or for none at all, does not appear, observed that the bodies of the little gentlemen in velvet disappeared mysteriously. He watched, and found that the agents were beetles, which having first deposited their eggs in the carcasses that were to be the provision of their larva, buried the bodies, so that they might be safe from the predatory birds and quadrupeds. Into a glass vessel he put four of these insects, having filled it with earth, on the surface of which, he placed two dead frogs. His sextons went to work, and one frog was interred in less than twelve hours—the other one in the third day. Then he introduced a dead linnet. The beetles soon began their labors, commencing operations by removing the earth from under the body, so as to form a cavity for its reception. Male and female got under the corpse, and pulled away at the feathers to lower it into its grave. A change then came over the spirit of the male, for he drove the female away, and worked by himself for five hours at a stretch. He lifted the body and changed its position, turned and arranged it, coming out of the hole, moaning on the dead bird, trampling on it, and then again going below to draw it down deeper still. Wearied with his incessant efforts he came out and laid his head upon the earth beside the object of his labors, remaining motionless for a full hour, as if for a good rest. Then he crept under the earth again. On the morning of the next day the bird was an inch and a half below the surface of the ground, but the trench remained open, the body looking as if laid out upon a bier, surrounded by a rampart of mould.

When evening came, it had sunk half an inch lower. The next day the burial was completed the bird having been completely covered. More corpses were now applied, and in fifty days twelve bodies were interred by the four beetles in this cemetery under a glass case.