satisfaction; the male at last settles also, and the bird undergoes the scrutiny of four at least of the senses,-touch, smell, sight and taste, for their heads are continually diving among the feathers of the bird, and a savory and ample meal is made before the great work is begun. After the beetles have appeased the calls of hunger, the bird is abandoned for a while; they both leave it to explore the earth in the neighbourhood, and ascertain whether the place is suitable for interment; if on a ploughed field, there is no difficulty; but if on grass or among stones, much labour is required to draw the body to a more suitable place. The operation of burying is performed almost entirely by the male beetle, the female mostly hiding herself in the body of the bird about to be buried, or sitting quietly upon it, and allowing herself to be buried with it: the male begins by digging a furrow all round the bird, at the distance of about half an inch, turning the earth outside; his head is the only tool used in this operation; it is held sloping outwards, and is exceedingly powerful. After the first furrow is completed, another is made within it, and the earth is thrown into the first furrow; then a third furrow is made, which, being under the bird, the beetle is out of sight: now the operation can only be traced by the heaving of the earth, which soon forms a little rampart round the bird; as the earth is moved from beneath, and the surrounding rampart increases in height, the bird sinks. After incessant labour for about three hours, the beetle emerges, crawls upon the bird, and takes a survey of his work. If the female is on the bird she is driven away by the male, who does not choose to be intruded on during the important business. The male. beetle then remains for about an hour perfectly still, does not

stir hand or foot; he then dismounts, diving again into the grave, and pulls the bird down by the feathers for half an hour; its own weight appears to sink it very little. The earth then begins heaving and rising all round, as though under the influence of a little earthquake: the feathers of the bird are again pulled, and again the bird descends. At last, after two or three hours more labour, the beetle comes up, again gets on the bird, and again takes a survey, and then drops down as though dead, or fallen suddenly fast asleep. When sufficiently rested, he rouses himself, treads the bird firmly into its grave, pulls it by the feathers this way and that way, and, having settled it to his mind, begins to shovel in the earth: this is done in a very short time by means of his broad head. He goes behind the rampart of earth, and pushes it into the grave with amazing strength and dexterity; the head being bent directly downward at first, and then the nose elevated with a kind of jerk, which sends the earth forward. After the grave is thus filled up, the earth is trodden in, and undergoes another keen scrutiny all round, the bird being completely hidden; the beetle then makes a hole in the still loose earth, and having buried the bird and his own bride, next buries himself. The female lays her eggs in the carcass of the bird, in number proportioned to its size; and after this operation is over, and the pair have eaten as much of the savoury viand as they please, they make their way out, and fly away in quest of further adventures. The eggs are hatched in two days, and produce flat, scaly grubs, which run about with great activity: these grubs grow excessively fast, and very soon consume all that their parents had left. As soon as they are full grown, they

cease eating, and burrowing further in the earth become pupæ. The length of time they remain in this state appears uncertain; but when arrived at the perfect state, they make round holes in the ground, from which they come forth.”

Other beetles, some of them allied to the Necrophori, such as the species of Silpha, are attracted to and feed upon the dead bodies of animals, and between them and the larvæ of Diptera, which abound in such bodies, there is soon little flesh left on the bones. Then other families of beetles, Dermestidæ and Nitidulido, have their turn, the former appropriating the skin, the latter the cartilage and muscle that yet remain. And thus, with animal as with vegetable bodies, nothing is lost, each atom becomes the means of supporting some form of animal life, or is resolved into its primitive elements, in all cases again to be compounded with other atoms into new forms, and so on for ever.

§ V.

THE HEDGES AND LANES.

"The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild, White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine, Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And Mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

KEATS.

"The green lane rough with fern and flowers."

ROGERS.

THE hedges between and bounding fields in the South of England give a very peculiar character to the scenery, not observed by the natives, but remarkable in the eyes of those who have been accustomed to the stone walls or entirely open fields of the North. Viewed agriculturally hedges are little better than nuisances, for they serve as great sheltering places for birds and other agents destructive to field crops; but, on account of the harbour they give to insects, both for food and shelter, they are great favourites with entomologists, and many a sigh has escaped the insect-hunter when, on

revisiting the spot where the year before he captured a single specimen of some rarity, he finds that the hedge out of which he beat it is levelled with the earth, and that if it be not exterminated it will be years before there is a hedge to be of any entomological use; the chances being that never again will an improved system of agriculture allow such a hedge as has vanished to grow up. Such a hedge as I mean is to be seen all over the metropolitan counties, not a mere film of whitethorn that a butterfly could go through at a bound, but a little plantation twenty or thirty feet thick. Just fancy what hosts of insects of all kinds nestle in such a cover: you may beat it again and again without getting your game to leave it. I hardly know where to begin to enumerate the multitudinous inhabitants.

Field-hedges are in general supposed to be formed of whitethorn, and so they are while well kept. One of my earliest entomological recollections is connected with a hedge of this kind: I found a bluish-green caterpillar, about an inch and a quarter long, with a large head and longish legs; it curled itself up, and being the first of the kind I had seen it took my attention exceedingly, and I watched it constantly. But I had not long time allowed me to look at it: it was full fed, and soon spun a stout oval cocoon in which to change to a pupa, and thus its further proceedings were hidden from view. It lay still all through the winter and until May of the next year, when behold, instead of a moth, as I expected, came forth a four-winged fly (Trichiosoma lucorum) belonging to the Hymenoptera. Young collectors are often deceived by these larvæ of saw-flies, thinking they are Lepidopterous, but from these they may be distinguished by