A more laborious task is performed by an insect by no means uncommon in Britain, the burying beetle (_Necrophorus vespillo_), which may be easily recognized by its longish body, of a black colour, with two broad and irregularly indented bands of yellowish brown. A foreign naturalist, M. Gleditsch, gives a very interesting account of its industry. He had "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. Not perceiving anything particular in the mole, he buried it again; and on examining it at the end of six days, he found it swarming with maggots, apparently the issue of the beetles, which M. Gleditsch now naturally concluded had buried the carcase for the food of their future young. To determine these points 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 labour, 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 carcases, viz., four