First of all, a word as to diet. A general scavenger, the Burying-beetle refuses no sort of cadaveric putrescence. All is good to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile with no less animation. He accepts without hesitation extraordinary finds, probably unknown to his race, as witness a certain Goldfish, a red Chinese Carp, whose body, placed in one of my cages, was forthwith considered an excellent tit-bit and buried according to the rules. Nor is butcher's meat despised. A mutton-cutlet, a strip of beef-steak, in the right stage of maturity, disappeared beneath the soil, receiving the same attentions as those lavished on the Mole or the Mouse. In short, the Necrophorus has no exclusive preferences; anything putrid he conveys underground. The maintenance of his industry, therefore, presents no sort of difficulty. If one kind of game be lacking, some other, the first to hand, will very well replace it. Nor is there much trouble in fixing the site of his industry. A capacious wire-gauze cover, resting on an earthen pan filled to the brim with fresh, heaped sand, is sufficient. To obviate criminal attempts on the part of the Cats, whom the game would not fail to tempt, the cage is installed in a closed glass-house, which in winter shelters the plants and in summer serves as an entomological laboratory. Now to work. The Mole lies in the centre of the enclosure. The soil, easily shifted and homogeneous, realizes the best conditions for comfortable work. Four Necrophori, three males and a female, are there with the body. They remain invisible, hidden beneath the carcase, which from time to time seems to return to life, shaken from end to end by the backs of the workers. An observer not in the secret would be somewhat astonished to see the dead creature move. From time to time, one of the sextons, almost always a male, comes out and walks round the animal, which he explores, probing its velvet coat. He hurriedly returns, appears again, once more investigates and creeps back under the corpse. The tremors become more pronounced; the carcase oscillates, while a cushion of sand, pushed out from below, grows up all around it. The Mole, by reason of his own weight and the efforts of the grave-diggers, who are labouring at their task underneath, gradually sinks, for lack of support, into the undermined soil. Presently the sand which has been pushed out quivers under the thrust of the invisible miners, slips into the pit and covers the interred Mole. It is a clandestine burial. The body seems to disappear of itself, as though engulfed by a fluid medium. For a long time yet, until the depth is regarded as sufficient, the body will continue to descend.