And the work of consuming goes fast, for one of the Beetles, Frisch’s Dermestes, is surrounded by her family, who are endowed with the same appetites. Parents and larval offspring of all ages feast higgledy-piggledy, insatiably. As for the Wavy Dermestes, the other’s collaborator in the dissection of corpses, I do not know where she lays her eggs. My pans have taught me nothing in this respect. As against that, they tell me a great deal about the larva of the other Dermestes.
All through the spring and the greater part of the summer the adult abounds beneath my carcases, accompanied by the youngsters, [[45]]ugly creatures covered with wild bristle of dark hairs. The pitch-black back has a red stripe running down the middle from end to end. The white-leaded lower surface already promises the white flannel of maturity. The penultimate segment is armed, above, with two curved points. These are grapnels, which enable the grub to slip swiftly through the interstices of the bones.
The exploited carcase seems deserted, so quiet is everything outside. Lift it up. Instantly what liveliness, what confusion! Surprised by the sudden rush of light, the hairy-backed larvæ dive under the remains, wriggling their way into the crevices of the skeleton; the adults, whose movements are less supple, run to and fro in their distress, burying themselves as best they can, or flying off. Leave them to their darkness: they will resume the interrupted work and, some time in July, we shall find their nymphs with no other shelter than the remnants of the corpse.
Although the Dermestes disdains to burrow underground in order to undergo their transformation, finding sufficient protection beneath the remains of the wasted corpse, this is by no means the case with the Silpha, [[46]]another exploiter of the dead. Two species visit my pans: S. rugosa, Linn., and S. sinuata, Fab. Although assiduously frequented by both species, my appliances tell me nothing definite about the history of these two habitual associates of the Dermestes and the Saprinus. Perhaps I took up the matter too late.
At the end of the winter, indeed, I find beneath a toad the family of the Wrinkled Silpha. It consists of some thirty naked larvæ, glossy, black, flat and tapering to a point. The abdominal segments end on either side in a spike aimed backwards. The penultimate segment has short, bristling filaments. Hidden in the shadow of the disembowelled toad, these larvæ are nibbling the dry meat, long toasted in the sun.
About the first week in May, they repair underground, where each of them digs itself a spherical recess. The nymphs are continually on the alert. At the slightest disturbance, they twirl their pointed abdomen, brandishing it to and fro with a rapid whirling motion. At the end of the same month, the adults leave the soil. Equally precocious, it would seem, are the insects that come to [[47]]my pans, to eat their fill but not to reproduce their species. Family cares are postponed to a later season, to the end of autumn.
I shall mention but briefly the Necrophorus (N. vestigator, Herch.), whose feats I have described elsewhere.[9] He comes to my apparatus, of course, but without making a long stay, the carcases being as a rule too large for his burying-methods. For that matter, I myself would thwart his enterprises if it did suit him. I want to see not burials but operations in the open air. If the sexton is persistent, I dissuade him by pestering him.
Let us pass on to others. Who is this, assiduous visitor, but appearing only in small parties, hardly more than four or five at a time? It is an Hemipteron,[10] a slender Bug, with red wings and with stout, toothed thighs to its hind-legs; it is the Spurred Alydus (A. calcaratus, Linn.), a near kinswoman of the Reduvius, so interesting because of her explosive egg.[11] She too has [[48]]an appetite for game, but how moderate compared with the other’s! I see her wandering over my specimens in search of a denuded bone bleached by the sun. After finding a suitable point she applies the tip of her rostrum to it and for some time remains motionless.
With her rigid implement, fine as a horse-hair, what can she extract from that bone? I ask myself in vain, so dry does the surface exploited appear to be. Perhaps she collects the vestiges of grease left by the Dermestes’ conscientious tooth. Quite a secondary worker, she gleans where others have reaped. I should have liked to follow this bone-sucker’s habits more closely and above all to obtain her eggs, in the hope of discovering some little mechanical secret at the moment of hatching. My attempts failed. When imprisoned in a glass jar with the victuals which she requires, the Alydus allows herself to pine away from one day to the next. She needs to fly in freedom over the neighbouring rosemary-bushes, after her sojourn in the retting-vats.
We will close this list of undertakers’ assistants with the Staphylini,[12] the tribe with [[49]]the short wing-cases. Two species, both inmates of dung-hills, haunt my earthenware pans: Aleochara fuscipes, Fab., and Staphylinus maxillosus, Linn. My attention is drawn rather to the latter, the family giantess.