But there are other unconsidered creatures besides these, creatures which perform for us functions almost as useful and important as those of the earthworms; and I propose to devote a few pages here to one such group, the sanitary commissioners of the insect world, as I will venture to call them—the vast body of minor sextons and six-legged scavengers. Has it ever struck you that as you walk abroad through the rich green meadows and pastures of England, you almost never come across a dead and decaying animal? I do not mean large animals like horses and donkeys: those do sometimes occur unburied, giving us bold and unpleasant advertisement of their near presence. But just consider that the fields through which you stroll are a perfect warren of moles and shrews and field-mice and water-voles and frogs and lizards and rabbits and weasels, to say nothing of smaller fry; and then think how seldom on your morning rounds in the country you come across a single dead bird or rat or adder, a departed toad, or a late lamented leveret. The ground about you teems with life: but where are its cemeteries? Squirrels and dormice are dying in every copse: but what becomes of their bodies? Who ever saw a dead bat? Who knows the tomb of the deceased hedgehogs?
Of course a great many of the smaller animals die a violent death, and find their living grave in the maw of their devourers—one must admit that explanation as covering a very large number of cases. Thirty field-mice have been disinterred from the stomach of a single buzzard when it was shot in the act of digesting after a good dinner; and owls and snakes are answerable for the fate of no small proportion of our minuter wild animals. In other countries, too, vultures and jackals devour most of the carrion as it lies; while even in England we have a few dead-meat-eaters, such as the carrion-crow, the rat, and the shrike. But for the most part our rural English public scavengers are smaller and less conspicuous creatures. Foremost among them in number and utility we may reckon the various kinds of burying beetle.
If you do find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied in England, it occurs almost always on a path or high-road. Now this fact is in itself significant; for the high-road is practically a man-made desert, so hardened and steam-rollered, so pounded and wheel-ridden, that no plant can grow on it; so exposed that small animals will only scurry across it for dear life in fear and trembling; and so difficult to dig into that no burrowing creature can hope to worm his toilsome way through it. Hence the animals that die on the road are almost never buried; while those that die in the field or copse are either eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed, a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small long-nosed, insect-eating animals known as shrews cannot so much as cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way: shrews die of cold and hunger in great numbers at the approach of winter. A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these, however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities, the sexton beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path; these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry them off to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road, and none on the open ground: so he hastily concludes in his easy-going way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals. If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke is specially certain: for the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity.
I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of reward. Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious calling for the sake of gain: they expect to be paid for their sanitary services. The payment is taken in two forms: one, immediate, as food for themselves: the other, deferred, as board and lodging for their children.
1.—GROUPS OF MISCELLANEOUS SEXTON BEETLES, DISCOVERING A DEAD FIELD-MOUSE.
Our illustration No. 1 introduces us to a typical miscellaneous group of these insect scavengers, occupied in appropriating a very fine and desirable carcass on which they have just lighted. A field-mouse, vanquished by fate in the struggle for existence, has lately "turned up his toes" in the most literal sense, and lies unburied, like Archytas, on the loose sand of a bare patch in a meadow. All carrion-eating creatures are remarkable for their powerful sense of smell: and the sexton beetles, like the vultures and condors, are no exception to the rule. They sniff their prey from afar: for where the carcass is, there shall the carrion beetles be gathered together. All are eager to take their share of the feast, and still more to lay their eggs in the dead body. Some of them may crawl up from the immediate neighbourhood; others, summoned from afar, come flying on their gauze-like wings from considerable distances. They are, as a rule, nocturnal creatures, and they come out on their burying expeditions by night alone.
The insect just alighting from his flight, in the upper part of the illustration, is the burying beetle par excellence among our British kinds; he rejoices (we are always supposed to rejoice foolishly in our personal designations) in the dignified title of Necrophorus vespillo. In stature he measures about an inch long, and he is a handsome beast, with two bright orange bands on his hard wing-covers. The illustration shows these wing-covers raised, as is the habit of beetles when they fly, while the thin but powerful wings beneath them are expanded as true pinions. When the insect alights, he folds the wings up carefully and replaces them under the hard protective wing-covers: he is then securely armour-plated from head to foot, and need fear no foe, save birds which swallow him whole—a very tough morsel—and hedgehogs which crunch him in their strong jaws before eating him. However, he is well prepared for all such enemies, for he can exude when attacked a very nasty fluid with a disgusting smell: and this mode of defence, which resembles that of the skunk and the polecat, usually protects him from obtrusive inquirers. He must be handled with caution, as the perfume he diffuses spoils woollen clothes and clings to the fingers after two or three washings.
