This Animal,
From The Excellence Of Its Flesh, Would Be Appropriate To Our Own Country;
And As There Is Also A Splendid Esculent Frog Nearly As Large As A Chicken,
It Would No Doubt Tend To Perpetuate The Present Alliance
If We Made A Gift Of That To France.
The scavenger beetle is one of the most useful of all insects,
as it effectually answers the object indicated
By the name.
Where they abound, as at Kuruman, the villages are sweet and clean,
for no sooner are animal excretions dropped than, attracted by the scent,
the scavengers are heard coming booming up the wind. They roll away
the droppings of cattle at once, in round pieces often as large
as billiard-balls; and when they reach a place proper by its softness
for the deposit of their eggs and the safety of their young,
they dig the soil out from beneath the ball till they have quite let it down
and covered it: they then lay their eggs within the mass.
While the larvae are growing, they devour the inside of the ball
before coming above ground to begin the world for themselves.
The beetles with their gigantic balls look like Atlas
with the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads down,
push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with his legs
while standing on his head. As we recommend the eland to John Bull,
and the gigantic frog to France, we can confidently recommend this beetle
to the dirty Italian towns and our own Sanitary Commissioners.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 82 of 1070
Words from 24361 to 24629
of 306638
