United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The short-legged Beetles, trotting along with tiny steps, ought, one would think, to make up in cunning, more fully than the others, for their incapacity for rapid flight. The facts do not correspond with this apparently well-founded forecast. I have consulted the genera Chrysomela, Blatta, Silpha, Cleonus, Bolboceras, Cetonia, Hoplia, Coccinella, and so on.
Thirteen species of Brachelytra have been found; of carrion-beetles, a Necrophorus, a Silpha, quite of the figure of the subterranea, and a Catops. Of Pentamerides are still to be mentioned the Scydmaenus, Cryptophagus, Byrrhus, Cercyon, Psammodius, and Aphodius.
The Sarcophagi, or grey flesh flies, "with red bloodshot eyes, and the stony gaze of a knacker"; the Saprinidae, "with bodies of polished ebony like pearls of jet"; the Silpha aplata, with large and sombre wing-cases in mourning; the shiny slow-trotting Horn-beetle; the Dermestes, "powdered with snow beneath the stomach"; the slender Staphylinus; the whole fauna of the corpse, the whole horde of artisans of death, "intoxicating themselves with purulence, probing, excavating, mangling, dissecting, transmuting, and stamping out infection."
At the same time, the flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow-trotting Cellar-beetle, the Dermestes, powdered with snow upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus, all, whence coming no one knows, hurry hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and draining the infection. What a spectacle, in the spring, beneath a dead Mole!
Soon the odour of the corpse attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the same time, the flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow-trotting Horn-beetle, the Dermestes, powdered with snow upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus, all, whence coming no one knows, hurry hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and draining the infection.
Word Of The Day