horn-beetle

Updated: May 5, 2025

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.

Jean-Henri Fabre - The Wonders of Instinct : Chapters in the Psychology of Insects

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."

Georges Victor Legros - Fabre, Poet of Science