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Updated: June 1, 2025
The science of rational mechanics might find something here to whet its finest theories upon. The strength and litheness of a clown cannot compare with those of this budding flesh, this hardly coagulated glair. Once isolated in its cell, the larva of the Necrophorus becomes a nymph in ten days or so. I lack the evidence furnished by direct observation, but the story is completed of itself.
The Necrophorus must assume the adult form in the course of the summer; like the Dung-beetle, he must enjoy in the autumn a few days of revelry free from family cares. Then, when the cold weather draws near, he goes to earth in his winter quarters, whence he emerges as soon as spring arrives.
A mutton-cutlet, a strip of beef-steak, in the right stage of maturity, disappeared beneath the soil, receiving the same attentions as those lavished on the Mole or the Mouse. In short, the Necrophorus has no exclusive preferences; anything putrid he conveys underground. The maintenance of his industry, therefore, presents no sort of difficulty.
I suspect that the Necrophorus, without in any way foreseeing the consequences of his action, heaved his back merely because he felt the animal's legs above him. With the system of suspension adopted, the push of the back, employed in all cases of difficulty, was brought to bear first upon the point of support; and the fall resulted from this happy coincidence.
With his expeditious method, the Necrophorus is the first of the little purifiers of the fields. He is also one of the most celebrated of insects in respect of his psychical capacities. This undertaker is endowed, they say, with intellectual faculties approaching to reason, such as are not possessed by the most gifted of the Bees and Wasps, the collectors of honey or game.
It is the final deliverance of verminous old age. This murderous frenzy, breaking out late in life, is not peculiar to the Necrophorus. I have described elsewhere the perversity of the Osmia, so placid in the beginning. Feeling her ovaries exhausted, she smashes her neighbours' cells and even her own; she scatters the dusty honey, rips open the egg, eats it.
As for his actions in the snare with the underground passage, any other bird, impassioned of the light, would do the same. Under rather more difficult conditions, the Necrophorus repeats the ineptness of the Turkey.
This is the ultimate deliverance of verminous old age. Let us proceed to the rational prowess which has earned for the Necrophorus the better part of his renown and, to begin with, let us submit the case related by Clairville that of the too hard soil and the call for assistance to experimental test.
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