d henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually
exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and the
imbecile?

The Massagetae might plead, as an excuse for their atrocious custom, a
dearth of provisions, which is an evil counsellor; not so the
Necrophori, for, thanks to my generosity, victuals are more than
plentiful, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no
part in this slaughter. What we see is an aberration due to
exhaustion, the morbid fury of a life on the point of extinction. As
is generally the case, work bestows a peaceable disposition on the
grave-digger, while inaction inspires him with perverted tastes.
Having nothing left to do, he breaks his kinsman's limbs and eats him
up, heedless of being maimed or eaten himself. 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. The Mantis devours the lovers who
have played their parts; the mother Decticus willingly nibbles a thigh
of her decrepit husband; the merry Crickets, once the eggs are laid in
the ground, indulge in tragic domestic quarrels and with not the least
compunction slash open one another's bellies. When the cares of the
family are finished, the joys of life are finished likewise. The
insect then sometimes becomes depraved; and its disordered mechanism
ends in aberrations.

The larva has nothing striking to show in the way of industry. When it
has fattened to the desired extent, it leaves the charnel-house of the
natal crypt and descends into the earth, far from the putrefaction.
Here, working with its legs and its dorsal armour, it presses back the
sand around it and makes itself a close cabin wherein to rest for the
metamorphosis. When the lodge is ready and the torpor of the
approaching moult arrives, it lies inert; but, at the least alarm, it
comes to life and turns round on its axis.

Even so do several nymphs spin round and round when disturbed, notably
that of _AEgosomus scabricornis_ which I have now before my eyes in
July. It is always a fresh surprise to see these mummies suddenly
throw off their immobility and gyrate on their own axis with a
mechanism whose secret deserves to b