excerpted from an article in the london review of books, feb 2003.


Brilliant field biologist that he was, Hamilton was at his best when focusing not on people but on the bizarre insects he loved. In an article written for a Japanese entomological magazine entitled 'My Preferred Burial and Why', he provided both an epitaph and, characteristically, a macabre insight into the life-cycle of beetles that lay their eggs in animal corpses they have buried.


"I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motorbikes, be borne, body by flying body out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars, lofted under those beautiful and un-fused elytra which we will all hold over our backs. So finally I too will shine like a violet ground beetle under a stone."

i am thinking of cees nooteboom and the following story.