BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS 97 



reached them, coming from afar, imperceptible to any- 

 other sense than that of the Sexton-beetles. So my 

 Necrophori are fain to go their'ways. 



Can they? Nothing would be easier if a glimmer of 

 reason were to aid them. Through the wire network, 

 over which they have so often strayed, they have seen, 

 outside, the free soil, the promised land which they long 

 to reach. A hundred times if once they have dug at the 

 foot of the rampart. There, in vertical wells, they take 

 up their station, drowsing whole days on end while un- 

 employed. If I give them a fresh Mole, they emerge 

 from their retreat by the entrance corridor and come to 

 hide themselves beneath the belly of the beast. The 

 burial over, they return, one here, one there, to the con- 

 fines of the enclosure and disappear beneath the soil. 



Well, in two and a half months of captivity, despite 

 long stays at the base of the trellis, at a depth of three- 

 quarters of an inch beneath the surface, it is rare indeed 

 for a Necrophorus to succeed in circumventing the ob- 

 stacle, to prolong his excavation beneath the barrier, to 

 make an elbow in it and to bring it out on the other side, 

 a trifling task for these vigorous creatures. Of fourteen 

 only one succeeded in escaping. 



A chance deliverance and not premeditated; for, if the 

 happy event had been the result of a mental combination, 

 the other prisoners, practically his equals in powers of 

 perception, would all, from first to last, discover by ra- 

 tional means the elbowed path leading to the outer world ; 

 and the cage would promptly be deserted. The failure 

 of the great majority proves that the single fugitive was 



