THE SACRED BEETLE 17 



heap which is easy to unroll so long as it is not 

 dried up. 



The thing works with the regularity of a chronometer. 

 Every minute, or, rather, to be accurate, every four-and- 

 fifty seconds, an eruption takes place and the thread is 

 lengthened by three to four millimetres.^ At long in- 

 tervals, I employ the pincers, unfasten the cord and 

 unroll the heap along a graduated rule, to estimate the 

 produce. The total measurement for twelve hours is 

 2-88 metres.^ As the meal and its necessary comple- 

 ment, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for 

 some time longer after my last visit, paid at eight o'clock 

 in the evening by the light of a lantern, it follows that my 

 subject must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord 

 well over three yards in length. 



Given the diameter and the length of the thread, it is 

 easy to calculate its volume. Nor is it difficult to arrive 

 at the exact volume of the insect by measuring the 

 amount of water which it displaces when immersed in a 

 narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not un- 

 interestmg : they tell us that, at a single festive sitting, in 

 a dozen hours, the Scarab digests very nearly its own 

 volume in food. What a stomach ! And especially what 

 a rapidity, what a power of digestion ! From the first 

 mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself into a thread that 

 stretches, stretches out indefinitely as long as the meal 

 lasts. In that amazing laboratory, which perhaps never 

 puts up its shutters, unless it be when victuals are lack- 

 ing, the material only passes through, is worked upon 

 at once by the reagents in the stomach and at once 

 exhausted. We may well believe that a crucible so 

 quick to purify dirt plays its part in the general hygiene. 



^ "ll to "15 inches. — Translator's Note. 



2 Close upon 9^ feet. — Translator' s Note, .^ 



