THE SACRED BEETLE 53 



in a five-jointed tarsus, the Sacred Beetles obviously have 

 thirty fingers." 



Forgive me, illustrious master : the total number of 

 joints is but twenty, because the two front legs are 

 devoid of tarsi. You have been carried away by the 

 general law. Losing sight of the singular exception, 

 which was certainly known to you, you said thirty, 

 swayed for a moment by that overwhelmingly positive 

 law. Yes, the exception was known to you, so much so 

 that the figure of the Sacred Beetle accompanying your 

 account, a figure drawn from the insect and not from the 

 Egyptian monuments, is irreproachably accurate : it has 

 no tarsi on its fore-legs. The blunder is excusable, in 

 view of the strangeness of the exception. 



What did Horapollo himself see ? Apparently what 

 we see in our day. If Latreille's explanation be right, as 

 everything seems to denote, if the Egyptian author 

 began by counting thirty fingers according to the number 

 of joints in the tarsi, it is because his enumeration was 

 based in his mind upon the facts of the general situation. 

 He was guilty of a mistake which was not very repre- 

 hensible, seeing that, some thousand years later, masters 

 like Latreille and Mulsant were guilty of it in their turn. 

 The only culprit in all this business is the exceptional 

 structure of the insect. 



" But," I may be asked, " why should not Horapollo 

 have seen the exact truth ? Perhaps the Scarab of his 

 century had tarsi which the insect does not possess to- 

 day. In that case, it has been altered by the patient 

 work of time." 



Before answering this evolutionary objection, I will 

 wait for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Hora- 



