GNAWING ANIMALS^ KODKNTS 137 



beneficent faculty may have been one amongst many 

 which we know the Egyptians attributed to these 

 deities, but we believe there were others less material. 



The sacred beetle {Scaraboeus sacer) was venerated, 

 Dr. Sambon says, " because of the habit this animal 

 was known to have of rolling dung into pellets, 

 almost as soon as dropped, and burying it in the soil 

 together with its dung-eating larva. Thus this 

 insect prevents the spread of the acta disease, a grave 

 form of endemic ana3mia, which tlie writer of the 

 Papyrus Ebers 3400 years ago rightly ascribed to 

 the Heltu worm rediscovered in 1838 by Dubius." 



During the plague in Rome, 291 B.C., rat-eating 

 snakes were introduced to destroy the pest-carriers. 

 This event Dr. Sambon says is commemorated on a 

 medallion of Antoninus, on which a galley is repre- 

 sented passing beneath a bridge, and from its prow 

 a snake moves towards the figure of the Tiber God, 

 who stretches out his right hand in sign of welcome. 



And again the same author describes an illustration 

 of a fresco in Dyer's book on Pompeii, published in 

 1871, '^ in which are represented two guardian serpents 

 moving towards an altar placed between them, 

 on which lies the incense-yielding cone, sacred to 

 ^sculapius. Above each snake is a bird darting 

 after a fly. 1'he tails of these birds are considerably 

 shorter than their wings. Their peculiar markings 

 and action, as if hawking flies on the wing, show that 

 they must be intended to represent the common 

 spotted fly-catcher— a bird even at the present day 

 kept in houses in Southern Italy for the purpose of 

 destroying flies.'' 



