CHAPTER V 



THE BURYING-BEETLES : THE BURIAL 



BESIDE the iootpath in April lies the Mole, disemboweled 

 by the peasant's spade ; at the foot of the hedge the piti- 

 less urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about 

 to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The 

 passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush be- 

 neath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind 

 has thrown a tiny unfeathered bird from its nest. What 

 will become of these little bodies and of so many other 

 pitiful remnants of life? They will not long offend our 

 sense of sight and smell. The sanitary officers of the 

 fields are legion. 



An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the 

 first to come hastening and begin, particle by particle, to 

 dissect the corpse. Soon the odor of the corpse attracts 

 the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the 

 same time, the flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow- 

 trotting Horn-beetle, the Dermestes, powdered with snow 

 upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus, all, 

 whence coming no one knows, hurry hither in squads, 

 with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and drain- 

 ing the infection. 



What a spectacle, in the spring, beneath a dead Mole ! 

 The horror of this laboratory is a beautiful sight for one 

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