96 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



watch; never do I see a single one of them push it with 

 his foot or butt it with his head. 



Their defeat is not due to lack of strength. Like the 

 Geotrupes, they are vigorous excavators. Grasped in the 

 closed hand, they insinuate themselves through the inter- 

 stices of the fingers and plow up your skin in a fashion 

 to make you very quickly loose your hold. With his 

 head, a robust plowshare, the Beetle might very easily 

 push the ring off its short support. He is not able to do 

 so because he does not think of it; he does not think 

 of it because he is devoid of the faculty attributed to him, 

 in order to support its thesis, by the dangerous prodigal- 

 ity of trans formism. 



Divine reason, sun of the intellect, what a clumsy slap 

 in thy august countenance, when the glorifiers of the 

 animal degrade thee with such dullness ! 



Let us now examine under another aspect the mental 

 obscurity of the Necrophori. My captives are not so 

 satisfied with their sumptuous lodging that they do not 

 seek to escape, especially when there is a dearth of labor, 

 that sovereign consoler of the afflicted, man or beast. In- 

 ternment within the wire cover palls upon them. So, 

 the Mole buried and all in order in the cellar, they stray 

 uneasily over the wire-gauze of the dome; they clamber 

 up, descend, ascend again and take to flight, a flight 

 which instantly becomes a fall, owing to collision with the 

 wire grating. They pick themselves up and begin again. 

 The sky is superb ; the weather is hot, calm and propitious 

 for those in search of the Lizard crushed beside the foot- 

 path. Perhaps the effluvia of the gamy tit-bit have 



