The Beaded Trox 



of the bones. The adults have gone to 

 earth and are dead or dying. Their time is 

 over. I obtain the first nymphs at midsum- 

 mer. A glass receptacle shows them to me 

 slowly turning round and round and polish- 

 ing with their backs the earthy wall of their 

 cell, a simple, oval cavity. 



By the middle of July the perfect insect 

 has matured. Not yet defiled by the dirt 

 of its calling, it is really magnificent in its 

 ebony cuirass, its strings of large beads sur- 

 mounted by white hairs, its hinder and mid- 

 dle tarsi shod with bright red. It comes up 

 to the surface, finds the Fox's dejecta, set- 

 tles down and from now onward is a filthy 

 scavenger. Once torpid in the sand, under 

 the heap of ordure which serves it as a 

 roof, it will pass the winter there and resume 

 its labours in the spring. 



When all is said, the Trox is a somewhat 

 uninteresting insect. One single point in 

 her history deserves to be remembered, 

 namely, her predilection for what the Fox's 

 stomach has refused. I know another in- 

 stance of these pecuhar tastes. The Owl, 

 when he has caught a Field-mouse, stuns her 

 with a blow of his beak on the back of the 

 neck and swallows her whole. It is for the 

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