More Beetles 



digestive pouch to bone and skin her and 

 sift the bad from the good. When the se- 

 lection is made — as it is, most admirably — 

 the bird, with a shrug of its body, gets rid 

 of the indigestible stuff ; it vomits a pellet of 

 bones and fur. Now, just like the furry 

 mass evacuated by the Fox, these balls of 

 filth have their votaries. I have just seen 

 one of them at work. This is the Choleva 

 tristiSj PANZ., a dwarf related to the family 

 of the Silphae. 



Is the fur of a Rabbit or a Field-mouse 

 such a very precious thing, then, that it has 

 special exploiters appointed to work at it 

 again after the Fox's intestine and the Owl's 

 crop have been unable to break it up and 

 use it? Yes, this fur has a certain value. 

 Nature's treasury claims it for fresh pur- 

 poses with such an imperious voice that our 

 own industries, which in their fashion are 

 endowed with a terrific power, of digestion, 

 cannot guarantee us the protracted posses- 

 sion of what was a scrap of fluff. 



Cloth comes from the Sheep. It has been 

 worked up by the teeth of machinery at the 

 spinner's and the weaver's; it has been 

 steeped in chemicals at the dyer's; it has 

 passed through worse ordeals than an at- 

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