50 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



would be that of the perfect insect which, casting its 

 rejected mummy-clothes and moving for the first time 

 in its shell, wields fingerless armlets. The fact, there- 

 fore, is established for certain : the Sacred Beetle is born 

 maimed ; his mutilation dates from his birth. 



' ' Very well, " reply our fashionable theorists, ' ' the Sacred 

 Beetle is mutilated from the start ; but his remote an- 

 cestors were not. They were formed according to the 

 general rule, they were correct in structure down to this 

 slight digital detail. There were some who, in the course 

 of their rude task as diggers and rollers, wore out that 

 delicate, cumbrous, useless member ; and, finding them- 

 selves better equipped for their work by this accidental 

 amputation, they bequeathed it to their successors, to 

 the great benefit of the race. The present insect profits 

 by the improvement obtained by a long array of ancestors, 

 and, acting under the stimulus of vital competition, gives 

 permanence to an advantageous condition due to chance." 



O ingenuous theorists, so triumphant on paper, so 

 vain in the face of reality, listen to me for yet one 

 moment more ! If the loss of the front fingers be a 

 fortunate thing for the Sacred Beetle, who faithfully 

 hands down the leg of yore fortuitously maimed, why 

 should it not be so with the other members, if they too 

 happened to lose by chance their terminal appendage, 

 a small, powerless filament, almost utterly unserviceable, 

 and, owing to its delicacy, a cause of grievous conflicts 

 with the roughness of the soil ? 



The Sacred Beetle is not a climber, but an ordinary 

 pedestrian, supporting himself upon the point of an iron- 

 shod stick, by which I mean the stout spine or prickle 

 wherewith the tip of the leg is armed. He does not have 

 to hold on by his claws to some hanging branch, as does 



