The Burying-Beetles: Experiments 



scrape at the foot of the gibbet in order to 

 overturn it? By no means; and the ingenu- 

 ous observer who looked for such tactics 

 would be greatly disappointed. No atten- 

 tion is paid to the base of the support. It 

 is not vouchsafed even a stroke of the rake. 

 Nothing is done to overturn it, nothing, ab- 

 solutely nothing! It is by other methods 

 that the Burying-beetles obtain the Mole. 



These decisive experiments, repeated un- 

 der many different forms, prove that never, 

 never in this world, do the Necrophori dig, 

 or even give a superficial scrape, at the foot 

 of the gallows, unless the hanging body 

 touch the ground at that point. And, in the 

 latter case, if the twig should happen to fall, 

 this is in no way an intentional result, but a 

 mere fortuitous effect of the burial already 

 commenced. 



What, then, did the man with the Frog, 

 of whom Gleditsch tells us, really see? If 

 his stick was overturned, the body placed to 

 dry beyond the assaults of the Necrophori 

 must certainly have touched the soil: a 

 strange precaution against robbers and 

 damp ! We may well attribute more fore- 

 sight to the preparer of dried Frogs and 

 allow him to hang his animal a few inches 

 off the ground. In that case, as all my ex- 

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