The Sacred Beetle and Others 



hardly be able to disturb, have their front 

 tarsi intact, as if cutting through rock, were 

 work calling for delicate tools rather than 

 strong ones. Everything then promotes the 

 belief that, if we could see the Scarab while 

 still a novice in his native cell, we should 

 find him to be mutilated in just the same way 

 as the much-travelled veteran who has worn 

 himself out with /toil. 



This absence of fingers might serve as the 

 foundation for an argument in favour of the 

 theories now in fashion: the struggle for life 

 and the evolution of the species. People 

 might say: 



" The Scarabs began by having tarsi to all 

 their legs, in conformity with the general 

 laws of insect structure. In one way or an- 

 other, some of them lost these troublesome 

 appendages to their front legs, they being 

 hurtful rather than useful. Finding them- 

 selves the better for this mutilation, which 

 made their work easier, they gained the 

 advantage over their less-favoured fellows; 

 they founded a family by handing down their 

 fingerless stumps to their descendants; and 

 the fingered insect of antiquity ended by be- 

 coming the maimed insect of our times." 



I am ready to yield to this reasoning if 

 you will first tell me why, with similar but 



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