The Sacred Beetle and Others 



I allowed myself to be led away by it. In 

 the first pear that I examined, layer by layer, 

 shaving off slices with my penknife, I looked 

 for the egg in the centre of the paunch, 

 feeling almost certain of finding it there. 

 To my great surprise, It was not there. 

 Instead of being hollow, the centre of the 

 pear is full and consists of one continuous, 

 uniform alimentary mass. 



My deductions, which any observer in my 

 place would certainly have shared, seemed 

 very reasonable; the Scarab, however, is of 

 another way of thinking. We have our 

 logic, of which we are rather proud; the 

 dung-kneader has hers, which is better than 

 ours in this instance. She has her own fore- 

 sight, takes her own precautions; and she 

 places the egg elsewhere. 



But where? Why, in the narrow part of 

 the pear, in the neck, right at the end! Let 

 us cut this neck lengthwise, taking the 

 necessary precautions not to damage the 

 contents. It is hollowed into a niche with 

 polished and shiny walls. This niche Is the 

 tabernacle of the germ, the hatching- 

 chamber. The egg, which is very large in 

 proportion to the size of the mother, is an 

 elongated oval, about ten millimetres in 

 length with a diameter of five millimetres at 



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