The Sacred Beetle: the Nymph 



walking or digging; used moreover for 

 constant leverage when the insect is rolling 

 its pill backwards, the front limbs are 

 exposed much more freely than the others 

 to the danger of spraining and tv\^isting their 

 delicate finger, of putting it out of joint, of 

 losing it entirely, from the first moment when 

 the work begins. 



Lest this explanation should appeal to any 

 of my readers, I will hasten to undeceive 

 him. The absence of the front fingers is 

 not the result of an accident. Here before 

 my eyes lies the unanswerable proof. I 

 examine the nymph's legs with the magnify- 

 ing-glass: those in front have not the least 

 vestige of a tarsus; the toothed limb ends 

 bluntly, without any trace of a terminal 

 appendage. In the others, on the contrary^ 

 the tarsus is as distinct as can be, notwith- 

 standing the shapeless, lumpy condition due 

 to the swaddling-bands and humours of the 

 nymphal state. It suggests a finger swollen 

 with chilblains. 



If the evidence of the nymph were not 

 sufl^.cient, there would still be that of the 

 perfect insect, which, casting its mummy- 

 cloths and moving for the first time in its 

 shell, wields fingerless fore-arms. The 

 point is established for a certainty: the 



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