[Illustration: Under-surface of sacred scarabæi, engraven with hieroglyphs.] _Apropos_ of scarabs, the toleration by Egyptians of all living creatures, from the crocodile to the fly, exhibits, in a high degree, the gentleness and amiability of character of the people. It was not always love—often it was superstition, or fear, that made them so lenient; but, nevertheless, we cannot fail to perceive, in their treatment of animals, a recognition of the rights of all created beings, as well as of themselves. Lady Duff Gordon looked warily around her, lest there should be witnesses, when her prejudices led her to kill a serpent that had intruded itself into her apartment; and she was unable to induce the Arab mothers to kill the gorged flies which hung from the inflamed eyelids of their children afflicted with ophthalmia. The Fellaheen look doubtfully at the sportsman as he fills his bag with the superfluous pigeons, although to themselves they are almost a scourge. Different parts of Egypt preferred different animals, and held them sacred; so that we find a Leontopolis, or city of lions; a Lycopolis, or city of the wolf; a Crocodilopolis, or city of the crocodile; a Bubastis, where the cat was held in veneration; and so forth. But what shall we say of the venerable scarab, the sacred scarabæus. Those who are sufficiently acquainted with the natural history of certain beetles, are aware that they propel, with their hind-legs, objects of domestic use which they are desirous of storing away in their caves. Now, on the banks of the Nile, the object of greatest importance and anxiety to the scarab is its egg. She lays it near the stream; and, to protect it from injury, she plasters it over with mud, enclosing it like a kernel in its shell; and, instinctively mindful of the rise of the Nile, which would wash it away, she sets herself diligently to work to roll it upward from the river’s brink. It has to be propelled often to a considerable distance: she must drive it across the arable belt; for the sepulchre of the scarab, like that of the Egyptian, is the desert; and the male oftentimes helps her in her labour. Arrived at the sandy border of the desert, they dig their well; the precious mummy is deposited therein, to await the return of the spirit of life, and, at the appointed hour, to rise from the tomb into renewed existence. Does not the Egyptian see, in the scarab, the pioneer of his own religious belief?—and hence is led to regard it as the emblem of the divine spirit—the future “to be,” or “to transform.” Too frequently this labour of love, on the part of the scarab, concludes in sacrifice: the exhausted labourer sinks wearily by the side of the finished tomb, and dies.