When the whole ball has been through the mill, the hermit reappears in the light of day, seeks his fortune, finds it, shapes himself a new ball and begins all over again. On a very hot, calm, sultry day—the atmospheric conditions most favourable to the gastronomic enjoyments of my anchorites—watch in hand, I observe one of the consumers in the open air, from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night. The Scarab appears to have come across a morsel greatly to his taste, for, during those twelve hours, he never stops feasting, remains permanently at table, stationary at one spot. At eight o’clock in the evening, I pay him a last visit. His appetite seems undiminished. I find the glutton in as fine fettle as at the start. The banquet, therefore, must have lasted some time longer, until the total disappearance of the lump. Next morning, in fact, the Scarab is gone and, of the fine piece attacked on the previous day, naught remains but crumbs. Once round the clock and more, for a single sitting at table, is a fine display of gormandizing in itself; but here is something much better by way of rapidity of digestion. While, in front of the insect, the matter is being continuously chewed and swallowed, behind it, with equal continuity, the matter reappears, stripped of its nutritive particles and spun into a little black cord, similar to a cobbler’s thread. The Scarab never evacuates except at table, so quickly are his digestive labours performed. The apparatus begins to work at the first few mouthfuls; it ceases its office soon after the last. Without a break from beginning to end of the meal and always hanging to the discharging orifice, the thin cord is piled in a heap which is easy to unroll so long as it is not dried up. The thing works with the regularity of a chronometer. Every minute, or, rather, to be accurate, every four-and-fifty seconds, an eruption takes place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres. [5] At long intervals, I employ the pincers, unfasten the cord and unroll the heap along a graduated rule, to estimate the produce. The total measurement for twelve hours is 2·88 metres. [6] As the meal and its necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for some time longer after my last visit, paid at eight o’clock in the evening by the light of a lantern, it follows that my subject must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.