Given the diameter and the length of the thread, it is easy to calculate its volume. Nor is it difficult to arrive at the exact volume of the insect by measuring the amount of water which it displaces when immersed in a narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not uninteresting: they tell us that, at a single festive sitting, in a dozen hours, the Scarab digests very nearly its own volume in food. What a stomach! And especially what a rapidity, what a power of digestion! From the first mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself into a thread that stretches, stretches out indefinitely as long as the meal lasts. In that amazing laboratory, which perhaps never puts up its shutters, unless it be when victuals are lacking, the material only passes through, is worked upon at once by the reagents in the stomach and at once exhausted. We may well believe that a crucible so quick to purify dirt plays its part in the general hygiene. CHAPTER II THE SACRED BEETLE: THE PEAR A young shepherd, who had been told in his spare time to watch the doings of the Sacred Beetle, came to me in high spirits, one Sunday, in the second half of June, to say that he thought the time had come to commence a search. He had detected the insect issuing from the ground, had dug at the spot where it made its appearance and had found, at no great depth, the queer thing which he was bringing me. Queer it was and calculated to upset the little which I thought I knew. In shape, it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all the colour of its freshness and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to come from a turner’s workshop? Was it made by human hands? Was it a model of the fruit of the pear-tree intended for some child’s collection? One would say so. The children come round me; they look at the treasure-trove with longing eyes; they would like to add it to the contents of their toy-box. It is much prettier in shape than an agate marble, much more graceful than an ivory egg or a box-wood top. The material, it is true, seems none too nicely chosen; but it is firm to the touch and very artistically curved. In any case, the little pear discovered underground must not go to swell the collection of nursery treasures until we have found out more about it. Can it really be the Scarab’s work? Is there an egg inside it, a grub? The shepherd assures me that there is. A similar pear, crushed by accident in the digging, contained, he says, a white egg, the size of a grain of wheat. I dare not believe it, so greatly does the object which he has brought me differ from the ball which I expected to see.