To know the habits of those creatures charged with the disappearance of corpses, to see them busy at their work of disintegration, to follow in detail the process of transmutation that makes the ruins of what has lived return apace into life's treasure house: these are things that long haunted my mind. I regretfully left the mole lying in the dust of the road. I had to go, after a glance at the corpse and its harvesters. It was not the place for philosophizing over a stench. What would people say who passed and saw me! And what will the reader himself say, if I invite him to that sight? Surely, to busy one's self with those squalid sextons means soiling one's eyes and mind? Not so, if you please! Within the domain of our restless curiosity, two questions stand out above all others: the question of the beginning and the question of the end. How does matter unite in order to assume life? How does it separate when returning to inertia? The pond, with its Planorbis eggs turning round and round, would have given us a few data for the first problem; the Mole, going bad under conditions not too repulsive, will tell us something about the second: he will show us the working of the crucible wherein all things are melted to begin anew. A truce to nice delicacy! Odi profanum vulgus et arceo; hence, ye profane: you would not understand the mighty lesson of the rag tank. I am now in a position to realize my second wish. I have space, air and quiet in the solitude of the harmas. None will come here to trouble me, to smile or to be shocked at my investigations. So far, so good; but observe the irony of things: now that I am rid of passers by, I have to fear my cats, those assiduous prowlers, who, finding my preparations, will not fail to spoil and scatter them. In anticipation of their misdeeds, I establish workshops in midair, whither none but genuine corruption agents can come, flying on their wings. At different points in the enclosure, I plant reeds, three by three, which, tied at their free ends, form a stable tripod. From each of these supports, I hang, at a man's height, an earthenware pan filled with fine sand and pierced at the bottom with a hole to allow the water to escape, if it should rain. I garnish my apparatus with dead bodies. The snake, the lizard, the toad receive the preference, because of their bare skins, which enable me better to follow the first attack and the work of the invaders. I ring the changes with furred and feathered beasts. A few children of the neighborhood, allured by pennies, are my regular purveyors. Throughout the good season, they come running triumphantly to my door, with a snake at the end of a stick, or a lizard in a cabbage leaf. They bring me the rat caught in a trap, the chicken dead of the pip, the mole slain by the gardener, the kitten killed by accident, the rabbit poisoned by some weed. The business proceeds to the mutual satisfaction of sellers and buyer.