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 quantity of water which it displaces when immersed in a narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not devoid of interest: they tell us that, at a single bout of eating, in a dozen hours, the Sacred Beetle digests very nearly his own bulk in food. What a stomach! And, above all, what rapidity, what power of digestion! From the very first mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself into a thread that stretches and stretches 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 merely passes through, is at once treated by the stomach’s reagents and at once exhausted. One may well believe that an apparatus which sanifies filth so quickly has some part to play in the public health. We shall have occasion to return to this important subject. CHAPTER IV THE SACRED BEETLE: THE PEAR The 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 latter part of June, to say that he thought the time had come to begin our investigations. 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 that I thought I knew. In shape, it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all its fresh colour and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to have 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 children’s museum? One would say so. The little ones group themselves 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 boxwood 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 nursery collection until we have found out more about it. Can it really be the Sacred Beetle’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.