If you _do_ find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied in England, it occurs almost always on a path or high-road. Now this fact is in itself significant; for the high-road is practically a man-made desert, so hardened and steam-rollered, so pounded and wheel-ridden, that no plant can grow on it; so exposed that small animals will only scurry across it for dear life in fear and trembling; and so difficult to dig into that no burrowing creature can hope to worm his toilsome way through it. Hence the animals that die on the road are almost never buried; while those that die in the field or copse are either eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed, a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small long-nosed, insect-eating animals known as shrews cannot so much as cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way: shrews die of cold and hunger in great numbers at the approach of winter. A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these, however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities, the sexton beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path; these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry them off to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road, and none on the open ground: so he hastily concludes in his easy-going way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals. If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke is specially certain: for the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity. I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of reward. Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious calling for the sake of gain: they expect to be paid for their sanitary services. The payment is taken in two forms: one, immediate, as food for themselves: the other, deferred, as board and lodging for their children. [Illustration: 1.--GROUPS OF MISCELLANEOUS SEXTON BEETLES, DISCOVERING A DEAD FIELD-MOUSE.]