History tells us that certain peoples, the Massagetae and others, used to kill their aged folk in order to spare them the miseries of senility. The fatal blow on the hoary skull was in their eyes an act of filial piety. The Necrophori have their share of these ancient barbarities. Full of days and henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and the imbecile? The Massagetae might invoke, as an excuse for their atrocious custom, a dearth of provisions, which is an evil counsellor; not so the Necrophori, for, thanks to my generosity, victuals are superabundant, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no part in this slaughter. Here we have the aberration of exhaustion, the morbid fury of a life on the point of extinction. As is generally the case, work bestows a peaceable disposition on the grave-digger, while inaction inspires him with perverted tastes. Having no longer anything to do, he breaks his fellow's limbs, eats him up, heedless of being mutilated or eaten up himself. This is the ultimate deliverance of verminous old age. CHAPTER 6. THE BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS. Let us proceed to the rational prowess which has earned for the Necrophorus the better part of his renown and, to begin with, let us submit the case related by Clairville--that of the too hard soil and the call for assistance--to experimental test. With this object in view, I pave the centre of the space beneath the cover, level with the soil, with a brick and sprinkle the latter with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil in which digging is impracticable. All about it, for some distance and on the same level, spreads the loose soil, which is easy to dig. In order to approximate to the conditions of the little story, I must have a Mouse; with a Mole, a heavy mass, the work of removal would perhaps present too much difficulty. To obtain the Mouse I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a Mouse is needed, that very common animal becomes rare. Braving decorum in his speech, which follows the Latin of his ancestors, the Provencal says, but even more crudely than in my translation: "If you look for dung, the Asses become constipated!" At last I possess the Mouse of my dreams! She comes to me from that refuge, furnished with a truss of straw, in which official charity gives the hospitality of a day to the beggar wandering over the face of the fertile earth; from that municipal hostel whence one invariably emerges verminous. O Reaumur, who used to invite marquises to see your caterpillars change their skins, what would you have said of a future disciple conversant with such wretchedness as this? Perhaps it is well that we should not be ignorant of it, so that we may take compassion on the sufferings of beasts.