Others will come, frugal and patient pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, and will garner the Mole’s fur, hair by hair, to cover [[58]]themselves, to clothe themselves with it; there will be some, we may be sure, that will feast upon the Snake’s cast scales. These are the Tineæ, the humble caterpillars of no less humble Moths.
Everything suits them in the way of animal clothing: bristles, hair, scales, horn, fur, feather; but for their labours they need darkness and repose. In the sunshine and bustle of the open air they refuse the relics in my pans; they wait until a gust of wind sweeps the charnel-pits and carries the Mole’s velvety down or the reptile’s parchment into a shady corner. Then, infallibly, the cast-off garments of the dead will disappear. As for the bones, the atmospheric agencies, having plenty of time, will crumble and disintegrate them in good time.
If I wish to hasten the end of the epidermic remains disdained by the Dermestes, I have only to keep them in a dry place, in the dark. Before long the Moth will come to exploit them. They infest my house. I had received the skin of a Rattlesnake from Guiana. The horrible specimen, rolled into a bundle, reached me intact, with its poison-fangs, the mere sight of which makes one shudder, and its alarm of rattling rings. In [[59]]the Carib country it had been steeped in a poison which should have ensured its preservation for an indefinite length of time. A useless precaution: the Moths have invaded the thing; they are gnawing at the Rattlesnake’s skin and find the unusual dish, here eaten for the first time, excellent. More familiar victuals, such as the skin of our native Snake, tanned by the maggots and the sun, would be exploited with even greater enthusiasm.
And any relics of what has once lived are visited by specialists who come hurrying up to work upon dead matter and restore it to circulation under new forms. Among them are some whose peculiar specialty shows us with what scrupulous economy the waste material of life is utilized. Such is the Beaded Trox (T. perlatus, Scriba), a humble Beetle, no larger than a cherry-stone at most, black all over and decorated on the wing-cases with rows of protuberances which have earned it the epithet of beaded.
Not to know the Trox is quite excusable, for the insect has never been much talked about. It is an obscure creature, overlooked by the historian. When impaled in a collector’s box, it ranks close to the Dung-Beetles, [[60]]just after the Geotrupes.[1] Its mean and earthy attire denotes a digger. But what precisely is its calling? Like many others, I did not know, when an accidental discovery enlightened me and taught me that the beaded insect deserves something better than a mere compartment in the collector’s necropolis.
February was drawing to a close. The weather was mild and the sun warm. We had gone off in a family party, with the children’s lunch, an apple and a chunk of bread, in the basket, to see the almond trees in bloom. When lunch-time came, we were resting under some great oaks, when Anna, the youngest of the household, always on the watch for “beasties” with her six-year-old eyes, called to me from a distance of a few yards:
“A beastie!” she cried. “Two, three, four of them! And such pretty ones! Come and look, papa, come and look!”
I ran up to her. The child had dug into the sand, to no great depth, with a bit of stick, and was breaking up a sort of rag of [[61]]fur. I produced my pocket trowel and joined her in the task; and in a moment I possessed a dozen Trox-beetles, most of whom I found in a filthy tangle of fur and broken bones. They were working away at it and apparently feeding on it. I had disturbed them at their banquet.
What could this mess be? That was the fundamental question to be solved. Brillat-Savarin[2] declared as an axiom:
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”