A keen and vigilant scent is the Beetle’s, we must admit; a scent which is always in operation. The Dog smells the truffle through the soil, but he is awake; the pill-roller smells his favourite fare through the ground in the opposite direction, but he is asleep. Which of the two has the subtler scent?
Science flings wide her net, welcoming even filth; and truth soars at heights where nothing can soil her. The reader will therefore be good enough to excuse certain [[53]]details which cannot be avoided in a history of the Dung-beetle; he will show some indulgence for what has gone before and what will follow. The revolting workshop of the insect that manipulates ordure will lead perhaps to loftier ideas than would the perfumer’s factory with its jasmine and patchouli.
I have accused the Sacred Beetle of being an insatiable gormandizer. It is time to prove what I said. In my cages, which are too small to allow of much pill-rolling, my boarders often scorn to accumulate provisions and confine themselves to eating where they are. It is a good opportunity for us: the meal taken in public will tell us better than the underground banquet what a Dung-beetle’s stomach can do.
On a very still and sultry day—these are the conditions most favourable to my anchorites’ gastronomic joys—I observe one of the diners in the open air, from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night. Watch in hand, I time the glutton. He appears to have come across a morsel greatly to his taste, for, during those twelve hours, he never stops feasting, but remains glued to the table, absolutely stationary. At eight o’clock in the evening, I pay him a last visit. His appetite seems undiminished; I find him in as fine fettle as at the start. The banquet then must have gone on some time longer, until the dish had disappeared entirely. In fact, next morning there was no sign of my Beetle; and, of the sumptuous repast begun on the previous day, naught remained but crumbs.
To eat the clock round is no small feat of gluttony; but the present instance shows a much more remarkable feat of digestion. While matter is continuously being chewed and swallowed by the insect in front, it is [[54]]reappearing, no less continuously, behind, deprived of its nutritive particles and spun into a thin black cord, similar to cobbler’s thread. The Scarab never evacuates except at table, so quickly are his digestive operations performed. The wire-drawing apparatus begins to work at the first few mouthfuls; it ceases soon after the last. Without a break from beginning to end of the meal, the slender cord, ever appended to the discharging orifice, goes on piling itself into a heap which can easily be unrolled so long as there is no sign of desiccation.
The working is as regular as that of a chronometer. Every minute, or rather, to be exact, every four-and-fifty seconds, a discharge takes place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres.[3] At long intervals I employ my tweezers, remove the cord and unroll the mass along a graduated rule, in order to measure the amount produced. The total for twelve hours is 2·88 metres.[4] As the meal and its necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for some time longer after my last visit, which was paid at eight o’clock in the evening by lantern-light, my Beetle must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.
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, [[55]]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. [[56]]
[1] Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), author of the famous Fables.—Translator’s Note. [↑]