Well done, my undertakers! I expected no less of your savoir-faire. You have foiled the artifices of the experimenter by employing your resources against natural obstacles. With mandibles for shears, you have patiently cut my threads as you would have gnawed the cordage of the grass-roots. This is meritorious, if not deserving of exceptional glorification. The most limited of the insects which work in earth would have done as much if subjected to similar conditions.
Let us ascend a stage in the series of difficulties. The Mole is now fixed with a lashing of raphia fore and aft to a light horizontal cross-bar which rests on two firmly-planted forks. It is like a joint of venison on a spit, though rather oddly fastened. The dead animal touches the ground throughout the length of its body.
The Necrophori disappear under the corpse, and, feeling the contact of its fur, begin to dig. The grave grows deeper and an empty space appears, but the coveted object does not descend, retained as it is by the cross-bar which the two forks keep in place. The digging slackens, the hesitations become prolonged.
However, one of the grave-diggers ascends to the surface, wanders over the Mole, inspects him and ends by perceiving the hinder strap. Tenaciously he gnaws and ravels it. I hear the click of the shears that completes the rupture. Crack! The thing is done. Dragged down by his own weight, the Mole sinks into the grave, but slantwise, with his head still outside, kept in place by the second ligature.
The Beetles proceed to the burial of the hinder part of the Mole; they twitch and jerk it now in this direction, now in that. Nothing comes of it; the thing refuses to give. A fresh sortie is made by one of them to discover what is happening overhead. The second ligature is perceived, is severed in turn, and henceforth the work proceeds as well as could be desired.
My compliments, perspicacious cable-cutters! But I must not exaggerate. The lashings of the Mole were for you the little cords with which you are so familiar in turfy soil. You have severed them, as well as the hammock of the previous experiment, just as you sever with the blades of your shears any natural filament which stretches across your catacombs. It is, in your calling, an indispensable knack. If you had had to learn it by experience, to think it out before practising it, your race would have disappeared, killed by the hesitations of its apprenticeship, for the spots fertile in Moles, Frogs, Lizards and other victuals to your taste are usually grass-covered.
You are capable of far better things yet; but, before proceeding to these, let us examine the case when the ground bristles with slender brushwood, which holds the corpse at a short distance from the ground. Will the find thus suspended by the hazard of its fall remain unemployed? Will the Necrophori pass on, indifferent to the superb tit-bit which they see and smell a few inches above their heads, or will they make it descend from its gibbet?
Game does not abound to such a point that it can be disdained if a few efforts will obtain it. Before I see the thing happen I am persuaded that it will fall, that the Necrophori, often confronted by the difficulties of a body which is not lying on the soil, must possess the instinct to shake it to the ground. The fortuitous support of a few bits of stubble, of a few interlaced brambles, a thing so common in the fields, should not be able to baffle them. The overthrow of the suspended body, if placed too high, should certainly form part of their instinctive methods. For the rest, let us watch them at work.
I plant in the sand of the cage a meagre tuft of thyme. The shrub is at most some four inches in height. In the branches I place a Mouse, entangling the tail, the paws and the neck among the twigs in order to increase the difficulty. The population of the cage now consists of fourteen Necrophori and will remain the same until the close of my investigations. Of course they do not all take part simultaneously in the day's work; the majority remain underground, somnolent, or occupied in setting their cellars in order. Sometimes only one, often two, three or four, rarely more, busy themselves with the dead creature which I offer them. To-day two hasten to the Mouse, who is soon perceived overhead in the tuft of thyme.
They gain the summit of the plant by way of the wire trellis of the cage. Here are repeated, with increased hesitation, due to the inconvenient nature of the support, the tactics employed to remove the body when the soil is unfavourable. The insect props itself against a branch, thrusting alternately with back and claws, jerking and shaking vigorously until the point where at it is working is freed from its fetters. In one brief shift, by dint of heaving their backs, the two collaborators extricate the body from the entanglement of twigs. Yet another shake; and the Mouse is down. The burial follows.