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
difficu