when he employed
all his remaining force to push the other off and keep him down. If
nearly matched, sometimes the under one got a shoulder-lock on his
adversary, and, by an Herculean effort, threw him over his head, and to
a distance of two or three inches across the sand. This usually
terminated the battle, and the whipped Scarabaeus made his way off as
rapidly as his legs would carry him. If the Scarabaeus in possession
could keep the other off the ball for a few seconds, the latter gave up
the struggle and sought his fortunes on another field.

I had wisely chosen my hero so strong that there was little fear of his
being ousted; so my sympathies were on the winning side. But once he met
his master, and was pitched with terrific violence across the sand,
striking on his head, to his evident stupefaction. When he recovered he
gave up his property without demur, and started for another venture.
Then I, the _deus ex machina_, stepped into the epic, pitched the
usurper three times as far as he had thrown my friend, then rolled the
"apple of discord" directly in the path of its rightful owner, and saw
him commencing his task anew, with unabated energy. A little declivity
stood in his way, and it was a Sysiphus-labor to get beyond it. Time
after time, poising himself squarely and solidly on his head, and
bracing himself after the manner of equestrian performers by his
superior extremities, he walked backwards, pushing the ball before him,
and gingerly meeting the tendency to escape, first on one side, and then
on the other; finally, missing, it rolled down the whole slope, carrying
him in dizzy revolutions with it; but without hesitation he recommenced
his work undiscouraged.

Some I saw who seemed to have partners in their toils,--a smaller,
demurer-looking Scarabaeus,--working side by side and in peace with the
greater originator, to get their burden into some quiet spot. What their
relations were, and what they wanted to do with bolus, I don't know, and
doubt if the wisest man in the court of the first of the Pharaohs did.
Whether the Scarabaei are a nation of Amazons, and the hero I had chosen
was a heroine, or whether the lesser partner was a patient waiter for
conjugal content and the fruition of marital hopes, I of course can't
tell. Perhaps Agassiz or Wyman could, but Moses, I am sure, couldn't;
and as what he knew of the _Scarabaeus pilularius_ lies behind all he is
to me in connection with my present subject of