omething very like
the Canthon's work in shape and size.

When placed on burning charcoal, this double-bellied gourd turns
black, becomes covered with shiny warts that look like jet beads,
emits a smell like that of grilled meat and leaves a residue of red
clay. It is therefore formed of clay and sanies. Moreover, the paste
is sprinkled with little scraps of dead flesh. At the smaller end is
the egg, in a chamber with a very porous roof, to allow the air to
enter.

The little undertaker has something better to show than her double
sausage. Like the Bison Onitis, the Sisyphus and the Lunary Copris,
she enjoys the collaboration of the father. Each burrow contains
several cradles, with the father and mother invariably present. What
are the two inseparables doing? They are watching their brood and, by
dint of assiduous repairs, keeping the little sausages, which are in
constant danger of cracking or drying up, in good condition.

The magic carpet which has allowed me to take this trip to the pampas
supplies me with nothing else worth noting. Besides, the New World is
poor in pill-rollers and cannot compare with Senegambia and the
regions of the Upper Nile, that paradise of Copres and Sacred Beetles.
Nevertheless we owe it one precious detail: the group which is
commonly known by the name of Dung-beetles is divided into two
corporations, one of which exploits dung, the other corpses.

With very few exceptions, the latter has no representatives in our
climes. I have mentioned the little Oval Onthophagus as a lover of
carrion corruption; and my memory does not recall any other example of
the kind. We have to go to the other world to find such tastes.

Can it be that there was a schism among the primitive scavengers and
that these, at first addicted to the same industry, afterwards divided
the hygienic task, some burying the ordure of the intestines, the
others the ordure of death? Can the comparative frequency of this or
the other provender have brought about the formation of two
trade-guilds?

That is not admissible. Life is inseparable from death; wherever a
corpse is, there also, scattered at random, are the digestive residues
of the live animal; and the pill-roller is not fastidious as to the
origin of this waste matter. Dearth therefore plays no part in the
schism, if the true dung-worker has actually turned himself into an
undertaker, or if the undertaker has turned himself into a true
dung-worker. At no time hav