is reason to believe that the reptilian class daubs its garments with
similar products.

[Footnote 10: A. B. Griffiths, Transactions of the Academie des
sciences, 26 November, 1894.--_Author's Note_.]

From the reptile to the bird is no great distance. Then the
Wood-pigeon's iridescent hues, the eyes on the Peacock's tail, the
Kingfisher's sea-blue, the Flamingo's carmine are more or less closely
connected with the urinary excretions? Why not? Nature, that sublime
economist, delights in these vast antitheses which upset all our
conceptions of the values of things. Of a pinch of common charcoal she
makes a diamond; of the same clay which the potter fashions into a
bowl for the Cat's supper she makes a ruby; of the filthy waste
products of the organism she makes the splendours of the insect and
the bird. The metallic marvels of the Buprestis and the Ground-beetle;
the amethyst, ruby, sapphire, emerald and topaz of the Humming-bird;
glories which would exhaust the language of the lapidary jeweller:
what are they in reality? Answer: a drop of urine.

CHAPTER XI
THE BURYING-BEETLES: THE BURIAL

Beside the footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the
peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has
stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green,
pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious
deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of
wind has thrown a tiny unfledged bird from its nest. What will become
of these little bodies and so many other pitiful remnants of life?
They will not long offend our sense of sight and smell. The sanitary
officers of the fields are legion.

An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come
hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon
the odour attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the
same time, the flattened Silpha,[1] the glistening, slow-trotting
Cellar-beetle, the Dermestes,[2] powdered with snow upon the abdomen,
and the slender Staphylinus,[3] all, whence coming no one knows, hurry
hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and
draining the infection.

[Footnote 1: Or Carrion-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 2: Or Bacon-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 3: Or Rove-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]

What a spectacle, in the spring, beneath a dead Mole! The horror of
this laboratory is a