s by employing the resources which
you use against natural obstacles. With mandibles for shears, you
patiently cut my strings as you would have gnawed the threads of the
grass-roots. This is meritorious, if not deserving of exceptional
glorification. The shallowest of the insects that 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 by a strap of raffia fore and aft to a light horizontal
cross-bar resting on two firmly-planted forks. It is like a joint of
venison on the spit, eccentrically 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 climbs to the surface, wanders over
the Mole, inspects him and ends by perceiving the strap at the back.
He gnaws and ravels it tenaciously. 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 strap.

The Beetles proceed with 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 find out what is happening overhead. The second strap is
perceived, is severed in turn; and henceforth the work goes on as well
as could be wished.

My compliments, perspicacious cable-cutters! But I must not
exaggerate. The Mole's straps were for you the little cords with which
you are so familiar in turfy soil. You broke them, as well as the
hammock of the previous experiment, just as you sever with the blades
of your shears any natural thread stretching across your catacombs. It
is an indispensable trick of your trade. 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 prolific of Moles, Frogs, Lizards and other viands to your taste
are usually covered with grass.

You are capable of much better things still