e at the foot of the gibbet in
order to overturn it? By no means; and the ingenuous observer who
looked for such tactics would be greatly disappointed. No attention is
paid to the base of the support. It is not vouchsafed even a stroke of
the rake. Nothing is done to overturn it, nothing, absolutely nothing!
It is by other methods that the Burying-beetles obtain the Mole.

These decisive experiments, repeated under many different forms, prove
that never, never in this world, do the Necrophori dig, or even give a
superficial scrape, at the foot of the gallows, unless the hanging
body touch the ground at that point. And, in the latter case, if the
twig should happen to fall, this is in no way an intentional result,
but a mere fortuitous effect of the burial already commenced.

What, then, did the man with the Frog, of whom Gleditsch tells us,
really see? If his stick was overturned, the body placed to dry beyond
the assaults of the Necrophori must certainly have touched the soil: a
strange precaution against robbers and damp! We may well attribute
more foresight to the preparer of dried Frogs and allow him to hang
his animal a few inches off the ground. In that case, as all my
experiments emphatically declare, the fall of the stake undermined by
the sextons is a pure matter of imagination.

Yet another of the fine arguments in favour of the reasoning-power of
insects flies from the light of investigation and founders in the
slough of error! I wonder at your simple faith, O masters who take
seriously the statements of chance-met observers, richer in
imagination than in veracity; I wonder at your credulous zeal, when,
without criticism, you build up your theories on such absurdities!

Let us continue. The stake is henceforth planted perpendicularly, but
the body hanging on it does not reach the base: a condition enough to
ensure that there will never be any digging at this point. I make use
of a Mouse, who, by reason of her light weight, will lend herself
better to the insect's manoeuvres. The dead animal is fixed by the
hind-legs to the top of the apparatus with a raffia strap. It hangs
plumb, touching the stick.

Soon two Necrophori have discovered the morsel. They climb the greased
pole; they explore the prize, poking their foreheads into its fur. It
is recognized as an excellent find. To work, therefore. Here we have
again, but under more difficult conditions, the tactics employed when
it was necessary to displace