as Christians, and if we consider for an
instant, our own veneration for the latter; it would doubtless have
been considered, by those unfamiliar with our religion, as also based
on a veneration for a very strange emblem; for the cross was the
instrument used by the Romans for punishing with death, murderers and
criminals of the lowest type; and what would be thought to-day, of a
man worshipping the gallows or the guillotine, or carrying copies
modeled from the same, suspended from his neck. However we of to-day
all understand the emblem of the cross, and the Ancient Egyptians in
their time, all understood the emblem of the scarab.

"Men are rarely conscious of the prejudices, which really incapacitate
them, from forming impartial and true judgments on systems alien to
their own habits of thought. And philosophers who may pride themselves
on their freedom from prejudice, may yet fail to understand; whole
classes of psychological phenomena which are the result of religious
practice, and are familiar to those alone to whom such practice is
habitual."[6] Said Thespesion to Apollonius Tyanaeus, according to the
biography of the latter, by Philostratus; "The Egyptians do not
venture to give form to their deities, they only give them in symbols
which have an occult meaning."

The family of the _Scarabaeidae_ or _Coprophagi_ is quite large, the
type of the family is the genus _Ateuchus_, the members of this genus
are more frequently found in the old world than the new, and of its
forty species, thirty belong to Africa.

The sacred scarab of the Egyptians was termed by Linnaeus, the
_Scarabaeus sacer_, but later writers have named it, _Ateuchus sacer_.
This insect is found throughout Egypt, the southern part of Europe, in
China, the East Indies, in Barbary and at the Cape of Good Hope,
Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is black and about one inch in
length.

There was also another species of the scarabaeus valued by the Ancient
Egyptians, that termed by Cuvier, the _Ateuchus sacer AEgyptiorum_,
which is larger and wider than the others of its family; it is of
green golden tints, and is now found principally in Egypt and Nubia.
Pliny, in his Natural History says: "The green scarabaeus has the
property of rendering the sight more piercing, (i.e., curing fatigue
of the eye from its green color,) of those who gaze upon it; hence it
is, that the engravers of precious stones use these insects to steady
their sight."[7] M. La