scape, especially when there is a
dearth of labour, that sovran consoler of the afflicted, man or beast.
Internment within the wire cover palls upon them. So, the Mole buried
and all in order in the cellar, they stray uneasily over the wire-gauze
of the dome; they clamber up, descend, ascend again and take to flight,
a flight which instantly becomes a fall, owing to collision with the
wire grating. They pick themselves up and begin again. The sky is
superb; the weather is hot, calm and propitious for those in search of
the Lizard crushed beside the footpath. Perhaps the effluvia of the
gamy tit-bit have reached them, coming from afar, imperceptible to any
other sense than that of the Sexton-beetles. So my Necrophori are fain
to go their ways.

Can they? Nothing would be easier if a glimmer of reason were to aid
them. Through the wire network, over which they have so often strayed,
they have seen, outside, the free soil, the promised land which they
long to reach. A hundred times if once have they dug at the foot of the
rampart. There, in vertical wells, they take up their station, drowsing
whole days on end while unemployed. If I give them a fresh Mole, they
emerge from their retreat by the entrance corridor and come to hide
themselves beneath the belly of the beast. The burial over, they
return, one here, one there, to the confines of the enclosure and
disappear beneath the soil.

Well, in two and a half months of captivity, despite long stays at the
base of the trellis, at a depth of three-quarters of an inch beneath
the surface, it is rare indeed for a Necrophorus to succeed in
circumventing the obstacle, to prolong his excavation beneath the
barrier, to make an elbow in it and to bring it out on the other side,
a trifling task for these vigorous creatures. Of fourteen only one
succeeded in escaping.

A chance deliverance and not premeditated; for, if the happy event had
been the result of a mental combination, the other prisoners,
practically his equals in powers of perception, would all, from first
to last, discover by rational means the elbowed path leading to the
outer world; and the cage would promptly be deserted. The failure of
the great majority proves that the single fugitive was simply digging
at random. Circumstances favoured him; and that is all. Do not let us
make it a merit that he succeeded where all the others failed.

Let us also beware of attributing to the Necrophori an understanding
more limi