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Updated: June 28, 2025
Apis, the Bull of Memphis, was worshipped with the greatest reverence by the Egyptians. The individual animal who was held to be Apis was recognized by certain signs. It was requisite that he should be quite black, have a white square mark on the forehead, another, in the form of an eagle, on his back, and under his tongue a lump somewhat in the shape of a scarabaeus or beetle.
From a mass of undigested knowledge he has created the living science of entomology, which had received from Réaumur a first breath of vitality, in such wise that each individual creature is presented in his work with its precise expression and the absolute truth of its character and attitudes; the inhabitants of the woods and fields, whether those which feed upon the crops or those which live in the crevices of the rocks, or the obscure workers that crawl upon the earth; all those which have a secret to tell or something to teach us; the Cigale, so different from the insect of the Fable; and above all that beetle whose name had hitherto been encountered arrayed in the most fantastic legends, the famous Scarabaeus sacer of the tombs, which Fabre preferred to place at the head of his epic as an agreeable prologue, although the inquiry relative to his amazing feats belongs chronologically to a comparatively recent period of his career.
I select as my first patient the sacred beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, who thanks to his size and sturdiness, lends himself admirably to an experiment of this kind. I operate upon a dozen, in the corselet, on the breast, on the belly and, by preference, on one of the hind legs, far removed from the impressionable nervous centers.
In the north of England, where it is much used as a killing bait for trout, the insect is commonly known by the name of 'bracken-clock, a name of the same import with the Staffordshire term 'fernshaw, each signifying 'fern-beetle." Another correspondent says Scarabaeus horticola, called "the chovy" in Norfolk, is there deemed very injurious to apple-trees, and other trees and plants, as it feeds both on leaves and all the parts of the flower.
I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabaeus, I must confess; new to me: never saw anything like it before unless it was a skull, or a death's-head, which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come under MY observation." "A death's-head!" echoed Legrand "Oh yes well, it has something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt.
When God manifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him 'the Word, 'He, who covers his limbs with names, as the sacred Text expresses itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the scarabaeus, 'which enters life as its own son' reminds us of the ever self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can the happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male scarabei, and this animal reproduces itself."
The spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the main land, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop.
Some of these histories, like that of the hyper-metamorphosis of the Meloë, were only completed as the result of twenty-five years of assiduous inquiry, while forty years were required to complete that of the Scarabaeus sacer, for his observation of it was always partial; it is almost always impossible to divine what one cannot see from the little that one does see; and as a rule one must return to the same point over and over again in order to fill up lacunae.
It was a beautiful scarabaeus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round, black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold.
The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing a scarabaeus. "Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is mine." The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice or thrice.
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