Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1899-04-24
THE SACRED BEETLE,
THE CURIOUS PERFo FINANCES THAT
 LED TO HIS DEIFlcATIoN.


 ing Life and Preserved After Death-The
 Great sagacitv Displayed By It for the
 Preservation of It's Young.
 As far as can make out. a pair of beetles, male and female, seem usually to share hole in common, and to roll balls of food to it either alone or in concert. 1 cannot say 1 have ever seen much cooperation except between such partners. Once a ball is secured and safely Ianded-fOr here, as else where, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip-the happy couple pro- ceed to eat it up, and apparently do not emerge again from their burrow til the supply is exhausted. Patient na- turalists say that one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as fortnight, but this 1 do not vouch for of personal knowledge When more food IS wanted, the couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll into a new food ball and then dry and harden.
 Till very lately it was universally be- lIeyed that the female scarab laid an egg ir some of the balls, and that the young grubs hatched within such food stocks and began at once to devour them. This belief has recently been contradicted with great emphasis by good French observer, who opened many balls and found no eggs; but cannot accept his conclusion. I opened a number of balls myself near Venice this year, and saw in several one or two eggs, while in one case (unearthed from hole) I discovered q half-grown larya. 1 venture, therefore, in this matter to believe my own eyes as against those of even the most cele- brated and authoritative entomolo- gists. In Egypt it has been univers- ally believed from all antiquity-and I think quite rightly-that after the scarab has laid an egg in the ball the parents unite in rolling it to a place of safety, above the level of the an- nual inundation due to the rise of the Nile. At any rate, searabs abound in Egypt.
 At a very early date, it would seem, the curious action of these beetles at tracted the attention of the ancient Egyptians, whose worship of animals was one of the most marked features
 
 grew q strange and widespread super stition. A race which deified the hawk. the cat. the ibis and the iaekal was not likely to overlook the marvel lous proceedings of the pious and dutful scarab. So the very early Egyptians. we may conjecture began by thinking there must be something divine i'll the nature of an insect which worked so ceaselessly on behalf of it's young, and rolled such big round balls behind it up such relatively large hil- locks. Watching q little closer, as time went on the Egyptian discov- cred, no doubt, that sacred beetles did not proceed directly from sacred bee ties like lambs from ewes. but grew, as it were, out of the dirt and corrup- ton of the mysterious pellets.
 4 modern observer would, of course, at once suspect that the scarab laid an egg inside the ball, and would prompt ly proceed to pull one open and look for it. But that cold scientific method was not likely to commend itself to the mystic and deeply religious Egyp- tan mind The priests by the Nile jumped rather to the conclusion that the scarab collected dirt in order to make a future scarab out of clay and that from this dirt the young beetle grew, self-eXistent, self-developed. self created. Considering the absence of scientific knowledge and comparative groups of scientific facts at the time such a conclusion was by no means unnatural. Once started on so strange a set of ideas the Egyptians proceed cd to evolve a worship of the scarab which grew ever and developed, as they thought the scarab itself did practically out of nothing. The inn mortality of the soul and the resurrec- ton of the body were the central ideas of Egyptian religion; the thinkers of Thebes and Memphis instantly per eeiyed a fanciful anology between the scarab rising from it's bed of dirt and the mummy reviying when the expect ed day of resurrection should at last arrive. As a consequence of this an alogv the scarab was made sacred 1t was reverenced during its life and often preserved after its death, like the mummied cats and hawks and sa- cred Apis bulls which formed such spe- eial objects of veneration to the deyout of Egypt-Grant Allen.