Note 5 — Chapter I · THE SACRED BEETLE

The thing works with the regularity of a chronometer. Every minute, or, rather, to be accurate, every four-and-fifty seconds, an eruption takes place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres.5 At long intervals, I employ the pincers, unfasten the cord and unroll the heap along a graduated rule, to estimate the produce. The total measurement for twelve hours is 2·88 metres.6 As the meal and its necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for some time longer after my last visit, paid at eight o’clock in the evening by the light of a lantern, it follows that my subject must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.