Note 2 — Chapter IV · THE SACRED BEETLE: THE GRUB, THE METAMORPHOSIS, THE HATCHING-CHAMBER

Then what is the cause of the original mutilation of the Scarab? I will confess plainly that I know nothing at all about it. Nevertheless, those two maimed members are very strange: so strange, in the endless order of insects, that they have exposed the masters, the greatest masters, to lamentable blunders. Let us listen first to Latreille,2 the prince of descriptive entomologists. In his account of the insects which ancient Egypt painted or carved upon her monuments,3 he quotes the writings of Horapollo, an unique document which has been preserved for us in the papyri for the glorification of the sacred insect: