Note 3 — Chapter iii · THE SACRED BEETLE: THE BALL

The working is as regular as that of a chronometer. Every minute, or rather, to be exact, every four-and-fifty seconds, a discharge takes place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres.3 At long intervals I employ my tweezers, remove the cord and unroll the mass along a graduated rule, in order to measure the amount produced. The total for twelve hours is 2·88 metres.4 As the meal and its necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for some time longer after my last visit, which was paid at eight o’clock in the evening by lantern-light, my Beetle must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.