They were draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer.

They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous.
Others will soon put in their appearance, smaller creatures and more patient, who will take over the relic and exploit it ligament by ligament, bone by bone, hair by hair, until the whole has been resumed by the treasury of life.

All honour to these purifiers! Let us put back the Mole and go our way.
Some other victim of the agricultural labours of spring--a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard--will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil.

This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the cadaveric mob in dress and habits.

In honour of his exalted functions he exhales an odour of musk; he bears a red tuft at the tip of his antennae; his breast is covered with nankeen; and across his wing-cases he wears a double, scalloped scarf of vermilion.