A hundred times if once have they dug at the foot of the rampart.

There, in vertical wells, they take up their station, drowsing whole days on end while unemployed.

If I give them a fresh Mole, they emerge from their retreat by the entrance corridor and come to hide themselves beneath the belly of the beast.

The burial over, they return, one here, one there, to the confines of the enclosure and disappear beneath the soil.
Well, in two and a half months of captivity, despite long stays at the base of the trellis, at a depth of three-quarters of an inch beneath the surface, it is rare indeed for a Necrophorus to succeed in circumventing the obstacle, to prolong his excavation beneath the barrier, to make an elbow in it and to bring it out on the other side, a trifling task for these vigorous creatures.

Of fourteen only one succeeded in escaping.
A chance deliverance and not premeditated; for, if the happy event had been the result of a mental combination, the other prisoners, practically his equals in powers of perception, would all, from first to last, discover by rational means the elbowed path leading to the outer world; and the cage would promptly be deserted.