They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible subject for dissection.

But do they respect one another when there is no previous wound?
At first there was every appearance that their relations were perfectly pacific.

During their sanguinary meals there is never a scuffle between the feasters; nothing but mere mouth-to-mouth thefts.
There are no quarrels during the long siestas in the shelter of the board.

Half buried in the cool earth, my twenty-five subjects slumber and digest their food in peace; they lie sociably near one another, each in his little trench.

If I raise the plank they awake and are off, running hither and thither, constantly encountering one another without hostilities.
The profoundest peace is reigning, and to all appearances will last for ever, when in the early days of June I find a dead Gardener.