AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 333 



No circumstance connected with the storge of insects is more striking 

 than the herculean and incessant labor which it leads them cheerfully to 

 undergo. Some of these exertions are so disproportionate to the size of 

 the insect, that nothing short of ocular conviction could attribute them to 

 such an agent. A wild bee or a Sphex, for instance, will dig a hole in a 

 hard bank of earth some inches deep and five or six times its own size, 

 and labor unremittingly at this arduous undertaking for several days, 

 scarcely allowing itself a moment for eating or repose. ■ It will then occupy 

 as much time in searching for a store of food ; and no sooner is this task 

 finished, than it will set about repeating the process, and before it dies will 

 have completed five or six similar cells or even more. If you would esti- 

 mate this industry at its proper value, you should reflect what kind of 

 exertion it would require in a man to dig in a few days out of hard clay or 

 sand, with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or six caverns 

 twenty feet deep and four or five wide — for such an undertaking would 

 not be comparatively greater than that of the insects in question. 



Similar laborious exertions are not confined to the bee or Sphex tribe. 

 Several beetles in depositing their eggs exhibit examples of industry 

 equally extraordinary. The common dor or clock (Geotrupes stercora- 

 rius), which may be found beneath every heap of dung, digs a deep 

 Cylindrical hole, and carrying down a mass of the dung to the bottom, 

 in it deposits its eggs. And many of the species of the Scarabceidce^ 

 roll together wet dung into round pellets, deposit an egg in the midst 

 of each, and when dry push them backwards by their hind feet, some- 

 times three or four assisting, into holes of the surprising depth of three 

 feet, which they have previously dug for their reception, and which are 

 often several yards distant. Frequently the road lies across a depression 

 in the surface, and the pellet when nearly pushed to the summit rolls 

 back again. But our patient Sisyphi are not easily discouraged. They 

 repeat their efforts again and again, and in the end their perseverance is 

 rewarded by success.^ The attention of these insects to their egg-balls 

 is so remarkable, that it was observed in the earliest ages, and is mention- 

 ed by ancient writers, but with the addition of many fables, as that they 

 were all of the male sex, that they became young again every year, that 



1 Mr. W. S. MacLeay in his very remarkable and learned work (Horce EnfomoIogiccE) 

 has very properly restored its name to the true Scarabaus of the ancients, which gives its 

 name to this group. 



"^ The precise mode in which these dung-pellets are formed, and the object of rolling 

 them greater distances than would seem to be required for merely depositing them in their 

 holes, which it might have been supposed would, like those of our common dung-beetle, 

 be made close to (if not under) the dung employed, do not appear to have been very clearly 

 ascertained. According to a newspaper extract given from the travels of an author, whose 

 name is not given, the Scarabaida frequenting the Egyptian deserts from their egg-balls of 

 a mixture of clay (sand?) and camel's dung, and they keep rolling them the whole day, 

 apparently to dry the surface, as they ceased rolling them if clouds overshadowed the sua 

 in the day time, and invariably at sunset (thus confirming the ancient idea) betaking them- 

 selves to their holes, and leaving their egg-balls till sunrise the next day. If this account 

 be supposed to be correct only as respects clay (or sand) entering into the composition of 

 the exterior crust of the egg-balls, it may perhaps throw light on the formation of the sin- 

 gular shot-like balls, two inches in diameter, with a very hard shell, of which Col. Sykes 

 has given an interesting account (Trans, Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 130.), which produced speci- 

 mens of the Indian dung-beetle, Copris Midas. In fact, the mere long rolling of a ball of 

 very moist dung upon sand or powdery clay would press so much of either into the surface 

 as to give it when dry a very hard shell, which would remain much as Col. Sykes describes, 

 when the larva had eaten all the central portion of dung. 



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