II 



THE ENCLOSURE 



If you seek among writers for information as to the 

 habits of Scarabaeus sacer in particular, and on the 

 dung robbers in general, you find that science has 

 not got beyond some of the beliefs current in the 

 time of the Pharaohs. We are told that the ball 

 which is dragged along contains an egg, and is a 

 cradle where the larva will find board and lodging. 

 The parents roll it over rough ground to make it 

 round, and when shocks and shakes and tumbles all 

 along the slopes have shaped it properly, they bury 

 it and abandon it to mother earth. 



So rough a start in life always seemed to me 

 unlikely. How could a beetle's egg, so tender and 

 fragile as it is, endure the rocking of its rolling 

 cradle ? There exists in the germ a spark of life 

 which the slightest touch, the merest trifle, can 

 extinguish, and is it likely that the parents should 

 take it into their heads to lug it about over hill 

 and dale for hours ? Not they ; maternal tenderness 

 does not subject its progeny to the martyrdom of 

 Regulus. 



However, something more than logical reasoning 

 27 



