64 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



remains the ball with which the Sacred Beetle plays 

 in the sun, sometimes without making any other use 

 of it. 



Then what does the globulous form, which presents the 

 most efficacious preventative agamst desiccation during 

 the heat of summer, do here ? Physically, this property 

 of the sphere and of its near neighbour, the ovoid, 

 is undeniable ; but these shapes offer only a casual 

 concord with the difficulty overcome. The animal built 

 to roll balls across the fields also fashions balls under- 

 ground. If the worm be all the better for finding tender 

 foodstuffs under its mandibles to the very end, that is a 

 capital thing for the worm, but it is no reason why we 

 should extol the instinct of the mother. 



To complete my conviction, I shall need a portly 

 Dung-beetle who is a total stranger to the pill-making 

 craft in matters of every-day life and who, nevertheless, 

 when the moment of laying is at hand, makes a sudden 

 change in her habits and shapes her harvest into a ball. 

 Is there any such in my neighbourhood ? Yes, there is ; 

 and she is one of the handsomest and largest, next to the 

 Sacred Beetle. I speak of the Spanish Copris, who is so 

 remarkable for her suddenly sloping corselet and for the 

 extravagant horn surmounting her head. 



Thick-set, round, dumpy, slow of gait, the Spanish 

 Copris is certainly not equal to the athletic perform- 

 ances of the Sacred Beetle. The legs, of very middling 

 length and folded under the belly at the least alarm, 

 bear no comparison with the stilts of the pill-rollers. 

 Their stiff and stunted form alone is enough to tell us 

 that the insect would not care to wander about hampered 

 by a rolling ball. 



The Copris is, in point of fact, of a sedentary habit. 



