More Beetles 



laying because of a defective home, she 

 would have abstained from baking a cake 

 that would serve no purpose. 



Besides, the same fact recurs under nor- 

 mal conditions. In my dozen excavations 

 in the fields — that their number was no 

 greater must be attributed to the difficulty of 

 the operation — the egg was lacking in three 

 instances. The larder was deserted. No 

 laying had taken place; and the provisions 

 were there, manipulated in the usual fash- 

 ion. 



What I suspect is that the mother, not 

 feeling in her ovaries germs ripened to the 

 requisite degree, none the less labours to 

 provide a store of food with her collabora- 

 tor. She knows that the horned dandy, the 

 enthusiastic helper, will disappear ere long, 

 worn out by toil and time. She makes the 

 most of his zeal and his energies before being 

 deprived of them. Thus food is prepared 

 in the cellar to be used afterwards by the 

 mother, now a widow. To these provisions 

 which are all the better in that they have been 

 improved by fermentation, the mother will 

 return, moving them and piling them up in a 

 lateral cell, but this time with an egg under 

 the heap. Thus provided for and enabled 

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