The Dung-Beetles of the Pampas 



any of us, they knew how, with the aid of a 

 round jar, to keep the provisions from dry- 

 ing during the summer heats. The work of 

 the Bolbites is an ovoid, hardly differing in 

 shape from that of the Copres; but this is 

 where the ingenuity of the American insect 

 shines forth. The inner mass, the usual 

 dung-cake furnished by the Cow or the Sheep, 

 is covered with a perfectly homogeneous and 

 continuous coating of clay, which makes a 

 piece of solid pottery impervious to evapor- 

 ation. 



The earthen pot is exactly filled by its con- 

 tents, without the slightest interval along the 

 line of junction. This detail tells us the 

 worker's method. The jar is moulded on 

 the provisions. After the food-pellet has 

 been formed in the ordinary baker's fashion 

 and the egg laid in its hatching-chamber, the 

 Bolbites takes some armfuls of the clay near 

 at hand, applies it to the foodstuff and presses 

 it down. When the work is finished and 

 smoothed to perfection with indefatigable 

 patience, the tiny pot, built up piecemeal, 

 looks as though made with the wheel and 

 rivals our own earthenware in regularity. 



The hatching-chamber, in which the egg 

 lies, is, as usual, contrived in the nipple at 

 the end of the pear. How will the germ and 

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