CHAPTER II 



THE SACRED BEETLE IN CAPTIVITY 



TF we ransack the books for information 

 ''■ about the habits of the dung-rollers in 

 general and the Sacred Beetle in particular, 

 we find that modern science still clings to 

 some of the beliefs which were current in 

 the days of the Pharaohs. We are told that 

 the ball which is bumped across the fields con- 

 tains an egg, that it is a cradle in which the 

 future larva is to find both board and lodging. 

 fThe parents roll it over hilly country to make 

 it nice and round; and, when jolts and jars 

 and tumbles down steep places have shaped it 

 properly, they bury it and abandon it to the 

 care of that great incubator, the earth. 



So rough an upbringing has always seemed 

 to me improbable. How could a Beetle's 

 egg, that delicate thing, so sensitive under its 

 soft wrapper, survive the shaking-up which 

 it would undergo in that rolling cradle? In 

 the germ is a spark of life which the least 

 touch, the veriest trifle can extinguish. Are 

 we to believe that the parents would de- 

 41 



