The Spanish Copris: the Eggs 



stays and keeps watch. Under her never- 

 failing vigilance, the pill does not crack, for 

 any crevice is stopped up as soon as It ap- 

 pears; nor does it become covered with 

 parasitic vegetation, for nothing can grow on 

 a soil that is constantly being raked. The 

 two or three dozen ovoids which I have be- 

 fore my eyes all bear witness to the mother's 

 watchfulness: not one of them is split or 

 cracked or Infested with tiny fungi. In all 

 of them the surface Is Irreproachable. But, 

 if I take them away from the mother to put 

 them into a bottld or tin, they suffer the same 

 fate as the Sacred Beetle's pears : In the 

 absence of supervision, destruction more or 

 less complete overtakes them. 



Two examples will be instructive to us 

 here. I take from a mother two of her three 

 pills and place them In a tin, which prevents 

 them from getting dry. Before a week has 

 passed, they are covered with a fungous 

 vegetation. More or less everything grows 

 in this fertile soil; the lesser fungi delight 

 in It. To-day It Is an Infinitesimal crystalline 

 plant swollen Into a bobbin-shape, bristling 

 with short, dew-beaded hairs and ending In 

 a little round head as black as jet. I have 

 not the leisure to consult books and micro- 

 scope and give a name to the tiny apparition 



20S 



