The Spanish Copris: the Eggs 



any fresh excavating on the finished pills. 

 What guide leads her to the artificial one, 

 which is extremely deceptive in appearance, 

 and bids her dig into that? 



I do it again and yet again. The result is 

 the same: the mother does not confuse her 

 work with mine and takes advantage of the 

 presence of my pill to instal an egg in it. 

 On only one occasion, when her appetite 

 seems suddenly to have come back, did I see 

 her feeding on my loaf. But her discrimina- 

 tion between the tenanted and the untenanted 

 was just as clearly marked here as in the 

 previous instance. Instead of attacking, in 

 her hunger, the pills with eggs, by what 

 miracle of divination does she turn, in spite 

 of their exact outward similarity, to the pill 

 which contains nothing? 



Can my handiwork be defective? Did 

 the wooden blade not press hard enough to 

 Impart the proper consistency? Is there 

 something wrong with the dough as the result 

 of insufficient kneading? These are dehcate 

 questions, of which I, who am no expert in 

 this kind of confectionery, am not competent 

 to judge. Let us have recourse to a master 

 of the pastry-cook's art. I borrow from the 

 Sacred Beetle the pill which he is beginning 

 to roll in the vivarium. I choose a small one, 



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