The Sacred Beetle and Others 



I hear the tools rasping against the unyield- 

 ing wall; then silence follows and not a 

 prisoner survives to tell the tale. The 

 mother too perishes in that home which has 

 remained dry when the season for dryness 

 has passed. The Copris, like the Sacred 

 Beetle, needs the rain to soften the granite 

 shell. 



To return to the liberated ones. When 

 the emergence is effected, the mother, we 

 were saying, ceases to trouble about them. 

 Her present indifference, however, must not 

 make us forget the wonderful care which she 

 has lavished for four months on end. Out- 

 side the Social Hymenoptera — Bees, 

 Wasps, Ants and so on — who spoon-feed 

 their young and bring them up according to 

 scrupulously hygienic methods, where in the 

 insect world shall we find another example of 

 such maternal self-abnegation, of such wise 

 and tender care for the offspring? I know 

 of none. 



How did the Copris acquire this lofty 

 quality, which I would readily call a moral 

 quality, if morality and nescience had any 

 point of contact? How did she learn to 

 surpass in tenderness the Bee and the Ant, 

 both so greatly renowned? I say surpass. 

 The mother Bee, indeed. Is simply a germ- 

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