A TRUFFLE-HUNTER 225 



ancient olives which the summer suns have dried. It 

 stacks them in a row at the end of its burrow, closes 

 the door, and consumes them. When the food is 

 broken up and exhausted of its meagre juices it returns 

 to the surface and renews its store. Thus the winter 

 passes, famine being unknown unless the weather is 

 exceptionally hard. 



The second insect which I have observed for so 

 long among the pines is the Bolboceras. Its burrows, 

 scattered here and there, higgledy-piggledy with those 

 of the Minotaur, are easy to recognise. The burrow 

 of the Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous 

 rubbish-dump, the materials of which are piled in the 

 form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of 

 these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed 

 outward by the little sapper, which shoulders it up 

 from below. The orifice is closed whenever the insect 

 is at home, enlarging its tunnel or peacefully enjoying 

 the contents of its larder. 



The lodging of the Bolboceras is open and surrounded 

 simply by a mound of sand. Its depth is not great ; 

 a foot or hardly more. It descends vertically in an 

 easily shifted soil. It is therefore easy to inspect it, 

 if we take care first of all to dig a trench so that the 

 wall of the burrow may be afterwards cut away, slice 

 by slice, with the blade of a knife. The burrow is 

 thus laid bare along its whole extent, from the surface 

 to the bottom, until nothing remains of it but a 

 demi-cylindrical groove. 



Often the violated dwelling is empty. The insect 

 has departed in the night, having finished its business 

 there. It is a nomad, a night-walker, which leaves its 



16 



