More Beetles 



not yet ready to occupy the top. For a quiet, 

 exodus it is important that the shaft should 

 be free from one end to the other. The 

 several cavities must therefore be grouped 

 side by side and communicate, each by a 

 lateral passage, with the common ascension- 

 shaft. 



Long ago, the Bison Ortis ^ showed us his 

 preserves, the rations of so many grubs, 

 arranged near the bottom of the burrow. A 

 short passage connected each of the chambers 

 with the vertical shaft. The cells were all 

 grouped on one landing. Probably the 

 Minotaur adopts a similar system. 



Indeed, when I go digging in the fields, a 

 little late in the season, when the father is 

 already dead, my trowel unearths a second 

 chamber, with an egg and provisions, at some 

 distance from the main chamber, which it- 

 self contains an egg and is duly victualled. 

 Another excavation gives me two eccentric 

 cells. The arrangement is the same in each 

 case, in the blind alley of the burrow and in 

 its annexes: at the base, in the sand, is an 

 egg; above it are the victuals, packed into 

 a column. 



1 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. xvi. — Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



126 



