50 INSECT ARTIZANS AND THEIR WORK 



others, however, point in another direction, and 

 the Peckhams found that instead of doing things 

 automatically and uniformly there was a great 

 amount of variation in the way things were done by 

 the individuals of any one species. The moving 

 of a plant near the covered-up nest would disarrange 

 the wasp's ideas as to locality and set her hunting 

 around instead of going straight to it. 



Some Fossores do not mine in the ground, but in 

 wood, as in the more or less decayed wood of tree- 

 stumps and posts, or the more pith-like centres of 

 bramble-stems and the stalks of herbs. It seems, 

 therefore, more appropriate to deal with these 

 under the head of Carpenters, or workers in wood. 

 To that section of this work we will relegate them, 

 whilst we consider a few miners among the beetles. 



The pre-eminent mining beetle is the Sacred 

 Scarab {Scarahceus sacer), whose industry attracted 

 the attentions of the ancients, who saw in the 

 movements of its rolling ball of food an emblem of 

 terrestrial and planetary revolutions and of other 

 matters with which this work is not concerned. 

 For a great number of years stories have been told 

 in natural-history books which were believed to 

 embody the facts of the Scarab's economy, but that 

 terrible M. Fabre, who by his patient observation 

 has set us right upon so many points of insect 

 behaviour, declares almost all the supposed facts 

 to be as erroneous as the ideas of the ancients. The 

 careful rolling of the sphere of dung and its subse- 

 q^uent burial is true enough, but it does not contain 



