The Sacred Beetle and Others 



liberately bump it over hill and dale for 

 hours? No, that is not the way in which 

 things happen; a mother does not subject her 

 offspring to the torture of a Regulus' barrel. 



However, something more than logic 

 was needed to make a clean sweep of 

 accepted opinions. I therefore opened 

 some hundreds of the pellets that were being 

 rolled along by the Dung-beetles; I opened 

 others which I took from holes dug before 

 my eyes; and never once did I find either a 

 central cell or an egg in those pellets. They 

 were invariably rough lumps of food, 

 fashioned in haste, with no definite internal 

 structure, merely so much provender with 

 which the Beetle retires to spend a few days 

 in undisturbed gluttony. The dung-rollers 

 covet and steal them from one another with 

 a keenness which they would certainly not 

 display in robbing one another of new family 

 charges. For Sacred Beetles to go stealing 

 eggs would be an absurdity, each of them 

 having quite enough to do in securing the 

 future of his own. So this point is hence- 

 forward settled beyond question: the pellets 

 which we see the Dung-beetles rolling never 

 contain eggs. 



My first attempt to solve the knotty 

 problem of the lan^a's rearing involved the 



42 



