CHAPTER IX 



THE SPANISH COPRIS : THE LAYING OF 

 THE EGGS 



IF we show instinct doing for the egg what 

 would be done on the advice of reason 

 matured by study and experience, we achieve 

 a result of no small philosophic importance; 

 and an austere scientific conscience begins 

 to trouble me with scruples. Not that I 

 wish to give science a forbidding aspect: 

 I am convinced that one can say the wisest 

 things without employing a barbarous vo- 

 cabulary. Clearness is the supreme court- 

 esy of the wielder of the pen. I do my best 

 to observe it. No, the scruple that stops me 

 is of another kind. 



I begin to wonder if I am not in this case 

 the victim of an illusion. I say to myself: 



" Gymnopleuri and Sacred Beetles, when 

 in the open air, are manufacturers of balls or 

 pills. That is their trade, learnt we know 

 not how, prescribed perhaps by their 

 structure, in particular by their long legs, 

 some of which are slightly curved. When 



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