The Spanish Copris: the Eggs 



perceived, the pastry-cook slips down the 

 curved slope and hides away under her cake. 



For a further knowledge of the work, for 

 a study of its innermost detail, we shall have 

 to resort to artifice. There is scarcely any 

 difficulty about it. Either my long practice 

 with the Sacred Beetle has made me more 

 skilful in my methods of research, or else 

 the Copris is less reserved and bears the 

 rigours of captivity more philosophically: at 

 any rate, I succeed, without the slightest 

 trouble, in following all the phases of the 

 nest-making to my heart's content. 



I employ two methods, each of them 

 adapted for enlightening me on some special 

 points. Whenever the vivarium supplies me 

 with a few large cakes, I take these out of 

 the burrows, together with the mother 

 Copris, and place them in my study. The 

 receptacles are of two sorts, according to 

 w^hether I want light or darkness. In the 

 former case, I use glass jars with a diameter 

 more or less the same as that of the burrows, 

 say four to five inches. At the bottom of 

 each is a thin layer of fresh sand, quite in- 

 sufficient to allow the Copris to bury herself 

 in it, but still serving the purpose of sparing 

 the insect the slippery foothold of the actual 

 glass and giving it the illusion of a soil 



193 



