The Spanish Copris: the Eggs 



stays and keeps watch. Under her never- 

 failing vigilance, the pill does not crack, for 

 any crevice is stopped up as soon as It ap- 

 pears; nor does it become covered with 

 parasitic vegetation, for nothing can grow on 

 a soil that is constantly being raked. iThe 

 two or three dozen ovoids which I have be- 

 fore my eyes all bear witness to the mother's 

 watchfulness: not one of them is split or 

 cracked or infested with tiny fungi. In all 

 of them the surface is irreproachable. But, 

 if I take them away from the mother to put 

 them into a bottle or tin, they suffer the same 

 fate as the Sacred Beetle's pears: in the 

 absence of supervision, destruction more or 

 less complete overtakes them. 



Two examples will be instructive to us 

 here. I take from a mother two of her three 

 pills and place them in a tin, which prevents 

 them from getting dry. Before a week has 

 passed, they are covered with a fungous 

 vegetation. More or less everything grows 

 in this fertile soil; the lesser fungi delight 

 in it. To-day it is an infinitesimal crystalline 

 plant swollen Into a bobbin-shape, bristling 

 with short, dew-beaded hairs and ending in 

 a little round head as black as jet. I have 

 not the leisure to consult books and micro- 

 scope and give a name to the tiny apparition 



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