The Sacred Beetle and Others 



pies, I do not see it taking note of the hole, 

 turning round and forthwith repairing the 

 damage with a few pats of a trowel well- 

 suppHed with cement. The access of the air 

 does not trouble it apparently, or rather there 

 is no provision against this in its means of 

 defence. 



You have only to take a glance at its dwell- 

 ing. What would be the use of the plaster- 

 er's art of stopping up crannies, when the 

 house simply cannot crack? Closely 

 moulded in the cylinder of the burrow, the 

 sausage is preserved from crumbling to dust 

 by the support of its mould. The Sacred 

 Beetle's pear, which is free on every side in a 

 large underground cavity, often swells, splits, 

 peels off. The Geotrupes' sausage, being 

 packed in a casing, is free from these imper- 

 fections. Besides, if it were to burst, the 

 accident w^ould not be serious, for now, in 

 autumn and winter, in a soil that is always 

 damp and fresh, there is no fear of that desic- 

 cation which is so greatly dreaded by the pill- 

 rollers. Hence there Is no special industry 

 designed to circumvent a peril that is unlikely 

 and of little consequence; no excessively do- 

 cile intestine to keep the trowel supplied; no 

 ugly hump to act as a mortar-magazine. 

 The inexhaustible evacuator of our earlier 



318 



