198 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 
such an agent. A wild:bee or a Sphex, for instance, will dig a hole in a 
hard bank of earth some inches deep and five or six times its own size, and 
labour unremittingly at this arduous undertaking for several days, scarcely 
allowing itself a moment for eating or repose. It will then occupy as 
much time in searching for a store of food; and no sooner is this task 
finished, than it will set about repeating the process, and before it dies 
will have completed five or six similar cells or even more. If you would 
estimate this industry at its proper value, you should reflect what kind of 
exertion it would require in a man to dig in a few days out of hard clay or 
sand, with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or six caverns 
twenty feet deep and four or five wide—for such an undertaking would 
not be comparatively greater than that of the insects in question. 
Similar laborious exertions are not confined to the bee or Sphex tribe, 
Several beetles in depositing their eggs exhibit examples of industry equally 
extraordinary, The common dor or clock (Geotrupes stercorarius), which 
may be found beneath every heap of dung, digs a deep cylindrical hole, and 
carrying down a mass of the dung to the bottom, in it deposits its eggs. And 
many of the species of the Scarabeide? roll together wet dung into round 
pellets, deposit an egg in the midst of each, and when dry push them back- 
wards by their hind feet, sometimes three or four assisting, into holes of the 
surprising depth of three feet, which they have previously dug for their 
reception, and which are often several yards distant. Frequently the road 
lies across a depression in the surface, and the pellet when nearly pushed 
to the summit rolls back again. But our patient Sisyphi are not easily 
discouraged, They repeat their efforts again and again, and in the end 
their perseverance is rewarded by success.? The attention of these insects 
to their egg-balls is so remarkable, that it was observed in the earliest ages, 
and is mentioned by ancient writers, but with the addition of many fables, 
as that they were all of the male sex, that they became young again every 
year, that they rolled the pellets containing their eggs from sunrise to sunset 
every day, for twenty-eight days without intermission®, &c. It is one of 
1 Mr. W. S. MacLeay in his very remarkable and learned work (Hore Entomo- 
logice) has very properly restored its name to the true Scarabeus of the ancients, 
which gives its name to this group. 
® The precise mode in which these dung pellets are formed, and the object of roll- 
ing them greater distances than would seem to be required for merely depositing 
them in their holes, which it might have been supposed would, like those of our 
common dung beetle, be made; close to (if not under) the dung employed, do noi 
appear to have been very clearly ascertained. According to a newspaper extract 
given from the travels of an author, whose name is not given, the Scarabaide fre- 
quenting the Hgyptian deserts form their egg-balls of a mixture of clay (sand?) 
and camel’s dung, and they keep rolling them the whole day, apparently to dry the 
surface, as they ceased rolling them if clouds overshadowed the sun in the day time; 
and invariably at sunset (thus confirming the ancient idea) betaking themselves to 
their holes, and leaving their egg-balls, till sunrise the next day. If this account be 
Supposed to be correct only as respects clay (or sand) entering into the composition 
of the exterior crust of the ege-balls, it may perhaps throw light on the formation 
of the singular shot-like balls, two inches in diameter, with a very hard shell, of 
which Col. Sykes has given an interesting account (Zrans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 130.); 
which produced specimens of the Indian dung-beetle, Copris Midas. In fact, the 
mere long rolling of a ball of very moist dung upon sand or powdery clay would 
press so much of either into the surface as to give it when dry a very hard shell, 
which would remain much as Col. Sykes describes when the larva had eaten all the 
central portion of dung. 
5 Mouffet, 153. 
