AFrECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 295 



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 ob- 

 served 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 this tribe of beetles (S. sacer) 

 whose image is so often met with amongst the hieroglyphics 

 of the Egyptians, with whom it was a symbol of the world, of 

 the sun, and of a courageous warrior. Of the world, as P. 

 Valerianus supposes, on account of the orbicular form of its 

 pellets of dung, and the notion of their being rolled from sun- 

 rise to sunset ; of the sun, because of the angular projections 

 from its head resembling rays, and the thirty joints of the six 

 tarsi of its feet answering to the days of the month ; and of a 

 warrior, from the idea of manly courage being connected with 

 its supposed birth from a male only.'^ It was as symbolical of 

 this last that its image was worn upon the signets of the 

 Koman soldiers ; and as typical of the sun, the source of fer- 



' The precise mode in which these dung-pellets are formed, and the object of 

 rolling them greater distances than would seem to be required for merely de- 

 positing 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 not 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 Scara- 

 hcBida: frequenting the Egyptian deserts form their egg-balls of a mixture of clay 

 (sand ?) and camels' 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) be- 

 taking 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 egg-balls, it may per- 

 haps throw light on the formation of the singular shot-like balls, two inches in 

 diameter, witn a very hard shell, of which Col. Sykes has given an interesting 

 account ( Trans. Ent. Snc. Load. i. ] 30. ), 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. 



2 Mouffet, 1.53. 



3 J. Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica, 93 — 95. Mouffet, 156. 



u 4 



