The Sacred Beetle likewise attaches no value to remote retreats. He houses his offspring in vaults at no great distance from the [[96]]surface of the soil; but he makes amends by fashioning the victuals into a ball: he knows that round tins keep their contents moist. The Copris does very much the same with his ovoids. So with the others, the Sisyphus,[5] the Gymnopleurus.[6] The Minotaur alone takes an enormous dive underground.
There are different reasons that call for this. Here is a second, more imperious even than the first. The dung-workers all go for recent materials, fully endowed with their toothsome and plastic qualities. To this system of baking the Minotaur makes a stronger exception: what he needs is old, dry, arid stuff. I have never seen him, either in my cages or in the open country, gather pellets quite recently ejected. He wants them dried by long exposure to the sun’s rays.
But, to suit the grub, the hard food has to simmer for a long time and to improve by keeping, in surroundings saturated with moisture. So the coarse whole-meal bread is replaced by the bun. The laboratory in which the children’s food is prepared must therefore be a very deep-seated factory, which can never be entered by the drought [[97]]of summer however long prolonged. Here succulence and flavour are imparted to dry materials which no other member of the stercoral guild thinks of employing, for lack of an annealing-chamber, of which Minotaurus possesses the monopoly. And, the better to fulfil his mission in life, he also possesses an instinct to bore to enormous depths. The nature of the victuals makes an incomparable well-sinker of the three-pronged Dung-beetle; his talents have been determined by a hard crust. [[98]]
[1] The Beetle under consideration is known to some nomenclators as Geotrupes Typhœus.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] A genus of wild Bees. Cf. Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. iv. and vii. and passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] François Huber (1750–1831), the Swiss naturalist, author of Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles. He early became blind from excessive study and thereafter conducted his scientific work with the aid of his wife.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. x., Cf. v.—Translator’s Note. [↑]