I now know: he who wishes to watch the gathering of the provisions must display the utmost patience and discretion. I accept the facts: I will be discreet and patient. On the following days, at different hours, I try again, silently and slyly, until success rewards me for my assiduous vigil.
Again and again I see the Minotaur go his harvesting rounds. It is always the male and the male alone that comes out and goes in quest of supplies; the mother never, never on any account, shows herself, being absorbed in other occupations at the bottom of the burrow. The provisions are transported sparingly. Down below, it seems, the culinary preparations are minute and deliberate; the housewife must be given time to work up the morsels lowered to her before we bring others which would encumber the workshop and hinder the manipulation. In ten days, beginning with the 13th of April, the date on which the male leaves home for the first time, I count twenty-three pellets [[118]]stored away, say an average of a little over two in the twenty-four hours. In all, ten days’ harvesting and two dozen morsels to manufacture the sausage which will form the ration of one grub.
Let us try to catch a glimpse of the couple’s behaviour in private. In this connection I can have recourse to two methods, which, if employed in alternation and with perseverance, may give me the much-desired spectacle in a fragmentary form. In the first place, there is a large tripod. The narrow column of earth affords, as we know, incidental peep-holes, situated at different heights. I avail myself of these to take a glance at what happens inside. In the second place, a perpendicular, uncovered tube, the same which I used when investigating the climbing, receives a couple removed from the ground a few hours before, while actively engaged on preparing the foodstuffs.
I quite expect that my device will fail to have any lasting effect. Soon demoralized by the peculiarity of their new residence, the two insects will refuse to work, will become restless and wish to get away. No matter: before their nest-building ardour dies down, they may be able to supply me [[119]]with valuable details. On combining the facts collected by means of the two methods, I obtain the following data.
The father goes out and selects a pellet whose length is greater than the diameter of the pit. He conveys it to the mouth, either backwards, by dragging it with his fore-feet, or straight ahead, by rolling it with little thrusts of his clypeus. He reaches the edge of the hole. Will he fling the lump down the precipice with one last push? Not at all: he has plans that are incompatible with a violent fall.
He enters, clasping the pellet with his legs and taking care to insert it by one end. On reaching a certain distance from the bottom, he has only to slant the piece slightly to make it find a support at its two ends against the walls of the shaft: this because of the greater length of its main axis. He thus obtains a sort of temporary flooring able to bear the load of two or three pellets. The whole forms the workshop in which the father will perform his task without disturbing the mother, who is herself engaged below. It is the mill whence will be lowered the meal for making the cakes.
The miller is well-equipped for his work. [[120]]Look at his trident. On the solid foundation of the corselet stand three sharp spears, the two outer ones long, the middle one short, all three pointing forwards. What purpose does this weapon serve? At first sight, one would take it for a mere masculine decoration, the corporation of Dung-beetles boasting many such, of various forms. Well, it is something more than an ornament: the Minotaur turns his gaud into a tool.
The three points of unequal length describe a concave arc, wide enough to admit a spherical dropping. Standing on his incomplete and quaking floor, which demands the employment of his four hind-legs, propped against the walls of the shaft, how will the Beetle manage to keep the slippery pellet in position and break it up? Let us watch him at work.
Stooping a little, he drives his fork into the piece, which is thenceforth rendered stationary, for it is held in the crescent-shaped jaws of the implement. The fore-legs are free; with their toothed shanks they can saw the morsel, shred it and reduce it to fragments which gradually fall through the gaps in the flooring and reach the mother below. [[121]]
The substance which the miller shoots down is not a flour passed through the bolting-sieve, but rather a coarse meal, a mixture of pulverized remnants and of pieces hardly ground at all. Incomplete though it be, this preliminary grinding will be of the greatest assistance to the mother in her tedious job of bread-making: it will shorten the work and allow the best and the second best to be separated forthwith. When everything on the upper story, including the floor itself, is ground to powder, the horned miller returns to the open air, gathers a fresh harvest and starts his work of crumbling anew entirely at his leisure.