If similarity of shape implied purity of work, we ought unhesitatingly to attribute to Phanæus Milon short, thick puddings like those made by Olivier's Onitis.16 Alas, structure is a bad guide where instinct is concerned! The square-chined, short-legged Dung-beetle excels in the art of manufacturing gourds. The Sacred Beetle herself supplies none that are more correctly shaped nor, above all, more capacious.
16 I owe this detail on the work of Olivier's Onitis to a note and a sketch communicated by Professor Valéry-Mayer, of the Montpellier School of Agriculture.—Author's Note.
The thickset insect astonishes me with the elegance of its work, which is irreproachable in its geometry: the neck is shorter, but nevertheless combines grace with strength. The model seems derived from some Indian calabash, the more so as it has an open mouth and the belly is engraved with an elegant engine-turned pattern, produced by the insect's tarsi. One seems to see a pitcher protected by a wickerwork covering. The whole attains and even exceeds the size of a Hen's egg.
It is a very curious piece of work and of a rare perfection, especially when we consider the artist's clumsy and massive build. No, once again, the tool does not make the workman, among Dung-beetles any more than among ourselves. To guide the modeller there is something better than a set of tools: there is what I have called the bump, the genius of the animal.
Phanæus Milon scoffs at difficulties. He does much more than that: he laughs at our classifications. The word Dung-beetle implies a lover of dung. He sets no value on it, either for his own use or for that of his offspring. What he wants is the sanies of corpses. He is to be found under the carcasses of birds, Dogs or Cats, in the company of the undertakers-in-ordinary. The gourd which I will presently describe was lying in the earth under the remains of an Owl.
Let him who will explain this conjunction of the appetites of the Necrophorus17 with the talents of the Sacred Beetle. As for me, baffled by tastes which no one would suspect from the mere appearance of the insect, I give it up.
17 Or Burying-beetle. Cf. Chapters [XI]. and [XII]. of the present volume.—Translator's Note.
I know in my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is Onthophagus ovatus, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, far-gone meat for the grub.
Similar facts are encountered elsewhere, with differing tastes. The Hunting Wasp takes her fill of honey drawn from the nectaries of the flowers, but feeds her little ones on game. Game first and then sugar, for the same stomach! How that digestive pouch must change during development! And yet no more than our own, which scorns in later life the food that delighted it when young.
Let us now examine the work of Phanæus Milon more thoroughly. The calabashes reached me in a state of complete desiccation. They are very nearly as hard as stone; their colour inclines to a pale chocolate. Neither inside nor out does the lens discover the slightest ligneous particle pointing to a vegetable residue. The strange Dung-beetle does not, therefore, use cakes of Cow-dung or anything like them; he handles products of another class, which at first are rather difficult to specify.