4. The mother alone in her burrow: five pills are already finished; a sixth is in process of construction.
The insect continues for a long time yet to improve and lovingly to polish its sphere, gently passing its foot to and fro until the least protuberance has disappeared. Its finikin after-touches look as though they would never [[73]]be done. Towards the end of the second day, however, the globe is pronounced right and proper. The mother climbs to the dome of her edifice and there, still by simple pressure, hollows out a shallow crater. In this basin the egg is laid.
Then, with extreme caution, with a delicacy that is most surprising in such rough tools, the lips of the crater are brought together so as to form a vaulted roof over the egg. The mother slowly turns, rakes a little, draws
Fig. 6.—The Spanish Copris’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.
Fig. 7.—The Spanish Copris’s pill: section showing the hatching-chamber and the egg.
the material upwards and finishes the closing. This is the most ticklish work of all. A careless pressure, a miscalculated thrust might easily jeopardize the life of the germ under its slender ceiling.
From time to time, the work of closing is suspended. The mother, motionless, with lowered forehead, seems to auscultate the underlying cavity, to listen to what is happening within. All’s well, it seems; and the patient labour is resumed: a fine scraping of the sides towards [[74]]the summit, which tapers a little and lengthens out. In this way, an ovoid with the small end uppermost replaces the original sphere. Under the more or less projecting nipple is the hatching-chamber, with the egg. Twenty-four hours more are spent in this minute work. Total: four times round the clock and sometimes longer to construct the sphere, hollow it out basinwise, lay the egg and shut it in by transforming the sphere into an ovoid.
The insect goes back to the cut loaf and helps itself to a second slice, which, by the same manipulations as before, becomes an ovoid sheltering an egg. The surplus suffices for a third ovoid, pretty often even for a fourth. I have never seen this number exceeded when the mother had at her disposal only the materials which she had heaped up in the burrow.