Fig. 8.—Phanæus Milo.
The thick-set insect astonishes me with the elegance of its work, which is irreproachable in its geometry: the neck is less slender, but nevertheless combines grace with strength. The model seems derived from some Indian calabash, the more so as the neck opens wide and the belly is engraved with an elegant guilloche, produced by the insect’s tarsi. One seems to see a pitcher protected by a wicker-work covering. The whole is able to attain and even exceed 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. Once again, the tool does not make the [[103]]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 would call the bump, the genius of the animal.
Phanæus Milo laughs at difficulties. He does more: 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 of which I give a drawing overleaf was lying in the earth under the remains of an owl.
Let him who will explain this conjunction of the appetites of the Necrophore with the talents of the Scarab. As for me, baffled by tastes which no one would suspect from the mere appearance of the insect, I give it up.
I know in my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among the remains of dead bodies. 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 two-fold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, far-gone meat for the grub.
Similar facts are encountered elsewhere with different tastes. The predatory Hymenopteron takes her fill of honey drawn from the nectaries of the flowers, but feeds her little ones on game. Game first, then sugar, for the same stomach. How that digestive pouch must change on the road! And yet no more than our own, which scorns in later life that which delighted it when young.
Fig. 9.—Work of Phanæus Milo.
A, the whole piece, actual size. B, the same opened, showing the pill of sausage-meat, the clay gourd, the chamber containing the egg the ventilating-shaft.