The work is finished by rolling out and joining the edges of the little crater, which closes and becomes the hatching-chamber. Here, especially, a delicate dexterity becomes essential. At the time that the nipple of the calabash is being shaped, the insect, while packing the material, must leave the little channel which is to form the ventilating-shaft, following the line of the axis. This narrow conduit, which an ill-calculated pressure might stop up beyond hope of remedy, seems to me extremely difficult to obtain. The most skilful of our potters could not manage it without the aid of a needle, which he would afterwards withdraw. The insect, a sort of jointed automaton, obtains its channel through the massive nipple of the gourd without so much as a thought. If it did give it a thought, it would not succeed.
The calabash is made: there remains the decoration. This is the work of patient after-touches which perfect the curves and leave on the soft loam a series of stippled impressions similar to those which the potter of prehistoric days distributed with the end of his thumb over his big-bellied jars.
That ends the work. The insect will begin all over again under a fresh carcass; for each burrow has one calabash and no more, even as with the Sacred Beetle and her pears. [[111]]
[1] Voyage autour de ma chambre (1795).—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Sérignan, in Provence, is the author’s birth-place.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] ·78 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] ·78 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
THE GEOTRUPES
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