[3] For the Epeiræ, or Garden Spiders, the Lycosa, or Black-bellied Tarantula, and the Labyrinth and Clotho Spiders, cf. The Life of the Spider, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. viii., ix., xvi. and xvii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] Cf. The Life of the Fly and The Life of the Caterpillar: passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[6] ·039 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[7] Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chaps. xvii. and xviii. The seven essays on the Languedocian Scorpion will be included in the last volume of this complete edition of Fabre’s entomological works.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[8] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
Chapter xviii
THE BULL ONTHOPHAGUS: THE LARVA; THE NYMPH
May is the nesting-month of the different Onthophagi and of the Bull Onthophagus in particular. The mothers now go underground to some little depth, under the shelter of the cave whence the building and victualling-materials are extracted. Unaided by the males, who, heedless of family cares, continue to lead a life of jollity, they fashion their cabins and stuff them with provisions after the egg is laid. The work, for that matter, is crude and elementary and hardly needs the collaboration of the horned dandies. Five or six establishments at most, each founded in a couple of days, represent the whole of a mother’s work and leave plenty of time for spring revelry.