For the time being, keep this in mind: the Sacred Beetle makes his ball by placing next to each other armful after armful of the materials which he has collected; he builds it up without moving it, without turning it round. He fashions the dung with the pressure of his fore-arms as the modeller in our studios fashions his clay with the pressure of his thumb. And the result is not an approximate sphere, with a lumpy surface; it is a perfect sphere, which our human manufacturers would not disown.
The time has come for retiring with the booty so that we may bury it farther away, at no great depth, and consume it in peace. The owner, therefore, draws his ball out of the dung-yard; and, in accordance with ancient usage, begins straightway to roll it about on the ground, a little at random. Any one who was not present at the beginning and who now saw the ball rolling along, with the insect pushing it backwards, would naturally imagine that the round shape resulted from this method of transport. It rolls, therefore it becomes round, even as a shapeless lump of clay would soon become round if trundled in the same way. Though apparently logical, the idea is erroneous in every respect: we have just seen this perfect sphericity acquired before the ball moved from the spot. The rolling therefore has nothing to do with this geometrical accuracy; it merely hardens the surface into a tough crust and polishes it a little, if only by working into the substance of the pellet any coarse [[46]]bits that might have made it rough at the beginning. Between the pill that has been rolled for hours and the pill that is stationary in the dung-yard there is no difference in configuration.
What is the advantage of this particular shape, which is invariably adopted at the very outset of the work? Does the Scarab derive any benefit from the circular form? Your spectacles would have to be made of walnut-shells if you failed to see that the insect is brilliantly inspired when it kneads its cake into a ball. These victuals, the meagrest of meagre pittances from the point of view of nourishment, for the Sheep’s fourfold stomach has already extracted pretty nearly all the assimilable matter, have to make up in quantity for what they lack in quality.
It is the same with various other Dung-beetles. They are all insatiable gluttons; they all need a much larger amount of food than their modest dimensions would lead us to suspect. The Spanish Copris, no bigger than a good-sized hazel-nut, accumulates underground, for a single meal, a pie as big as my fist; the Stercoraceous Geotrupes hoards in his hole a sausage nine inches long and as wide as the neck of a claret-bottle.
These mighty eaters have an easy time of it. They establish themselves immediately under the heap dropped by some standing Mule. Here they dig passages and dining-rooms. The provisions are at the door of the house; they form a roof for it. All that you have to do is to bring them in, armful by armful, taking only as much as you can carry comfortably, for you can go on fetching more as long as you like. In this way, scandalous quantities of food are unobtrusively stored away in peaceful manors whose presence no outward sign betrays. [[47]]
The Sacred Beetle is not so fortunate as to have his cottage underneath the heap where the victuals are collected. He is of a vagabond temperament; and, when his work is over, he has no great inclination for the company of those arrant thieves, his kinsmen. He has therefore to travel to a distance with what he has secured, in quest of a site where he can establish himself alone. His stock of provisions, it is true, is comparatively modest: it is not to be mentioned in the same breath as the Copris’ enormous cakes or the Geotrupes’ fat sausages. No matter: modest though it be, its weight and bulk are too much for the strength of any Beetle that might think of carrying it direct. It is too heavy, ever so much too heavy, for him to take between his legs and fly away with, nor could he possibly drag it, gripped in his mandibles.
If the hermit, eager to withdraw from the world, wished to make use of direct means of conveyance, there would be only one method by which he could accumulate in his far-off cell food enough for even a single day: that would be to carry load after load on the wing, each load being proportionate to his strength. But what a number of journeys that would involve! What a lot of time would be wasted in this piecemeal harvesting! Besides, when he went back, would he not find the table already cleared? Think of the number of guests who were giving it their attention! The opportunity is a good one; it may not occur again for a long while. We must make the most of it without delay; the thing to do is to secure enough now to stock our larder for at least a day.
But how to set about it? Nothing could be simpler. What we cannot carry we drag; what we cannot drag we cart by rolling it along, as witness all our wheeled conveyances. The Sacred Beetle therefore chooses the sphere [[48]]as a means of transport. It is the best shape of all for rolling; it needs no axle-tree; it adapts itself admirably to the diverse inequalities of the ground and, at each point of its surface, provides the necessary leverage for the least expenditure of effort. Such is the mechanical problem which the pill-roller solves. The spherical form of his treasure is not the effect of the rolling: it precedes it; it is modelled precisely with a view to that method of conveyance, which is to make the carriage of the heavy load feasible.
The Sacred Beetle is a passionate lover of the sun, whose image he copies in the radiating notches of his rounded shield. He needs the bright light in order to make the most of the heap whence he extracts first provisions and next materials for nest-building. The other Dung-beetles—Geotrupes, Copres, Onites, Onthophagi—for the most part have dark, mysterious habits; they work unseen under the roof of excrement; they do not begin their quest until night is at hand and the last glimmer of twilight is fading. The more trustful Scarab both seeks and finds amid the gladness of the noonday sun; he works his bit of ground quite openly and reaps his harvest in the hottest and brightest hours of the day. His ebon breastplate is glittering on top of the heap at times when there is naught to indicate the presence of numerous fellow-workers, belonging to other genera, who are busy underneath, carving themselves their share of the lower strata. Darkness for others, but for him the light!
This love of the unscreened sun has its blissful side, as the insect, drunk with heat, shows from time to time by exultant transports; but it has also certain disadvantages. I have never witnessed any quarrel at harvest-time [[49]]between next-door neighbours, when these were Copres or Geotrupes. Working in the dark, each is ignorant of what is happening beside him. The rich morsel secured by one of them cannot arouse the envy of his neighbours, since it is not perceived. This perhaps explains the pacific relations among Dung-beetles who work in the gloomy depths of the heap.