Does it fear draughts then, when it scrupulously fills up the least cranny through which the air might enter? This again is not the solution. The temperature is the same in my room and in the grub’s; besides, when I perpetrate my burglaries, the atmosphere in my study is absolutely still. I do not examine the prisoner in a gale, but in the calm of my workroom, in the even profounder calm of a glass jar.
There can be no question of a cold breeze, which would be painful to a very sensitive skin; and nevertheless the air is the enemy to be avoided at all costs. If it flowed in at all plentifully through a breach, with the dryness which the July heat imparts to it, the provisions would be dried up. Faced with an uneatable biscuit, the grub would become languid and anæmic and would soon perish of hunger. The mother, to the best of her abilities, has guarded her offspring against death from starvation by making her pear round and giving it a stout rind; but, for all that, her children are not released from every obligation to watch their rations. If they want bread that keeps soft and fresh to the last, they must in their turn see to it that the provision-jar is properly closed. Crevices may appear, fraught with grave danger. It is important to stop them up without delay. This, if I be not utterly at fault, is the reason why the grub is a plasterer armed with a trowel and provided with a workshop that can always furnish plenty of putty. The pot-mender [[91]]repairs his cracked jar in order to keep his bread nice and soft.
A serious objection suggests itself. The slits, the breaches, the vent-holes which I see so zealously cemented are the work of my instruments: tweezers, penknife, dissecting-needles. It cannot be maintained that the grub is endowed with its strange talent to protect itself against the troubles brought upon it by human curiosity. What has it to fear from man, in its life underground? Nothing, or next to nothing. Since the Sacred Beetle started rolling his ball under the broad canopy of the sky, I am probably the first to worry his family in order to make them talk to me and instruct me. Others will come after me perhaps; but they will be very few! No, man’s destructive interference is not worth the pains of providing one’s self with a trowel and cement. Then why this art of stopping crevices?
Wait. In its apparently peaceful home, in its round shell which seems to give it such perfect security, the grub nevertheless has its troubles. Which of us has not, from the greatest to the smallest? They begin at birth. Though I have only touched the fringe of the matter, I am already aware of three or four sorts of grievous accidents to which the Sacred Beetle’s larva is liable. Plants, animals, blind physical forces, all work its ruin by destroying its larder.
Competition is rife around the cake served up by the Sheep. When the mother Scarab arrives to take her share and manufacture her pill, the bit is often at the mercy of fellow-banqueters of whom the smallest are the most to be dreaded. There are especially little Onthophagi, earnest workers crouching under the shelter of the cake. Some prefer to plunge into the richest part and [[92]]bury themselves ecstatically in its luscious depths. One of these is Schreber’s Onthophagus, who is a shiny ebon-black, with four red spots on his wing-cases. Another is the smallest of our Aphodii (Aphodius pusillus, Herbst), who confides her eggs, here and there, to the thick part of the cake. In her hurry, the mother Scarab does not examine her harvest very carefully. While some of the Onthophagi are removed, others, buried in the centre of the mass, escape notice. Besides, the Aphodius’ eggs are so small that they elude her vigilance. In this way a contaminated lump of paste is taken into the burrow and moulded.
The pears in our gardens suffer from vermin which disfigure them with scars. The Sacred Beetle’s pears suffer even worse ravages. The Onthophagus shut in by accident ferrets about and pulls them to pieces. When, filled to repletion, the glutton wishes to make his exit, he pierces them with circular holes large enough to admit a lead-pencil. The evil is worse still with the Aphodius, whose family hatch, develop and undergo their transformation in the very heart of the provisions. My notes contain descriptions of pears perforated in every direction, riddled with a multitude of holes that serve for the escape of the tiny dung-worker, a parasite in spite of himself.
With table-fellows such as these, who bore ventilating-shafts in the provisions, the Sacred Beetle’s grub dies if the miners be numerous. Its trowel and mortar cannot cope with so great a task. They can cope with it if the damage be slight and the intruders few. At once stopping up every passage that opens around it, the grub holds its own against the invader; it disgruntles him and drives him away. The pear is saved and preserved from internal desiccation. [[93]]
Various Cryptogamia have a finger in the pie. They invade the fertile soil of the pill, make it rise in scales, split it with fissures by implanting their pustules. In its shell cracked by this vegetation, the grub would die were it not for the safeguard of its mortar, which puts an end to these desiccating vent-holes.
It puts an end to them in a third case, the most frequent of all. Without the intervention of any ravager, whether animal or plant, the pear pretty often peels of its own accord, swells and tears. Is this due to a reaction in the outer layer, which was too tightly pressed by the mother when modelling? Is it due to an attempt at fermentation? Or is it not rather the result of a contraction similar to that of clay, which splits in drying? All three causes might very well play their part.
But, without saying anything positive on this point, I will draw attention to certain deep fissures which seem to threaten the soft bread with desiccation, inadequately protected as it is by the cracked jar. Have no fear that these spontaneous breaches will do any harm: the larva will soon put them right. In the distribution of gifts, it was not for nothing that the trowel and putty were awarded to the Sacred Beetle’s grub.