The Copris has other ways. She does not roll her stores from a distance; she warehouses them on the spot, bit by bit, which enables her to accumulate in a single burrow enough to satisfy all her brood. As there is no need for further expeditions, the mother stays and keeps watch. Under her never-failing vigilance, the pill does not crack, for any crevice is stopped up as soon as it appears; nor does it become covered with parasitic vegetation, for nothing can grow on a soil that is constantly being raked. The two or three dozen ovoids which I have before my eyes all bear witness to the mother’s watchfulness: not one of them is split or cracked or infested with tiny fungi. In all of them the surface is irreproachable. But, if I take them away from the mother to put them into a bottle or tin, they suffer the same fate as the Sacred Beetle’s pears: in the absence of supervision, destruction more or less complete overtakes them.
Two examples will be instructive to us here. I take from a mother two or three pills and place them in a tin, which prevents them from getting dry. Before a week has passed, they are covered with a fungous vegetation. More or less everything grows in this fertile soil; the lesser fungi delight in it. To-day it is an infinitesimal [[142]]crystalline plant swollen into a bobbin-shape, bristling with short, dew-beaded hairs and ending in a little round head as black as jet. I have not the leisure to consult books and microscope and give a name to the tiny apparition which attracts my attention for the first time. This botanical detail is of little importance: all that we need know is that the dark green of the pills has disappeared under the thick white crystalline growth stippled with black specks.
I restore the two pills to the Copris keeping watch over her third. I replace the opaque sheath and leave the insect undisturbed in the dark. In an hour’s time or less, I look to see how things are getting on. The parasitic vegetation has entirely disappeared, cut down, extirpated to the last stalk. The magnifying-glass fails to reveal a trace of what, a little while before, was a dense thicket. The insect has used its rake, those notched legs, to some purpose; and the surface of the pill is once more in the unblemished condition necessary for health.
The other experiment is a more serious one. With the point of my penknife I make a gash in a pill at the upper end and lay bare the egg. Here we have an artificial breach not unlike those which might be caused naturally, but of much greater size. I give back to the mother the violated cradle, threatened with disaster unless she intervenes. But she does intervene and that quickly, once darkness comes. The ragged edges slit by the penknife are brought together and soldered. The small amount of stuff lost is replaced by scrapings taken from the sides. In a very short time the breach is so neatly repaired that not a trace remains of my onslaught.
I repeat it, making the danger graver and attacking all four pills with my desecrating penknife, which cuts right [[143]]through the hatching-chamber and leaves the egg only an incomplete shelter under the gaping roof. The mother’s counter-move is swift and effective. In one brief spell of work everything is put right again. Yes, I can quite believe that with this vigilant supervisor, who never sleeps except with one eye open, there is no possibility of the cracks and the puffiness which so often disfigure the Sacred Beetle’s pear.
Four pills containing eggs are all that I have been able to obtain from the big loaf which I took from the burrow at the time of the nuptials. Does this mean that the Copris can lay only that number? I think so. I even believe that usually there are less, three, two, or possibly only one. My boarders, installed in separate potfuls of sand at nesting-time, did not reappear on the surface once they had stored away the necessary provisions; they never came out to dip into the replenished stock and enable themselves to increase the always restricted number of ovoids lying at the bottom of the pot under the mother’s watchful care.
This limitation of the family might very well be due partly to lack of space. Three or four pills completely fill the burrow; there is no room for more; and the mother, a stay-at-home alike from duty and inclination, does not dream of digging another dwelling. It is true that greater breadth in the one which she has would solve the problem of room; but then a ceiling of excessive length would be liable to collapse. Suppose I were myself to intervene, suppose I provided space without the risk of the roof falling in, could there be an increase in the number of eggs?
Yes, the number is almost doubled. My trick is quite simple. In one of the glass jars, I take away her three or four pills from a mother who has just finished the last. [[144]]None of the loaf remains. I substitute for it one of my own making, kneaded with the tip of a paper-knife. A new type of baker, I do over again very nearly what the insect did at the beginning. Reader, do not smile at my baking: science shall give it the odour of sanctity.
My cake is favourably received by the Copris, who sets to work again, starts laying anew and presents me with three of her perfect ovoids, making seven in all, the greatest number that I obtained in my various attempts of this kind. A large piece of the bun remains available. The Copris does not utilize it, at least not for nest-building; she eats it. The ovaries appear to be exhausted. This much is proved: the pillaging of the burrow provides space; and the mother, taking advantage of it, nearly doubles the number of her eggs with the aid of the cake which I make for her.
Under natural conditions nothing of a similar kind can happen. There is no obliging baker at hand, to shape and pat a new cake and slip it into the oven that is the Copris’ cellar. Everything therefore tells us that the stay-at-home Beetle, who makes up her mind not to reappear until the cool autumn days, is of very limited bearing-capacity. Her family consists of three or four at most. Occasionally, in the dog-days, long after laying-time is past, I have even dug up a mother watching over a solitary pill. This one, perhaps for lack of provisions, had reduced her maternal joys to the narrowest limits.