In order to clamber to the top, in order to hoist herself up through such a maze as never Copris mansion knew before, the Beetle must rub against and touch the units of the heap. But she counts none the better for that. To the insect all this is just the home, is just the family, worthy of the same care at the summit as at the base. The twelve produced by my trickery and the two of her own laying are the same thing in her arithmetic.
I present this strange mathematician to any one who comes and talks to me of a glimmer of reason in the insect, as Darwin claimed. It is one of two things: either this glimmer does not exist, or else the Copris reasons divinely and becomes a St. Vincent de Paul of insects, moved to pity by the sad lot of the homeless. Make your choice.
It is possible that, rather than abandon the principle, men will not shrink from sheer folly and that the compassionate Copris will one day figure in the evolutionists’ Book of Moral Deeds. Why not? Does it not already, with an eye to the same argument, contain a certain tender-hearted Boa Constrictor who, on losing his master, lay down and died of grief? Oh, the fond reptile! These edifying stories, compiled with the object of tracing man back to the Gorilla, procure me a few moments of mild amusement when I come across them. But we will not labour the point.
Better that you and I, friend Copris, should speak of things that do not raise storms. Would you mind telling me the reason of the reputation which you enjoyed in the days of antiquity? Ancient Egypt extolled you in pink granite and porphyry; she venerated you, O my fair horned one, and awarded you honours similar to the [[163]]Scarab’s! You ranked second in the entomological hierarchy.
Horapollo tells us of two Sacred Beetles with horns. One sported a single specimen on her head, the other had two. The first is you, the inmate of my glass jars, or at least some one very like you. If Egypt had known what you have just taught me, she would certainly have placed you above the Scarab, that roving pill-roller who deserts her home and leaves her family, after it has received its inheritance, to shift for itself as best it can. Knowing nothing of your wonderful habits, which history is noting for the first time, she deserves all the greater praise for having divined your merits.
The second, the one with two horns, would, according to the experts, appear to be the insect which the naturalists call the Isis Copris. I know her only in effigy, but her image is so striking that I sometimes catch myself dreaming late in life, just as I did in my youth, of going down to Nubia and exploring the banks of the Nile, in order to cross-examine, under some lump of Camel-dung, the insect that is emblematic of Isis the divine brooder, nature made fruitful by Osiris, the sun.
Oh, simpleton! Attend to your cabbages, sow your turnips: that won’t do you any harm; water your lettuces; and understand, once and for all, how vain are all our questionings when it is simply a matter of enquiring into a muck-raker’s sagacity! Be less ambitious; confine yourself to setting down facts.
So be it. There is nothing striking to be said of the larva, which is a replica of the Sacred Beetle’s, save for some minute details which do not interest us here. It has the same hump in the middle of its back, the same slanting truncature of the last segment, expanding into a trowel [[164]]on the upper surface. A ready excreter, it understands, though less thoroughly than the other, the art of stopping up breaches to protect itself from draughts. The larval state covers a period of four to six weeks.
At the end of July the nymph appears, first amber-yellow all over, next currant-red on the head, horn, corselet, breast and legs, while the wing-cases have the pale hue of gum arabic. A month later, by the end of August, the perfect insect releases itself from its mummy wrappers. Its costume, now wrought upon by delicate chemical changes, is quite as strange as that of the new-born Sacred Beetle. Head, corselet, breast and legs are chestnut-red. The horn, the epistoma and the denticulations of the fore-legs are shaded with brown. The wing-cases are a rather yellowish white. The abdomen is white, excepting only the anal segment, which is an even brighter red than the thorax. I perceive this early colouring of the anal segment, while the rest of the abdomen is still quite pale, in the Sacred Beetles, the Gymnopleuri, the Onthophagi, the Geotrupes, the Cetoniæ[8] and many others. Whence this precocity? One more note of interrogation which will long stand awaiting a reply.
A fortnight passes. The costume becomes ebon-black, the cuirass hardens. The insect is ready for the emergence. We are at the end of September; the earth has drunk in a few showers which soften the stubborn shell and allow of an easy deliverance. This is the moment, prisoners mine. If I have teased you a little, at least I have kept you in plenty. Your shells have hardened in your cages and have become caskets which your own efforts will never succeed in forcing open. I will come to your aid. Let us describe in detail how things happen. [[165]]