Fig. 439.—Golofa claviger.
The species of the genus Ateuchus collect portions of excrement, which they make up into balls, and roll till they are as perfectly rounded as pills, and in which they lay their eggs. This habit has gained for these insects the name of pill-makers. Their hind legs seem to be particularly adapted for this operation, for they are very long and somewhat distant from the other legs, which gives to the Ateuchi a strange appearance, and makes it hard work for them to walk. They walk backwards and often fall head over heels. They are generally seen on declivities exposed to the greatest heat of the sun, assembled together to the number of four or five, occupied in rolling the same ball; so that it is impossible to know which is the real proprietor of this rolling object. They seem not to know themselves; for they roll indifferently the first ball which they meet with, or near which they are placed.
Fig. 440.—Scarabæus (Golofa) Porteri.
Fig. 441.—Scarabæus enema, or Enema infundibulum.
The Ateuchi are large flat insects, with a broad-toothed clypeus; they all belong to the Ancient Continent. The type of the genus is the Ateuchus sacer ([Fig. 442]), the Sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians. This insect is black, and attains to a length of a little less than an inch. It is to be found commonly enough in the south of France, in the whole of southern Europe, Barbary, and Egypt. The paintings and amulets of the ancient Egyptians very often represent it, and sometimes give it a gigantic size. It is, doubtless, then, this species which was an object of veneration with the Egyptians.
There exists another species, which is always represented as of a magnificent golden green, and to which Herodotus also attributes this colour. As it was not to be found in Egypt, it was thought for a long while that the Egyptians had painted the black species of a more splendid colour in order to pay it homage. But in 1819 M. Caillaud actually found at Meroe, on the banks of the White Nile, the Ateuchus Ægyptiorum, which resembles the Ateuchus sacer much in colour, but has a golden tint. Since then it has also been brought from Sennaar. The two species were both probably sacred. Hor-Apollon, the learned commentator on Egyptian hieroglyphics, thinks that this people, in adopting the scarabæus as a religious symbol, wished to represent at once, a unique birth—a father—the world—a man. The unique birth means that the scarabæus has no mother. A male wishing to procreate, said the Egyptians, takes the dung of an ox, works it up into a ball, and gives it the shape of the world, rolls it with its hind legs from east to west, and places it in the ground, where it remains twenty-eight days; the twenty-ninth day it throws its ball, now open, into the water, and there comes forth a male scarabæus. This explanation shows also why the scarabæus was employed to represent at the same time a father, a man, and the world. There were, however, according to the same author, three sorts of Scarabæi: one was in the shape of a cat, and threw out brightly shining rays (probably the Golden Scarabæus, Ateuchus Ægyptiorum); the two others had horns; their description seems to refer to a Copris and a Geotrupes.