I may add that if the beetles left the bodies in which they laid their eggs to lie above ground, the bodies would dry up, and the eggs would run much greater risks. By burying the dead animal, they provide their young with food and shelter together, and so display considerable intelligence.
Another very distinct group of insects which act as scavengers in a different way in hotter climates than ours are the famous scarabs or sacred beetles, worshipped almost like gods by the ancient Egyptians. English people know the scarabs best, I think, in the neighbourhood of Naples, or on the Lido at Venice—that great bank of sand and shingle which separates the lagoons from the open Adriatic. When wearied with sight-seeing at St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace, we have, most of us, taken the little steamer that runs across to the baths on the Lido, and spent a pleasant hour or two in picking up shells and dried sea-horses on the firm belt of beach that stretches away to Malamocco. A little inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind, and over-grown by patches of blue-green marram-grass and other sandy seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills, choosing a spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours, you will soon be amused by seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in every direction. A number of odd-looking beetles, with long hind legs and very quaint heads, are occupied with ceaseless industry in rolling a lot of dark, round balls almost as big as themselves along the slopes of the sand-hills. In many places, the whole ground is alive with the tugging and pushing little beasts: indeed, when you come to look close you will find that every half acre of sand on the Venetian shore or the lower edge of the Egyptian desert is a perfect city of these busy wee creatures. Earth is honeycombed with their holes, towards which innumerable beetles are continually rolling their mysterious balls at every possible angle.
Now, what are the balls composed of? There comes the oddest part of the whole odd proceeding. The plain truth of it is that the sacred beetles are assistant scavengers—imperfect Southern and Oriental substitutes for a main drainage system. The balls consist of dung, dirt, and refuse, and the beetles collect them on the open, dry them hard in the sun, roll them to the mouths of their burrows, and then live on them till the ball has all been eaten. It is the funniest thing in the world to watch them. They tumble about in the loose sand and stumble over little eminences in the most comical fashion. No. 5 shows a pair of scarabs engaged in this habitual and quaint amusement. They have each collected a round mass of manure, and rolled and dried it nicely into shape; they are now engaged in trundling their booty off at their leisure to a place of safety. But they are obliged to push the balls backward with their long hind legs: and as this precludes the possibility of the scarab seeing where it is going, each beetle pauses every now and again and turns round, like a man sculling in a boat alone, to look what is ahead of him. Sometimes in doing so he loses his ball, a misfortune which has just happened to the beetle on the right in No. 5. The precious pellet goes bounding off down hill as fast as gravitation will take it. In this case, the disappointed little workman faces round and darts after it at full speed, going forward now instead of backward, and trying to head the ball as it rolls down the uncertain slope of the sand-hills. If he succeeds, he puts himself in front of the ball as it falls, catches it with his hind legs, and begins once more laboriously to push it backward up hill again, towards the mouth of his hole. But as the pellets roll quickly, and the beetles are by no means rapid runners, he seldom succeeds in recovering his own property, unless the ball happens to catch for a moment on some projecting little hillock of sand, or be checked on its downward course by a weed, a stick, or a dead shell or starfish.
5.—SACRED SCARABS ROLLING THEIR FOOD-BALLS BACKWARD (THE INSECT TO THE RIGHT HAS LOST HIS DINNER).
On the other hand, the scarabs, I fear I must admit, are terrible thieves; and if one scarab has lost his own ball, and sees some companion's pellet come rolling down hill towards him, he will often give up the pursuit of his lost property, and quietly and barefacedly appropriate his neighbour's. I have seen great fights take place at times over a disputed ball; though sometimes the combatants agree amicably to roll it along in common, and probably share it when they have reached their hole. Sometimes, again, three or four will unite to roll a ball: and then, when one loses it, the others combine to hold it up or catch it. I have spent hours together both in Egypt and on the Mediterranean or the Adriatic in watching the queer antics of these comic little commissioners of drainage: and I never tire of observing their odd and unexpected combinations of interest. I have sometimes known the real owner abandon a ball in despair, from the unevenness of the ground, and then seen a couple of outsiders come up and succeed in doing what the true owner had been unable to accomplish.
In No. 6 you see two such scarabs whose toil has at last been crowned by success, and who are delivering their balls with joy into the holes in the sand which form their residences. As far as I can make out, a pair of beetles, male and female, seem usually to share a hole in common, and to roll balls of food to it either alone or in concert. I cannot say I have ever seen much co-operation except between such partners. Once a ball is secured and safely landed—for here, as elsewhere, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip—the happy couple proceed to eat it up, and apparently do not emerge again from their burrow till the supply is exhausted. Patient naturalists say that one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as a fortnight, but this I do not vouch for of personal knowledge. When more food is wanted, the couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll into a new food-ball and then dry and harden.
6.—PRIMITIVE GOLF—END OF A ROUND: THE SCARABS HOLING THEIR BALLS.
Till very lately, it was universally believed that the female scarab laid an egg in some of the balls, and that the young grubs hatched within such food-stocks and began at once to devour them. This belief has recently been contradicted with great emphasis by a good French observer, who opened many balls and found no eggs; but I cannot accept his conclusion. I opened numbers of balls myself near Venice this year, and saw in several one or two eggs, while in one case (unearthed from a hole) I discovered a half-grown larva. I venture therefore in this matter to believe my own eyes as against those of even the most celebrated and authoritative entomologists.