How does the clumsy insect manage to accomplish so delicate and complex a piece of building? Exploring the pampas as I do through the eyes of an intermediary, my only guide in this question is the structure of the work, a structure whence we can deduct the workman's method without going far astray. I therefore imagine the building to proceed in this manner: a small carcase is found, the oozing of which has softened the underlying loam. The insect collects more or less of this loam, according to the richness of the vein. There are no precise limits here. If the plastic material be plentiful, the collector is lavish with it and the provision-box becomes all the more solid. Then enormous calabashes are obtained, exceeding a Hen's egg in volume and formed of an outer wall three-quarters of an inch thick. But a mass of this description is beyond the strength of the modeller, is badly handled and betrays, in its shape, the awkwardness attendant on an over-difficult task. If the material be rare, the insect confines its harvesting to what is strictly necessary; and then, freer in its movements, it obtains a magnificently regular gourd. The loam is probably first kneaded into a ball and then scooped out into a large and very thick cup by the pressure of the fore-legs and the work of the forehead. Even thus do the Copris and the Sacred Beetle act when preparing, on the top of their round pill, the bowl in which the egg will be laid before the final manipulation of the ovoid or pear. In this first business, the Phanaeus is simply a potter. So long as it be plastic, any clay serves her turn, however meagrely saturated with the juices running from the carcase. She now becomes a pork-butcher. With her toothed knife, she carves, she saws some tiny shreds from the rotten animal; she tears off, cuts away what she deems best suited to the grub's entertainment. She collects all these fragments and mixes them with choice loam in the spots where the sanies abounds. The whole, cunningly kneaded and softened, becomes a ball made on the spot, without any rolling-process, in the same way as the sphere of the other pill-manufacturers. Let us add that this ball, a ration calculated by the needs of the grub, is very nearly constant in size, whatever the dimensions of the final calabash. The sausage-meat is now ready. It is set in place in the wide-open clay bowl. Loosely packed, without compression, the food will remain free, will not stick to its wrapper.