The insect employs two methods to ward off the danger of desiccation. In the first place, it compresses the outer layer with all the strength of its wide armlets, turning it into a protecting rind more homogeneous and more compact than the central mass. If I smash one of these well-dried boxes of preserves, the rind usually breaks off sharp and leaves the kernel in the middle bare. The whole suggests the shell and the almond of a filbert. The pressure exercised by the mother when manipulating her pear has influenced the surface layer to a depth of a few millimetres and from this results the rind; further down, the pressure has not spread, whence proceeds the central kernel. In the hot summer months, my housekeeper puts her bread into a closed pan, to keep it fresh. This is what the insect does, in its fashion: by dint of compression, it confines the bread of the family in a pan. The Sacred Beetle goes further still: she becomes a geometrician capable of solving a fine problem of minimum values. All other conditions remaining equal, the evaporation is obviously in proportion to the extent of the evaporating surface. The alimentary mass must therefore be given the smallest possible surface, in order by so much to decrease the waste of moisture; nevertheless, this smallest surface must unite the largest aggregate of nutritive materials, so that the worm may find sufficient nourishment. Now which is the form that encloses the greatest bulk within the smallest superficial area? Geometry answers, the sphere. The Scarab, therefore, shapes the worm’s allowance into a sphere (we will pass over the neck of the pear for the moment); and this round form is not the result of blind mechanical conditions, imposing an inevitable shape upon the workman; it is not the forcible effect of a rolling along the ground. We have already seen that, with the object of easier and swifter transit, the insect kneads the plunder which it intends to consume at a distance into an exact ball, without moving it from the spot at which it lies; in a word, we have observed that the round form precedes the rolling. In the same way, it will be shown presently that the pear destined for the worm is fashioned down in the burrow. It undergoes no process of rolling, it is not even moved. The Scarab gives it the requisite outline exactly as a modelling artist would do, shaping his clay under the pressure of the thumb.