The most delicate part of the affair escapes my observation. I see quite clearly, in the main, how the hatching-chamber of the egg is obtained: the thick pad surrounding the original crater is thinned and flattened out under the pressure of the feet and lengthened into a sack the mouth of which gradually narrows. Up to this point, the work provides its own explanation. But we have no explanation of the exquisite perfection of the cell wherein the egg is to hatch, when we think of the insect’s rigid tools, the wide, toothed armlets whose jerky awkwardness suggests the spasmodic movements of an automaton. With this clumsy equipment, excellently adapted to coarse work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does the foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the painter’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere and this is the occasion to repeat it: the tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts its gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool wherewith it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us. The same strong-toothed rake with which the Sacred Beetle rips the earth is used by her as a trowel and brush wherewith to glaze the stucco of the chamber in which the grub will be born. In conclusion, one more detail concerning this hatching-chamber. At the extreme end of the neck of the pear, one point is always pretty clearly distinguished: it bristles with stringy fibres, while the rest of the neck is carefully polished. This is the plug with which the mother has closed the narrow opening after placing the egg; and this plug, as its hairy structure shows, has not been subjected to the pressure which, throughout the rest of the work, crams the smallest projecting scrap into the mass and causes it to disappear. Why this arrangement at the extreme pole, a very curious exception, when every elsewhere the pear has received the powerful blows of the insect’s foot? The hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which, were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. The mother, aware of the risk, blocks up the hole without ramming the stopper: the air in the hatching-chamber is thus more easily renewed; and the egg escapes the dangerous concussion of the compressing paddle. CHAPTER IV THE SACRED BEETLE: THE GRUB, THE METAMORPHOSIS, THE HATCHING-CHAMBER