So far, the Beetle has only raw material, lumped together anyhow. A minute sorting has to take place before anything else is done: this stuff, the purest, is for the inner layer on which the grub will feed; that other, coarser stuff is for the outer layers, which are not meant for food and serve only as a protecting shell. Then, around a central hollow which receives the egg, the materials must be arranged in successive strata, according as they are less refined and less nutritive; the layers must possess a proper consistency and must be made to adhere to one another; last of all, the stringy parts of the outer layers, which have to protect the whole structure, must be felted together. How does the clumsy Sacred Beetle, who is so stiff in her movements, accomplish a work of this kind in complete darkness, at the bottom of a hole crammed with provisions and hardly leaving room to stir? When I consider the delicacy of the workmanship and then the rough tools of the worker—angular limbs capable of cutting into hard or even rocky soil—I think of an Elephant trying to make lace. Let whoso can explain this miracle of maternal industry; as for me, I give it up, all the more as I have not had the luck to see the artist at work. We will confine ourselves to describing her masterpiece. The ball containing the egg is usually the size of an average apple. In the centre is an oval hollow about two-fifths of an inch in diameter. The egg is fixed at the bottom, standing perpendicularly; it is cylindrical, rounded at both ends, yellowish-white and about as large as a grain of wheat, but shorter. The inside of the niche is coated with a shiny, greenish-brown, semifluid material, a real stercoral cream, destined to form the larva’s first mouthfuls. To make this dainty food, does the mother collect the quintessence of the dung? The appearance of it tells me something different and makes me certain that it is a pap prepared in the maternal stomach. The Pigeon softens the grain in her crop and turns it into a sort of milky soup which she subsequently disgorges to her brood. To all seeming, the Dung-beetle displays the same solicitude: she half-digests choice provender and disgorges it in the form of a meat-extract with which she lines the walls of the cavity where the egg is laid. Thus the larva, on hatching, finds an easily-digested food, which very soon strengthens its stomach and enables it to attack the underlying strata, which have not been refined in the same way. Under the semi-fluid paste is a soft, well-compressed, uniform mass, from which every stringy particle is excluded. Beyond this are the coarser layers, abounding in vegetable fibres. Finally, the outside of the ball is composed of the commonest materials, but packed and felted into a stout rind.