While working, the builder never leaves the dome of his edifice: he revolves on his own axis, if he wants to give his attention to any lateral part; to shape the lower portion, he bends down to the point where it touches the ground; but from beginning to end the sphere never moves on its base and the Beetle never relaxes his hold. To obtain a perfectly round form, we need the potter’s wheel, whose rotation makes up for our want of skill; to enlarge his snowball and make it into the enormous sphere which he will end by being unable to move, the schoolboy rolls it in the snow: the rolling gives it the regularity which the direct work of the hands, guided by an inexperienced eye, would not. More dexterous than we, the Sacred Beetle can dispense with either rolling or rotation; he moulds his ball by means of superadded layers, without shifting its place and without even descending for an instant from the top of his dome to view the whole structure from the requisite distance. The compasses of his bow-legs, a living pair of callipers which measure and check the curve, are sufficient for his purpose. It is only with extreme caution, however, that I introduce these callipers, as I am perfectly convinced, by a host of facts, that instinct has no need of special tools. If further proof were wanted, here it is. The male Scarab’s hind-legs are perceptibly bowed; the female’s, on the contrary, are almost straight, though she is much the cleverer and is able, as we shall see presently, to produce masterpieces whose exquisite form far surpasses that of a monotonous sphere. If the curved compasses play but a secondary part in the matter and perhaps no part at all, what is the guiding principle of this sphericity? If one merely took into consideration the insect’s organism and the circumstances in which the work is done, I see absolutely none. We must go back farther, we must go back to the innate genius, the instinct that guides the tool. The Scarab has a natural gift for making spheres, just as the Hive-bee has a natural gift for making hexagonal prisms. Both achieve geometrical perfection in their work and are independent of any special mechanism which would force upon them the particular shape attained. For the time being, keep this in mind: the Sacred Beetle makes his ball by placing next to each other armful after armful of the materials which he has collected; he builds it up without moving it, without turning it round. He fashions the dung with the pressure of his fore-arms as the modeller in our studios fashions his clay with the pressure of his thumb. And the result is not an approximate sphere, with a lumpy surface; it is a perfect sphere, which our human manufacturers would not disown.