For my dark apparatus I use flower-pots filled with fresh, well-packed sand. The mother and her cake occupy the lower part, which is adapted as a niche by means of a cardboard screen forming a ceiling and supporting the sand above. Or else I simply put the mother on the surface of the sand with a supply of provisions. She digs herself a burrow, does her warehousing, makes herself a home; and things follow the usual course. In all cases I rely upon a sheet of glass, which does duty as a lid, to keep my prisoners safe. These different devices will, I trust, give me information on a delicate point of which I will say more later. What do the glass jars covered with an opaque sheath teach us? A good many things, all of them interesting, and this to begin with: the big loaf does not owe its curve—which is always regular, no matter how much the actual shape may vary—to any rolling process. Our inspection of the natural burrow has already told us that so large a mass could not have been rolled into a cavity of which it fills almost the whole space. Besides, the strength of the insect would be unequal to moving so great a load. From time to time I go to the jar for information and on every occasion the same evidence is forthcoming. I see the mother, hoisted on top of the lump, feeling here, feeling there, bestowing little taps, smoothing away the projecting points, perfecting the thing; never do I catch her looking as though she wanted to turn the block. It is clear as daylight: rolling has nothing whatever to do with the matter. The dough-maker’s assiduity, her patient care make me suspect an industrial detail whereof I was far from dreaming. Why so many after-touches to the mass, why so long a wait before making use of it? It is, in fact, a week or more before the insect, still busy with its pressing and polishing, makes up its mind to do something with its hoard. When the baker has kneaded his dough to the requisite extent, he collects it into a single lump in a corner of the kneading-trough. The leaven will work better in the depths of the voluminous mass. The Copris knows this bakehouse secret. She heaps together all that she has collected in her foraging; she carefully kneads the whole into a provisional loaf and allows it time to improve by virtue of an internal process that gives flavour to the paste and makes it of the right consistency for subsequent manipulations. As long as this chemical process remains unfinished, both the baker and the Copris wait. In the case of the insect, it goes on for some time, a week at least.