I restore the two pills to the Copris keeping watch over her third. I replace the opaque sheath and leave the insect undisturbed in the dark. In an hour’s time or less, I look to see how things are getting on. The parasitic vegetation has entirely disappeared, cut down, extirpated to the last stalk. The magnifying-glass fails to reveal a trace of what, a little while before, was a dense thicket. The insect has used its rake, those notched legs, to some purpose; and the surface of the pill is once more in the unblemished condition necessary for health. The other experiment is a more serious one. With the point of my penknife I make a gash in a pill at the upper end and lay bare the egg. Here we have an artificial breach not unlike those which might be caused naturally, but of much greater size. I give back to the mother the violated cradle, threatened with disaster unless she intervenes. But she does intervene and that quickly, once darkness comes. The ragged edges slit by the penknife are brought together and soldered. The small amount of stuff lost is replaced by scrapings taken from the sides. In a very short time the breach is so neatly repaired that not a trace remains of my onslaught. I repeat it, making the danger graver and attacking all four pills with my desecrating penknife, which cuts right through the hatching-chamber and leaves the egg only an incomplete shelter under the gaping roof. The mother’s counter-move is swift and effective. In one brief spell of work everything is put right again. Yes, I can quite believe that with this vigilant supervisor, who never sleeps except with one eye open, there is no possibility of the cracks and the puffiness which so often disfigure the Sacred Beetle’s pear. Four pills containing eggs are all that I have been able to obtain from the big loaf which I took from the burrow at the time of the nuptials. Does this mean that the Copris can lay only that number? I think so. I even believe that usually there are less, three, two, or possibly only one. My boarders, installed in separate potfuls of sand at nesting-time, did not reappear on the surface once they had stored away the necessary provisions; they never came out to dip into the replenished stock and enable themselves to increase the always restricted number of ovoids lying at the bottom of the pot under the mother’s watchful care. This limitation of the family might very well be due partly to lack of space. Three or four pills completely fill the burrow; there is no room for more; and the mother, a stay-at-home alike from duty and inclination, does not dream of digging another dwelling. It is true that greater breadth in the one which she has would solve the problem of room; but then a ceiling of excessive length would be liable to collapse. Suppose I were myself to intervene, suppose I provided space without the risk of the roof falling in, could there be an increase in the number of eggs?