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Settled under the sumptuous dish dropped by the Ox, the Phanæus, one would think, ought to make the very best use of it and to stock her burrow with a number of ovoids, after the example of the Lunary Copris. She does nothing of the sort, preferring to roam from one find to the other and to take from each the wherewithal to model a single pellet, which is left to itself for the soil to incubate.
To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as interesting. All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles. I will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history is the same as that of the Sacred Scarabæus, the Spanish Copris, and others.
It is curious, that all the seventeen kinds of Copris of South America known to us, have but seven stripes upon each wing-case; whereas those of the Old World have eight: the larger kinds, Hamadrias, Bucephalus, and Isidis, alone agree with the South American in the number of stripes.
This seems excellent reasoning; but it is much more often contradicted than confirmed by the facts. Why is the Sisyphus a hard working paterfamilias and the sacred beetle an idle vagabond? And yet the two pill rollers practice the same industry and the same method of rearing their young. Why does the Lunary Copris know what his near kinsman, the Spanish Copris, does not?
Copris Isidis, sexual differences of. Copris lunaris, stridulation of. Corals, bright colours of. Coral-snakes. Cordylus, sexual difference of colour in a species of. Corfu, habits of the Chaffinch in. Cornelius, on the proportions of the sexes in Lucanus Cervus. Corpora Wolffiana, agreement of, with the kidneys of fishes. Correlated variation.
Conscience, absence of, in some criminals. Constitution, difference of, in different races of men. Consumption, liability of Cebus Azarae to; connection between complexion and. Convergence of characters. Cooing of pigeons and doves. Cook, Captain, on the nobles of the Sandwich Islands. Cope, E.D., on the Dinosauria. Cophotis ceylanica, sexual differences of. Copris.
I double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupes, the Copris, the Decticus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short, with a host of tribes the telling of whose story would exhaust a lifetime.
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