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There remain the germ's respiratory requirements. To satisfy these, the insect has been equally well-inspired. The neck of the calabash is pierced, in the direction of its axis, with a tiny channel which would admit at most the slenderest of straws. Inside, this conduit opens at the top of the dome of the hatching-chamber; outside, at the tip of the nipple, it spreads into a wide mouth.
Not a thing is forgotten: the round belly with the largest volume and the smallest surface; the hard rind which acts as a preservative against premature desiccation; the terminal nipple where the egg is lodged in a hatching-chamber; and, at the end of the nipple, the felt stopper which admits the air needed by the germ. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. xvi.
But, in the matter of breathing, the egg is no better off for being shut up, on top of the provisions, in a clay casket quite as air-tight as the jar itself. Examine the thing more closely, however, and you will receive a satisfactory reply. The walls of the hatching-chamber are carefully glazed inside. The mother has taken meticulous pains to give them a stucco-like finish.
The work is completed by rolling out and joining the edges of the little crater, which closes and becomes the hatching-chamber. Here, especially, a delicate dexterity becomes essential. At the same time that the nipple of the calabash is being shaped, the insect, when packing the material, must leave the little channel which is to form the ventilating-shaft, following the line of the axis.
Imagine the Sisyphus' little pear with its hatching-chamber swollen into a globule a trifle smaller than the sphere at the other end; suppose the two protuberances to be divided by a sort of wide open groove like that of a pulley; and we shall have something very like the Canthon's work in shape and size.
When the work is finished and smoothed to perfection with indefatigable patience, the tiny pot, built up piecemeal, looks as though made with the wheel and rivals our own earthenware in regularity. The hatching-chamber, in which the egg lies, is, as usual, contrived in the nipple at the end of the pear.
After the food-pellet has been formed in the ordinary baker's fashion and the egg laid in its hatching-chamber, the Bolbites takes some armfuls of the clay near at hand, applies it to the foodstuff and presses it down.
In the south as in the north, at the antipodes as here, every Copris fashions ovoids with the egg at the smaller end; every Sacred Beetle models pears or gourds with a hatching-chamber in the neck; but the materials employed vary greatly according to the season and locality and can be furnished by the Megatherium, the Ox, the Horse, the Sheep or by man and several others.
Above the cold pastry, right at the base of the neck of the gourd, is contrived a round cell with a clay wall continuing the general wall. A fairly thick floor, made of the same material, separates it from the store-room. This is the hatching-chamber.
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