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But the Ox is a newcomer in the land, an importation of the Spanish conquest. What did the Megathopæ, the Bolbites, the Splendid Phanæus eat and knead, before the arrival of the present purveyor? The Llama, that denizen of the uplands, was not able to feed the Dung-beetles confined to the plains.
Before my housekeeper, before any of us, they knew how, with the aid of a round jar, to keep the provisions from drying during the summer heats. The work of the Bolbites is an ovoid, hardly differing in shape from that of the Copres; but this is where the ingenuity of the American insect shines forth.
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.
A fourth, Bolbites onitoides, compensates us for repetitions which, it is true, widen the scope of the problem but teach us nothing new. She is a handsome Beetle with a metallic costume, green or copper-red according as the light happens to fall. Her four-cornered shape and her long, toothed fore-legs make her resemble our Onites. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. xvi.
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