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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.
In less than a week the colourless insect turns a rusty red, next a sooty brown and then an ebony black. The process is completed; the insect possesses its normal colouring. Even so do the Copres, the Gymnopleuri, the Onites, the Onthophagi and many others behave; even so must the jewel of the pampas, the Splendid Phanæus set to work.
Captives under the wire dome and anxious to escape, Sacred Beetles, Geotrupes, Copres, Gymnopleuri, Sisyphi, all see about them the free space, the joys of the open sunlight; and not one thinks of going round under the rampart, which would present no difficulty to their pickaxes. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. vii.
And it is not only in the grassy plains of La Plata that the modellers of dung proceed according to the principles usual over here; we may say, without fear of being mistaken, that the magnificent Copres of Ethiopia and the big Sacred Beetles of Senegambia work exactly like our own. The same similarity of industry exists in other entomological series, however distant their country.
Captives under the wire dome, but desirous of escape, Sacred Beetles, Geotrupes, Copres, Gymnopleuri, Sisyphi, all see about them the freedom of space, the joys of the open sunlight; and not one thinks of going round under the rampart, a front which would present no difficulty to their pick-axes. Even in the higher ranks of animality, examples of similar mental obfuscation are not lacking.
Besides, the New World is poor in pill-rollers and cannot compare with Senegambia and the regions of the Upper Nile, that paradise of Copres and Sacred Beetles. Nevertheless we owe it one precious detail: the group which is commonly known by the name of Dung-beetles is divided into two corporations, one of which exploits dung, the other corpses.
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