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Onitis seems to be quite wanting in America: all the specimens, in this part of the world, that have been placed in that class, belong partly to the Phanæus, and partly to the Eurysternus Dalm. a remarkable species of the genus Ateuchus. The Ateuchi are not less numerous in South America than in Africa; and here is found what may be looked upon as the intermediate link between Copris and Onitis.
While equally rich in metallic splendour, his mate has no fantastic embellishments, which are an exclusive prerogative of masculine dandyism among the Dung-beetles of La Plata as among our own. Now what can the gorgeous foreigner do? Precisely what the Lunary Copris does with us.
The Copris and the Scorpion are no less blind, "and their maternal tenderness barely exceeds that of the plant, which, a stranger to any sense of affection or morality, none the less exercises the most exquisite care in respect of its seeds." Moreover, the impulse to work is only a kind of unconscious pleasure.
One is quite astonished to see so rich a gem load its basket with ordure. It is the jewel on the dung-hill. The corselet of the male is grooved with a wide hollow and he sports a pair of sharp-edged pinions on his shoulders; on his forehead he plants a horn which vies with that of the Spanish Copris.
I dare not follow up the argument, for the Spanish Copris would give me the lie, by showing me the mother occupied alone in settling the family and nevertheless stocking her one pit with a number of pellets. Each has her share of customs the secret of which escapes us.
Even thus do the Copris and the Sacred Beetle act when preparing, on the top of their round pill, the bowl in which the egg will be laid before the final manipulation of the ovoid or pear. In this first business, the Phanæus is simply a potter. So long as it be plastic, any clay serves her turn, however meagrely saturated with the juices running from the carcase. She now becomes a pork-butcher.
And you who groan over the distressing problem of depopulation, lend an ear to the lesson of the Copris, "which trebles its customary batch of offspring in times of abundance, and in times of dearth imitates the artisan of the city who has only just enough to live on, or the bourgeois, whose numerous wants are more and more costly to satisfy, limiting the number of its offspring lest they should go in want, often reducing the number of its children to a single one."
At the smaller end is the egg, in a chamber with a very porous roof, to allow the air to enter. The little undertaker has something better to show than her double sausage. Like the Bison Onitis, the Sisyphus and the Lunary Copris, she enjoys the collaboration of the father. Each burrow contains several cradles, with the father and mother invariably present. What are the two inseparables doing?
Reptiles and fish, on the other hand, retain their scales. Let us return to the unrecognizable thing that was once a Mole. The tit-bit lies in a spacious crypt, with firm walls, a regular workshop, worthy of being the bake-house of a Copris. Except for the fur, which lies scattered about in flocks, it is intact.
On the other hand, the horns are nearly as well developed in the female as in the male Phanaeus lancifer; and only a little less well developed in the females of some other species of this genus and of Copris. I am informed by Mr.
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