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Updated: May 22, 2025
This, in another form, is the edifying story of the Sacred Beetle whose pellet had rolled into a rut, powerless to withdraw his treasure from the gulf, the wily Dung-beetle called together three or four of his neighbours, who benevolently recovered the pellet, returning to their labours after the work of salvage.
The hay may be stacked in the fields when gathered, or put into small barns built for hay storage alone; and the manure, scattered over the fields by the cattle, as they are fed from either of them, may be knocked to pieces with the dung-beetle, in the spring, or harrowed and bushed over the ground; and with the very small quantity of labor required in all this, such practice will be more economical than any other which can be adopted.
I know in my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is Onthophagus ovatus, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, far-gone meat for the grub.
I should add that, to achieve success, we must have a subject with a concentrated ganglionic column, such as the Weevil, the Buprestis, the Dung-beetle and others. Paralysis is then obtained with but a single prick, made at the point which the Cerceris has revealed to us, the point at which the corselet joins the rest of the thorax.
He listened to the nuptial song of the insects above the lime trees, which rings in our ears like a funeral dirge: he heard the purring call of the night-crow; the ardent mewing of the cat, which sounds as if death, and not life, were wooing; the humming note of the dung-beetle, the fluttering of the large moths, the thin peeping of the bats.
Phanæus Milon scoffs at difficulties. He does much more than that: he laughs at our classifications. The word Dung-beetle implies a lover of dung. He sets no value on it, either for his own use or for that of his offspring. What he wants is the sanies of corpses. He is to be found under the carcasses of birds, Dogs or Cats, in the company of the undertakers-in-ordinary.
The strange Dung-beetle does not, therefore, use cakes of Cow-dung or anything like them; he handles products of another class, which at first are rather difficult to specify. Held to the ear and shaken, the object rattles slightly, as would the shell of a dry fruit with a stone lying free inside it. Does it contain the grub, shrivelled by desiccation? Does it contain the dead insect?
You can't draw a dung-beetle to a rose. But it's time I was going, my boy. It's getting dark." "Wait a minute then, I'll come with you. I have to go to town to-day myself." Both put on their overcoats and went out. When a little while afterwards they were driving in a cab, it was already dark, and lights began to gleam in the windows. "I've robbed you, Borenka!" the father muttered.
And as I said 'Hodge, my dear Hodge, you tumbled about like a kernel of corn which a dung-beetle blows with his breath. No, no, my worthy and virtuous Gammer Gurton, it was not Tib who called the handsome Hodge, and more than that, I saw Tib, as your contest began, go out at the courtyard gate." "It was not Tib!" exclaimed Gammer Gurton, much moved, and happy as love could make her.
Not one fails in obeying those two laws, the safety of the egg and ready ventilation; not one, not even the next on my list, whose talent opens up a new horizon: I am now speaking of Lacordaire's Gromphas. On the contrary, it is, like the last, an elegant Dung-beetle, dark-bronze, thickset, square-shaped like our Bison Onitis and almost as large.
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