-rate collaborator, I have my seat on
the magic carpet. Behold me in the pampas of the Argentine Republic,
eager to draw a parallel between the industry of the Serignan[12]
Dung-beetles and that of their rivals in the western hemisphere.

[Footnote 12: Serignan, in Provence, where the author ended his
days.--_Translator's Note_.]

A glorious beginning! An accidental find procures me, to begin with,
the Splendid Phanaeus (_P. splendidulus_), who combines a coppery
effulgence with the sparkling green of the emerald. 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. 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[13] does with us. Settling, like the other, under a flat cake
of Cow-dung, the South American Beetle kneads egg-shaped loaves
underground. 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.

[Footnote: 13: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chap.
xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

All these things I have seen here and I see over there, almost at the
other end of the world. Life, ruled by inflexible logic, repeats
itself in its works, for what is true in one latitude cannot be false
in another. We go very far afield in search of a new spectacle to
meditate upon; and we have an inexhaustible specimen before our eyes,
between the walls of our enclosure.

Settled under the sumptuous dish dropped by the Ox, the Phanaeus, one
would think, ought to make the very best use of it and to stock her
burrow with a number of ovoids, after the example of the Lunary
Copris. She does nothing of the sort, preferring to roam from one find
to the other and to take from each the wherewithal to model a single
pellet, which is left to itself for the soil to incubate. She is not
driven to practise economy e