has softened the underlying loam. The insect collects more or less of
this loam, according to the richness of the vein. There are no precise
limits here. If the plastic material be plentiful, the collector is
lavish with it and the provision-box becomes all the more solid. Then
enormous calabashes are obtained, exceeding a Hen's egg in volume and
formed of an outer wall three-quarters of an inch thick. But a mass of
this description is beyond the strength of the modeller, is badly
handled and betrays, in its shape, the awkwardness attendant on an
over-difficult task. If the material be rare, the insect confines its
harvesting to what is strictly necessary; and then, freer in its
movements, it obtains a magnificently regular gourd.

The loam is probably first kneaded into a ball and then scooped out
into a large and very thick cup by the pressure of the fore-legs and
the work of the forehead. 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 Phanaeus 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. With her toothed knife, she carves,
she saws some tiny shreds from the rotten animal; she tears off, cuts
away what she deems best suited to the grub's entertainment. She
collects all these fragments and mixes them with choice loam in the
spots where the sanies abounds. The whole, cunningly kneaded and
softened, becomes a ball made on the spot, without any
rolling-process, in the same way as the sphere of the other
pill-manufacturers. Let us add that this ball, a ration calculated by
the needs of the grub, is very nearly constant in size, whatever the
dimensions of the final calabash.

The sausage-meat is now ready. It is set in place in the wide-open
clay bowl. Loosely packed, without compression, the food will remain
free, will not stick to its wrapper.

Next, the potter's work is renewed. The insect presses the thick lips
of the clay cup, rolls them out and applies them to the prepared
force-meat, which is eventually contained by a thin partition at the
top end and by a thick layer every elsewhere. A wide circular pad is
left on the top partition, which is thin in view of the weakness of
the grub that is to perforate it later, w