Note 4 — Chapter V · THE SPANISH COPRIS

I employ two methods, each fitted to instruct me as to certain particulars. Whenever the voleries supply me with a few large cakes, I move these, with the mother, and place them in my study. The receptacles are of two sorts, according to whether I want light or darkness. For light, I employ glass jars with a diameter more or less the same as that of the burrows, say about a dozen centimetres.4 At the bottom of each is a thin layer of fresh sand, quite insufficient to allow the Copris to bury herself in it, but convenient, nevertheless, to save the insect from the slippery footing provided by the glass and to give it the illusion of a soil similar to that of which I have deprived it. On this layer the jar receives the mother and her loaf.