Note 3 — Chapter VIII · A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS

I carefully rip up the gourd with the point of the knife. Under a homogeneous outer wall, the thickness of which reaches as much as two centimetres3 in the largest of my three specimens, is encased a spherical kernel, which fills the cavity exactly, but without sticking to the wall at any part. The trifle of free scope allowed to this kernel accounts for the rattling which I heard when shaking the piece.