Note 5 — Chapter XIII · THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS: THE INSTRUMENT OF SOUND

Among these inexperienced scrapers, I will select the Bolboceras (B. gallicus, Muls.),5 as deserving honourable mention. Round as a ball, sporting a horn on his forehead, like the Spanish Copris, whose stercoral tastes he does not share, this pretty Beetle loves the pine-woods in my neighbourhood and digs himself a burrow in the sand, leaving it in the evening twilight with the gentle chirp of a well-fed nestling under its mother’s wing. Though habitually silent, he makes a noise at the least disturbance. A dozen of him imprisoned in a box will provide you with a delightful symphony, very faint, it is true: you have to hold the box close to your ear to hear it. Compared with him, the Capricorn, Copris, Pine Cockchafer and the rest are rustic fiddlers. In their case, after all, it is not singing, but rather an expression of fear, I might almost say, a cry of anguish, a moan. The insect utters it only in a moment of danger and never, so far as I know, at the time of its wedding.