until it is placed in safety. The persevering energy of this insect led the Egyptians to adopt it as an emblem of the labours of their great deity. Osiris, or the sun, they also traced a resemblance in the spiny projections on its head to the rays of the sun.
Great was my delight to find at length that Cheops—even in captivity—was true to his native instincts, that he had formed a pellet about the size of a marble and was gravely rolling it with his hind legs backwards and forwards in his box. Poor captive! he was evidently puzzled what to do with the precious thing. He had no Nile bank to surmount, and the sun was hardly warm enough to encourage any hope for his future family; but he did the only thing that was possible—he set to work to scoop out a hole of sufficient size, then rolled the pellet in and covered it over with loose earth. Three such pellets were made at intervals of a few days; one of them I unearthed and kept as a curio. The beetle never seemed to miss it, and having done his duty under difficult circumstances, his mind seemed to be at rest.
