a. and sb. [ad. L. stercorārius, f. stercor-, stercus dung: see -ARY.]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to dung. Of insects: Living in or feeding on dung.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 6. The Stercorary or Yellow Flyes that feed upon Cow-dung.
1669. W. Simpson, Hydrol. Chym., 78. Innate and connatural to the place like the stercorary ferment to the cæcum.
1765. Universal Mag., XXXVII. 130/1. The stercorary beetle is seen at fig. 5.
1864. D. G. Mitchell, Wet Days at Edgewood, 17 (Cent.). We come upon a stercorary maxim.
1869. trans. Hugo’s By King’s Command, III. i. (1875), 114. The stercorary tribe which, like the envious, are addicted to defiling high places.
B. sb. A place where manure is stored, a dung-heap. Now rare or Obs.
1759. Mills, trans. Duhamel’s Husb., I. viii. (1762), 29. Mud, or the product of your stercorary.
1792. Washington, Lett., 14 Oct., Writ. 1891, XII. 239. That lately sown in Lucern from the stercorary to the river fence.
1828–32. Webster, Stercorary, a place properly secured from the weather for containing dung.
1851. Rural Cycl., IV. 338. Stercorary, a collection of putrescent manure in a position of security from injury by the weather.
