On the appointed day the week after I returned to the tableland confident of success. My young helpers would no doubt have mentioned this lucrative trade in beetle-balls to their comrades and shown their handsels to convince the incredulous. Accordingly I found a larger party assembled than the first time. On seeing me they ran up, but there was no eagerness, no shout of joy. I saw that things had gone ill. Many times on coming out of school had they sought for what I had described, but in vain. Some balls, found underground with the Scarabæus, were brought, but they were mere heaps of food, and there was no grub. Fresh explanations were given and a new appointment was made for the following Thursday. Again the same want of success. The seekers, discouraged, were now few. I made a last appeal, but nothing came of it. Finally, I paid the most zealous, those who had been faithful to the last, and we dissolved partnership. I could count on no one but myself for researches, which seemed simple enough, but really were exceedingly difficult. Even up to the present time, after many years, excavations made in favourable spots and hopeful opportunities have not yet given any clear, consistent result. I am reduced to combining incomplete observations and to filling up gaps by analogy. [4] The little which I have seen, together with observations on other dung beetles—Gymnopleurus, Copris, and Onthophagus—in my enclosure is summed up in the following statement. The ball destined for the egg is not fashioned in public, in the hurry-scurry of the general workshop. It is a work of art and much patience, demanding minute care impossible amid a crowd. One must retire to meditate one’s plans and set to work, so the mother makes a hollow from four to eight inches deep in the sand. It is a rather spacious hall, communicating with the outside by a much narrower gallery. The insect carries down choice materials, no doubt first rolled into pellets. She must make many journeys, for the contents of the hole are out of all proportion with the door, and could not be carried in at once. I recollect a Spanish Copris which, at the moment I came upon it, was finishing a ball as large as an orange at the bottom of a burrow only communicating with the outside world by means of a gallery where I could but just insert my finger. It is true that the Copris do not roll balls or make long journeys to fetch food. They dig a hole immediately under the dung, and crawl backward with successive loads to the bottom of their cavity. The facility for provisioning and the security offered by working under the manure favour a taste for luxury not to be expected in the same degree among beetles belonging to the rude trade of ball-rollers; but should it return two or three times, Scarabæus sacer can amass wealth of which Copris hispanica might well be jealous.