Moreover, we have further proof in another reason. Were the absence of fore-claws accidental, and the consequence of rough labour, there are other insects, especially among the scavenger beetles, which undertake excavations yet more difficult than those of the Scarabæus, and which ought therefore to be still more liable to lose their front claws, as these are useless and in the way when the foot has to serve as a strong tool for excavation. For instance, the Geotrupes, who deserve their name of Earth-piercer so well, make hollows in the hard and beaten soil of paths among pebbles cemented by clay—vertical pits so deep that to reach the lowest cell one has to use powerful digging tools, and even then one does not always succeed. Now these miners par excellence, who easily open long galleries in surroundings whose surface the Scarabæus sacer could hardly disturb, have their front tarsi intact, as if to perforate tufa were a work calling for delicacy rather than strength. Everything then points to the belief that, if observed in its natal cell, the baby Scarabæus would be found mutilated like the veteran who has travelled the world and grown worn with labour. On this absence of fingers might be based an argument in favour of the theories now in fashion—the struggle for life and the evolution of the species. One might say that the Scarabæus had originally tarsi on all its feet in conformity with the general laws of insect organisation. One way or another, some have lost these embarrassing appendages on their forefeet, they being hurtful rather than useful. Finding themselves the better for this mutilation, which proved favourable to their work, little by little they gained a superiority over the less favoured ones, founded a race by transmitting their fingerless stumps to their descendants, and finally, the primitively fingered insect became the fingerless Scarabæus of our time. I am willing to agree to this reasoning if it could first be demonstrated why, with like labours,—labours even far harder,—the Geotrupes has preserved his tarsi. Meantime let us continue to believe that the first Scarabæus who rolled a ball, perhaps on the shores of some lake where bathed the Palæotherium, was as much without tarsi as him of our own day. III CERCERIS BUPRESTICIDA