For here at work are the scavenger beetles to whom is entrusted the high office of clearing the ground of impurities. It is impossible to admire sufficiently the variety of tools with which they are furnished, both to stir the dung with, to divide and shape it, and to hollow the deep retreats into which they shut themselves with their booty. These tools form a kind of technological museum, where there is a specimen of every kind of digging instrument. Some might be copied from those devised by human industry, others are of an original type, and might serve as models for new tools for man. Copris hispanica wears a strong horn on its head, forked and bent back, like the long spike of a pickaxe. To a similar horn C. lunaris adds two strong points, shaped liked a ploughshare, projecting from the thorax, and between them a sharp-edged protuberance, serving as a wide rake. Bubas bubalus and B. bison, both exclusively Mediterranean species, have foreheads armed with two stout, diverging horns, between which projects a horizontal share from the corslet. Geotrupes typhæus carries three points on the front of its thorax, parallel and standing straight out, the middle one shorter than the others. Onthophagus taurus owns as implements two long curving appendages like the horns of a bull, while the furcate Onthophagus has a two-pronged fork on its flat head. Even those least well off have on one part or other hard tubercules—tools blunt indeed, but which the patient insect knows very well how to utilise. All are furnished with a shovel, i.e. a large, flat, sharp-edged head; all use a rake—in other words, they collect materials with their toothed front legs. As compensation for their unpleasant work, more than one gives out a strong scent of musk, and its ventral parts gleam like polished metal. Geotrupes hypocrita has the under part of its body bright with metallic lights of copper and gold, and G. stercorarius with amethystine violet. But the usual colour is black. It is in tropical regions that we find dung beetles in gorgeous array—absolutely living jewels. Under camel droppings in Upper Egypt is found a beetle rivalling the dazzling green of an emerald; Guiana, Brazil, Senegal, can show Copridæ of a metallic red, rich as the red of copper, bright as that of a ruby. If such a jewelled race be wanting to our country, still its dung beetles are not less remarkable for their habits.