To produce these latter, these giants, it is evident that a more generous diet is needed. Whence comes this increase of appetite? We whet ours with condiments. The insect may well have condiments of its own, for instance, as regards the Sacred Beetle, the pepper of the sea-breezes and the mustard of a generous sun. Such, it seems to me, are the causes which augment the dimensions of the African Scarabæus and reduce those of his Sérignan kinsman. As I have not these two appetizers, the sea and the sun, at my disposal, I give up the idea of making giants by an excess of victuals. Let us now try the larvæ which, not being rationed by the mother, have unlimited abundance at their disposal. Among them are the larvæ of Cetonia floricola, Herbst, living in heaps of decomposing leaves. I shall certainly never obtain giants from these by resorting to the artifice of a copious diet! In a corner of my garden they swarm in a heap of rotten leaves, where they find the wherewithal to satisfy their gluttonous appetites to the full, without having to hunt for it; and yet I never find an adult whose dimensions are ever so little exaggerated. To make him exceed the usual proportions it is probable that better climatic conditions are necessary, as in the case of the Sacred Beetle, conditions of which I know nothing and which, moreover, I should be unable to realize. Only one experiment lies within my power, that of starvation. At the beginning of April, I take three batches of larvæ of Cetonia floricola chosen from among those most fully developed and therefore liable to undergo their transformation during the course of the summer. At this April season the great hunger sets in which doubles the size of the grub and amasses the reserves needed for the elaboration of the adult. The three batches are installed in large tin boxes, carefully closed, in which there is no danger of too rapid desiccation. The first batch consists of twelve grubs, which are given an abundance of food, renewed as the need arises. My prisoners could not be better off in the heap of leaf-mould, their favourite resort. Side by side with this gastric paradise, a second tin, a very inferno of starvation, receives a dozen larvæ kept absolutely without food. It is furnished—as, for that matter, are the others—with a litter of droppings, enabling the famished creatures to wander about or bury themselves at will. Lastly, the third batch, likewise twelve in number, receives from time to time a scanty pinch of rotten leaves, enough at most to beguile their mandibles for a moment.