I marry my captives: I give each of them a mate, a magnificent horned male, brought home from the fields. The household is set up during the night; and without delay the couple get to work in earnest. The co-operation has given fresh life to the workshop. Before this, the males, leading solitary lives in short burrows, used commonly to doze, not caring to gather pellets or to sink shafts of any depth; the females for the most part displayed no greater industry; the burrows remained superficial, the mounds comparatively flat, the harvest unproductive. As soon as the household is established, they dig deeply, and hoard plentifully. In twice twenty-four hours, the expulsion of rubbish has hidden the home beneath a dome-shaped heap of earthly plugs nine inches in width; moreover, a dozen droppings have been sent down into the cellar. This activity is maintained for three months or longer, broken by intervals of repose of varying duration, which are apparently rendered necessary by the operations of the miller and baker. The female never appears outside the burrow; it is always the male who emerges and sets out upon his quest, sometimes when twilight falls, more often at a later hour of the night. The crop varies greatly, though I take care to keep the part around the burrow properly supplied. At one time, two or three pellets are enough; at another, as many as twenty are collected in a single night. The gleaner seems to be influenced by the atmospheric conditions. The harvest is usually most active when the sky looks threatening, as though preparing for a storm that fails to materialize, or when I myself create rain by watering the tray of my apparatus. In dry weather, on the contrary, whole weeks pass without the slightest attempts at storing. As June draws nigh, feeling his end at hand, the gallant fellow redoubles his ardour; he wishes before he dies to leave his family abundantly provided for. With a not always well-timed enthusiasm, the prodigal heaps pellet upon pellet, to the pitch of encumbering the burrow and making the mother’s business difficult to carry on. Excessive wealth is an incubus. The thoughtless Beetle recognizes the fact at last and ejects the superfluous food from the shaft. On the first day of June, in one of my appliances, the sum of pellets sent down amounts to 239, a number that speaks well for the trident-bearer’s industry. My record of the droppings, kept as strictly as a banker’s account, confirms the enormous result. I am overjoyed by the treasure of the Minotaurs’; but, a few days later, an unexpected issue alarms me. One morning I find the mother dead. She has come up to breathe her last on the surface. It appears to be the rule that neither of the pair shall die in the children’s home. It is at a distance, in the open air, that the father and mother meet their end.