March is not over before signs of life reappear. My buried Beetles emerge, climb up the wire trellis, wandering about if the sun is kind, going back into the sand if the air grows colder. What am I to give them? There is no fruit. I serve them some honey in a paper dish. They go to it without any marked assiduity. Let us find something more to their taste. I offer them some dates. The exotic fruit, a delicious pulp in a thin skin, suits them very well, despite its novelty: they could set no greater store by pears or figs. The dates bring us to the end of April, the time of the first cherries. We have now returned to the regulation diet, the fruits of the country. A very moderate consumption takes place: the hour is past for feats of gastric prowess. Very soon my boarders grow indifferent to food. I surprise them in nuptial embraces, a sign that egg-laying is near at hand. In anticipation of events, I have placed in the cage, level with the soil, a pot full of dead, half-rotten leaves. About the summer solstice I see them enter it, one by one, remaining in it for some little time. Then, having finished their business, they return to the surface. For a week or two longer, they wander about, finally hiding themselves in the sand, at no great depth, and dying. Their successors are in the pot of rotten leaves. Before the end of June I find, in the tepid mass, plenty of recent eggs and very young larvæ. I now have the explanation of a peculiarity which caused me some confusion at the time of my earlier studies. When rummaging through the big heap of leaf-mould which, in a shady corner of the garden, provides me yearly with a rich colony of Cetoniæ, I used to find, under my trowel, in July and August, intact cocoons which would soon split open under the thrust of the insect inside; I also found the adult Cetonia, who had emerged from her strong-box that very day, and quite close to these I would find very young larvæ, which had only just made their appearance. I had before my eyes the crazy paradox of children born before their parents. The breeding-cage has cleared up these obscure points completely. It has taught me that the Cetonia, in the adult form, lives through a whole year and the summer of the following year. The cocoon is broken during the summer heats of July and August. The regular thing would be, provided the season were propitious, to think at once of the family, after indulging in a few nuptial frolics. This is the general rule among other insects. For them the present form is an efflorescence of brief duration, which the needs of the future employ as quickly as may.