White, naked, blind, possessing the customary attributes of life spent in the dark, the larva, with its tapering outline, is slightly reminiscent of the Ground-beetles'. The mandibles are black and powerful and make excellent dissecting-scissors. The limbs are short, but capable of a quick, toddling gait. The segments of the abdomen are clad on the upper surface in a narrow red plate, armed with four little spikes, whose office apparently is to furnish points of support when the larva quits the natal dwelling and dives into the soil, there to undergo the transformation. The thoracic segments are provided with wider plates, but unarmed. The adults discovered in the company of their larval family, in this putrescence which was a Rat, are all abominably verminous. So shiny and neat in their attire, when at work under the first Moles of April, the Necrophori, when June approaches, become odious to look upon. A layer of parasites envelops them; insinuating itself into the joints, it forms an almost continuous crust. The insect presents a misshapen appearance under this overcoat of vermin, which my hair-pencil can hardly brush aside. Driven off the belly, the horde runs round the sufferer, perches on his back and refuses to let go. I recognize the Beetle's Gamasus, the Tick who so often soils the ventral amethyst of our Geotrupes. No, life's prizes do not go to the useful. Necrophori and Geotrupes devote themselves to the general health; and these two corporations, so interesting in their hygienic functions, so remarkable for their domestic morals, fall victims to the vermin of poverty. Alas, of this discrepancy between the services rendered and the harshness of life there are many other examples outside the world of scavengers and undertakers! The Burying-beetles display an exemplary domestic morality, but it does not continue till the end. In the first fortnight of June, the family being sufficiently provided, the sextons strike work and my cages are deserted on the surface, in spite of new arrivals of Mice and Sparrows. From time to time, some grave-digger leaves the subsoil and comes crawling languidly into the fresh air. Another rather curious fact now attracts my attention. All those who climb up from underground are maimed, with limbs amputated at the joints, some higher up, some lower down. I see one cripple who has only one leg left entire. With this odd limb and the stumps of the others, lamentably tattered, scaly with vermin, he rows, as it were, over the sheet of dust. A comrade emerges, better off for legs, who finishes the invalid and cleans out his abdomen. Thus do my thirteen remaining Necrophori end their days, half-devoured by their companions, or at least shorn of several limbs. The pacific relations of the outset are succeeded by cannibalism.