Among males the same oscillations of the body and the same lateral flagellations are frequently practised. While the upper one makes a tremendous to-do and whirls his legs, the one under him keeps quiet. Sometimes a third scatterbrain comes on the scene, sometimes even a fourth, and mounts upon the heap of his predecessors. The uppermost bobs up and down and makes swift rowing-strokes with his fore-legs; the others remain motionless. Thus are the sorrows of the rejected beguiled for a moment. The Zonites, a rude clan, grazing on the heads of the prickly eryngo, despise all tender preliminaries. A few rapid vibrations of the antennae on the males' part; and that is all. The declaration could not be briefer. The pairing, with the creatures placed end to end, lasts nearly an hour. The Mylabres also must be very expeditious in their preliminaries, so much so that my cages, which were kept well-stocked for two summers, provided me with numerous batches of eggs without giving me a single opportunity of catching the males in the least bit of a flirtation. Let us therefore consider the egg-laying. This takes place in August for our two species of Mylabres. In the vegetable mould which does duty as a floor to the wire-gauze dome, the mother digs a pit four-fifths of an inch deep and as wide as her body. This is the place for the eggs. The laying lasts barely half an hour. I have seen it last thirty-six hours with Sitares. This quickness of the Mylabris points to an incomparably less numerous family. The hiding-place is next closed. The mother sweeps up the rubbish with her fore-legs, collects it with the rake of her mandibles and pushes it back into the pit, into which she now descends to stamp upon the powdery layer and cram it down with her hind-legs, which I see swiftly working. When this layer is well packed, she starts raking together fresh material to complete the filling of the hole, which is carefully trampled stratum by stratum.