What dough does the Scarab’s bake-house use? Who are the purveyors? The mule and the horse? By no means. And yet I expected to find it so—and so would everybody—at seeing the insect draw so eagerly, for its own use, upon the plentiful garner of an ordinary lump of dung. For that is where it habitually manufactures the rolling ball which it goes and consumes in some underground retreat. Whereas coarse bread, crammed with bits of hay, is good enough for the mother, she becomes more dainty where her family are concerned. She now wants fine pastry, rich in nourishment and easily digested; she now wants the ovine manna: not that which the sheep of a dry habit scatters in trails of black olives, but that which, elaborated in a less parched intestine, is kneaded into biscuits all of a piece. That is the material required, the dough exclusively used. It is no longer the poor and stringy produce of the horse, but an unctuous, plastic, homogeneous thing, soaked through and through with nourishing juices. Its plasticity, its delicacy are admirably adapted to the artistic work of the pear, while its alimentary qualities suit the weak stomach of the newborn progeny. Little though the bulk be, the grub will here find sufficient food. This explains the smallness of the alimentary pears, a smallness that made me doubt the origin of my find, before I came upon the mother in the presence of the provisions. I was unable to see in those little pears the bill of fare of a future Sacred Beetle, himself so great a glutton and of so remarkable a size. Where is the egg in that nutritive mass so novel in shape? One would be inclined to place it in the centre of the fat, round paunch. This central point is best-protected against accidents from the outside, best-endowed with an even temperature. Besides, the budding grub would here find a deep layer of food on every side of it and would not be exposed to the mistakes of the first few mouthfuls. Everything being alike on every side of it, it would not be called upon to choose; wherever it chanced to apply its novice tooth, it could continue without hesitation its first dainty repast. All this seemed so very reasonable that I allowed myself to be led away by it. In the first pear which I explored, slender layer by slender layer, with the blade of a penknife, I looked for the egg in the centre of the paunch, feeling almost certain of finding it there. To my great surprise, it was not there. Instead of being hollow, the centre of the pear is full and consists of one continuous, homogeneous alimentary mass. My deductions, which any observer in my place would certainly have shared, seemed very reasonable; the Scarab, however, is of another way of thinking. We have our logic, of which we are rather proud; the Dung-kneader has hers, which is better than ours in this contingency. She has her own foresight, her own discernment of things; and she places her egg elsewhere.