In this marvel, so severe and dignified in shape and colouring, one point above all captivates me and gives me at last the solution of a far-reaching problem. Are the front-legs furnished with a tarsus, yes or no? This is the great business that makes me forget the jewel for the sake of a structural detail. Let us then return to a subject that excited me in my early days; for the answer has come at last, late, it is true, but certain and indisputable. By a very strange exception, the full-grown Sacred Beetle and his congeners are without front tarsi; they lack on their fore-legs that five-jointed finger which is the rule among the highest division of Coleoptera, the Pentamera. The other limbs, on the contrary, follow the common law and possess a very well-shaped tarsus. Is the formation of the toothed armlets original or accidental? At first sight, an accident seems probable enough. The Scarab is a strenuous miner and a great pedestrian. Always in contact with the rough soil, whether in walking or digging; used, moreover, for constant leverage when the insect is rolling its ball backwards, the fore-legs are much more exposed than the others to the danger of spraining and twisting their delicate finger, of putting it out of joint, of losing it entirely, from the very first moment when the work begins. Lest this explanation should appeal to any of my readers, I will hasten to undeceive them. The absence of the front fingers is not the result of an accident. The proof of what I say lies here, under my eyes, without the possibility of a rejoinder. I examine the nymph’s legs with the magnifying-glass: those in front have not the least vestige of a tarsus; the toothed limb ends bluntly, without a trace of a terminal appendage. In the others, on the contrary, the tarsus is as distinct as possible, notwithstanding the shapeless, gnarled condition due to the swaddling-bands and the humours of the chrysalis state. It suggests a finger swollen with chilblains. If the evidence of the nymph were not sufficient, there would be that of the perfect insect which, casting its rejected mummy-clothes and moving for the first time in its shell, wields fingerless armlets. The fact, therefore, is established for certain: the Sacred Beetle is born maimed; his mutilation dates from his birth.