What did Horapollo himself see? Apparently what we see in our day. If Latreille’s explanation be right, as everything seems to denote, if the Egyptian author began by counting thirty fingers according to the number of joints in the tarsi, it is because his enumeration was based in his mind upon the facts of the general situation. He was guilty of a mistake which was not very reprehensible, seeing that, some thousand years later, masters like Latreille and Mulsant were guilty of it in their turn. The only culprit in all this business is the exceptional structure of the insect. “But,” I may be asked, “why should not Horapollo have seen the exact truth? Perhaps the Scarab of his century had tarsi which the insect does not possess to-day. In that case, it has been altered by the patient work of time.” Before answering this evolutionary objection, I will wait for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Horapollo’s date. The hypogea which so religiously guard the cat, the ibis and the crocodile must also contain the sacred insect. All that I have at my disposal is a few figures representing the Sacred Beetle as we find him engraved on the monuments or carved in fine stone as an amulet for the mummies. The ancient artist is remarkably faithful in the execution of the whole; but his graver, his chisel have not troubled about details so insignificant as those of the tarsi. Ill-supplied though I be with documents of this kind, I greatly doubt whether carving or engraving will solve the problem. Even if an image with front tarsi were discovered somewhere or other, the question would be no further advanced. One could always plead a mistake, carelessness, a leaning towards symmetry. The doubt, as long as it prevails in certain minds, can only be removed by the ancient insect in a natural state. I will wait for it, convinced beforehand that the Pharaonic Scarab differed in no way from our own. Let us not take leave of the old Egyptian author just yet, in spite of his usually incomprehensible jargon, with its senseless allegories. He sometimes has views that are strikingly correct. Is it a chance coincidence? Or is it the result of serious observation? I should be gladly inclined to adopt the latter opinion, so perfect is the agreement between his statements and certain biological details of which our own science was ignorant until quite lately. Where the intimate life of the Scarab is concerned, Horapollo is much better-informed than ourselves. In particular, he writes as follows: “The Scarab buries her ball in the ground, where she remains hidden for twenty-eight days, a space of time equal to that of a revolution of the moon, during which period the offspring of the Scarab quickens. On the twenty-ninth day, which the insect knows to be that of the conjunction of the sun and moon and of the birth of the world, it opens the ball and throws it into the water. From this ball issue animals that are Scarabs.”