And, strange to say, those insects vying in maternal tenderness with the flower-despoiling tribe of Bees are none other than the Dung-beetles, the dealers in ordure, the scavengers of the meadows contaminated by the herd. We must pass from the scented corollas of the flower-bed to the droppings left on the high-road by the mule to find a second example of devoted mothers and lofty instincts. Nature abounds in these antitheses. What are our ugliness and beauty, our cleanliness and dirt to her? With refuse, she creates the flower; from a little manure, she extracts the blessed grain of the wheat. Notwithstanding their filthy trade, the Dung-beetles occupy a very respectable rank. Thanks to their usually imposing size; to their severe and irreproachably glossy garb; to their short, stout, thickset shape; to the quaint ornamentation either of their brow or, also, of their thorax, they cut an excellent figure in the collector’s boxes, especially when to our own species, oftenest of an ebon black, we add a few tropical species flashing with gleams of gold and ruddy copper. They are the sedulous guests of our herds, for which reason several of them emit a mild flavour of benzoic acid, the aromatic of the sheepfolds. Their pastoral habits have impressed the nomenclators, who, too often, alas, careless of euphony, have changed their note this time and headed their descriptions with such names as Melibæus, Tityrus, Amyntas, Corydon, Mopsus and Alexis. We have here the whole series of bucolic denominations made famous by the poets of antiquity. Virgil’s eclogues have lent their vocabulary for the Dung-beetles’ glorification. What alacrity around one and the same dropping! Never did adventurers hurrying from the four corners of the earth display such eagerness in working a Californian claim. Before the sun becomes too hot, they are there in their hundreds, large and small, promiscuously, of every sort, shape and size, hastening to carve themselves a slice of the common cake. There are some that work in the open air and scrape the surface; there are some that dig themselves galleries in the thick of the heap, in search of choice veins; others work the lower stratum and bury their spoil without delay in the underlying ground; others—the smallest—stand aside to crumble a morsel that has fallen from the mighty excavations of their more powerful fellow-workers. Some, the newcomers and, no doubt, the hungriest, consume their meal on the spot; but the greater number mean to put by a substance that will allow them to spend long days in plenty, down in some safe retreat. A nice, fresh dropping is not found just when you want it, amid the fields bare of thyme; a windfall of that sort is as manna from the sky; only fortune’s favourites receive so fair a portion. Wherefore the riches of to-day are prudently stored for the morrow.