No elsewhere, in the insect order, except among the Apidæ, who prepare disgorged food in the shape of honey, is this affection present. The Dung-workers edify us with their morals. Several of them practise association in couples and found a household; several anticipate the suckling, the supreme expression of maternal solicitude, by turning their crop into a nipple. Life has its freaks. It settles amid ordure the creatures most highly-endowed with family qualities. True, from there it mounts, with a sudden flight, to the sublimities of the bird. The little worm is hatched in about a week: a strange and paradoxical being. On its back, it has an enormous sugar-loaf hump, the weight of which drags it over and capsizes it each time it tries to stand on its legs and walk. At every moment, it staggers and falls under the burden of the hunch. Unable to keep its hump upright, the grub of the Onthophagus lies down on its side and licks the cream of its cell all around it. There is cream everywhere, on the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor. As soon as one spot is thoroughly bared, the consumer moves on a little with the help of its well-shaped legs; it capsizes again and starts licking again. The room is large and plentifully supplied; and the jam-diet lasts some time. The fat babies of the Geotrupe, the Copris and the Sacred Beetle finish at one brief sitting the dainty wherewith their cabined lodge is hung, a dainty scantily served and just sufficient to stimulate the appetite and prepare the stomach for a coarser fare; but the Onthophagus grub, that lean pigmy, has enough to last it for a week and more. The spacious natal chamber, which is out of all proportion with the size of the nursling, has permitted this wastefulness. At last, the real loaf is attacked. In about a month, everything is consumed, except the wall of the sack. And now the splendid part played by the hump stands revealed. Glass tubes, prepared in view of events, allow me to follow the more and more plump and hunch-backed grub at work. I see it withdraw to one end of the cell, which has become a crumbling ruin. Here it builds a casket in which the transformation will take place. Its materials are the digestive residuum, converted into mortar and heaped up in the hump. The stercoral architect is about to construct a masterpiece of elegance out of its own ordure, held in reserve in that receptacle.