The nymph matures. The appendages of the forehead, at first quite crystalline, now show, transparently, a streak of reddish brown, curved arc-wise. These are real horns taking shape, consistency and colour. The appendage of the corselet and those of the belly, on the other hand, preserve their glassy appearance. They are barren sacks, void of any self-developing germ. The organism produced them in an impetuous moment; now, scornful, or perhaps powerless, it allows the work to wither and become useless. When the nymph sheds its covering and the fine tunic of the adult form is torn, these strange horns crumble into shreds, which fall away with the rest of the cast clothing. In the hope of finding at least a trace of the vanished things, the lens in vain explores the bases but lately occupied. There is nothing appreciable left: smoothness takes the place of protuberance; nullity succeeds to reality. Of the accessory panoply that promised so much, absolutely naught remains: everything has disappeared, evaporated, so to speak. Onthophagus Taurus is not the only one endowed with those fleeting appendages, which vanish wholly when the nymph sheds its clothes. The other members of the tribe possess similar horny manifestations on their bellies and corselets. These all disappear entirely in the perfect insect. A simple setting forth of the facts does not suffice us: we should like to guess at the motive of this corniculate display. Is it a vague memory of the customs of olden time, when life spent its excess of young sap upon quaint creations, banished to-day from our better-balanced world? Is the Onthophagus the dwarfed representative of an old race of horned animals now extinct? Does it give us a faint image of the past? The surmise rests upon no valid foundation. The Dung-beetle is recent in the general chronology of created beings; he ranks among the last-comers. With him there is no means of going back to the mists of the past, so favourable to the invention of imaginary precursors. The geological layers and even the lacustrian layers, rich in Diptera and Weevils, have so far furnished not the slightest relic of the Dung-workers. This being so, it is wiser not to refer to distant horned ancestors as accounting for their degenerate descendant, the Onthophagus. Since the past explains nothing, let us turn to the future. If the thoracic horn be not a reminiscence, it may be a promise. It represents a timid attempt, which the ages will harden into a permanent weapon. It lets us assist at the slow and gradual evolution of a new organ; it shows us life working on a portion of the adult’s corselet, which does not yet exist, but which is to exist some day. We take the genesis of the species in the act; the present teaches us how the future is prepared.