The Bolboceras’ lodging is open and surrounded merely by a padding of sand. Its depth is slight, nine inches, hardly more. It goes straight down in very loose soil. It is easily inspected, therefore, if we take care first to dig a trench in front of it, which will enable us later to cut away the perpendicular wall, slice by slice, with the blade of a knife. The burrow then appears at full length, from top to bottom, in a semicylindrical shape. Often the violated dwelling-house is empty. The insect has left during the night, having finished its business there and gone to settle elsewhere. The Bolboceras is a nomad, a night-walker, who leaves his home without regret and easily acquires a new one. Sometimes also the insect is found at the bottom of the pit: at one time a male, at another a female, but never the two at a time. The sexes, both equally zealous in digging burrows, work separately, not together. This is not, in fact, a family residence, containing the nursery of the young; it is a temporary abode, dug by each occupant for his own comfort. Sometimes we find nothing there but the well-sinker, surprised during his work of excavation; sometimes, lastly—and the case is not uncommon—the hermit of the crypt embraces with his legs a small hypogean fungus, either intact or partly consumed. He clutches it convulsively, refuses to be parted from it. It is his booty, his fortune, his worldly goods. Scattered crumbs tell us that we have caught him feasting. Let us take his prize away from him. We shall see a sort of irregular, rugged purse, closed on every side and varying in size between a pea and a cherry. Outside it is reddish, rough with little warts; inside it is smooth and white. The spores, which are ovoid and diaphanous, are contained, in rows of eight, in long satchels. By these characteristics we recognize an underground cryptogamous product, nearly related to the truffles and known to botanists as Hydnocystis arenaria, Tul. This throws a light upon the habits of the Bolboceras and upon the reason why his burrows are so frequently renewed. In the calm of the twilight, the little gadabout takes to the fields, chirruping softly as he goes, cheering himself with song. He explores the soil, questions it as to its contents, just as the Dog does when hunting for truffles. His sense of smell warns him when the coveted morsel is underneath, covered by a few inches of sand. Certain of the exact spot where the thing lies, he digs straight down and never fails to reach it. As long as the provisions last, he does not go out again. Blissfully he feeds at the bottom of the well, heedless of the door left open or hardly barred.