It is certainly very curious, if it be true, that the wingless male beetles should, by thus congregating together in this way, and so saving their lives, show more intelligence than the winged females, who, under similar circumstances, are choked with their ambrosia, as the Duke of Clarence was with his nectar in a malmsey-butt. It is true that with the males the thing happens every year, whereas with the females it is only accidental; but, in the particular circumstances, it is difficult to see how inheritance can have had anything to do with it. Here, then, are a particular family of beetles who live the same sort of social life that ants and bees do, which discovery appears to have been made by a Mr. Hubbard not so many years ago, and from whose paper on the subject all the above particulars have been taken, though only through the medium of various magazines, since even at the British Museum I was unable to get the paper itself. So long ago, however, as 1844 a certain Herr Theo Hartig “published an article on the ambrosia of _Xyleborno (Bostrichus) dispar_, in which he showed that it was a fungus growth (_pilzrasen_), and he named the fungus _Monilia candida_.” This statement is made by Mr. Hubbard in his much more recent account. Not feeling perfectly certain from it whether the origin, as well as the nature, of the strange-named substance was not also divined by the German investigator, I quote the reference in order not to do him a possible injustice, for to me it seems that there have been few more interesting discoveries than this of these ant-like, ambrosia-growing beetles. But why the ants only grow mushrooms, thus allowing themselves to be enormously outdone by an inferior insect, is more than I can understand.