IT is, no doubt, through feeding on wood that the beetles we have been considering came in time to feed on ambrosia. The particular fungus, that is to say, which for some unaccountable reason has received this name, appeared as a natural growth upon the walls of their tunnels, and in time it came to be thought necessary, and its coming was arranged for. By similar steps, probably, the leaves once carried as food to their nests by the sauba ants, or cooshies, have become the soil merely on which that food is grown; and so I have no doubt myself that even if the present agricultural ants of Texas do not purposely sow and afterwards reap the rice that springs up around the circular mound of their domicile, their descendants will do so. Indeed, it seems rather curious that, with such facilities for a gradual development, the habit has not yet been acquired; and this is the chief reason which inclines me to suspend judgment on the question, and wait for further observations. Far from thinking the thing too wonderful, I wonder if it be not the case. Such wonder, however, is for ants and not for beetles, except, indeed, ambrosia beetles, who certainly merit it, though in an opposite way. No other wood-borers of the order are anything but wood-eaters, or, at any rate, if a few feed on fungus, as would not be improbable, should it happen to appear, they have nothing to do with the cultivation of it. The words “as far as we know,” however, must be added to the foregoing statement. Numbers of beetles pass the larval and pupal stage of their existence within the trunk of a decaying or even of a perfectly sound tree, from which they issue after the final metamorphosis has been made. Amongst these is our own stag-beetle, in whom, that is to say in whose caterpillar, some suppose themselves to see the _Cossus_ of the ancient Romans, which was as much appreciated by them, and, no doubt, justly, as are earthworms by the Chinese. Others, however, believe this to have been the large red meaty-looking caterpillar of the goat-moth; and as the one conjecture is quite as plausible as the other, the only, or, at any rate, the best way of arriving at a conclusion would be to try them both—a simple plan which, as far as I know, has not yet been adopted.