The stag-beetle—when of maximum size, that is to say, for it varies amazingly in this respect—is much the largest beetle which this our island possesses, but though, with its huge, antler-like jaws, it makes a good perennial illustration for all books of popular entomology, its merits seem to end there, for either there is nothing or nothing has yet been observed particularly interesting about it. No doubt, if we look at the matter from an absolute rather than a relative point of view, the second of these two explanations is the correct one, for a creature has only to be studied in order to become interesting; but as compared with ants, bees, wasps, and many other insects, beetles, or, at any rate, the vast majority of them, are not so very entertaining in their habits, and the stag-beetle has no superiority in this respect to correspond with its size and uncommon appearance. This appearance, however, is confined to the male, who alone possesses the great branching mandibles on which its greater size also is largely dependent. It would be natural to suppose that these formidable weapons, as they certainly appear, stood in relation to the combats of the males for the possession of the females, yet it is often stated that the short, sharp pincers of the latter, which can be made, it would seem—anyone who doubts may try—to meet in the flesh, are really the more efficient of the two. Be this as it may, it is not improbable that the stag-beetle’s jaws, since they are very handsome, may have been developed less as weapons than as ornaments, under the laws of sexual selection. Darwin, if I remember, was doubtfully of this opinion, and he attributes many strange projections and processes on the head or thorax of other beetles—as notably that huge one with a snout like a weaver’s beam, called the Hercules beetle—to the same agency. No use for this extraordinary trunk, as one may term it, has as yet been discovered, but as the under portion is covered with a thick matting of soft brown hairs, it would seem as though it had some office to perform, unless indeed we suppose this _chevelure_ to be likewise admired. A lesser, though still tremendous, projection, starting from the head, as the other one does from the thorax, is likewise unaccounted for, for though the two together make in appearance a pair of uncouth and irregular pincers, they neither are, nor apparently can be used in this way. Nothing appears to be known of this strange creature’s habits, and the same may be said in regard to most of the more remarkable-looking beetles of the world, as well as those which are not so extraordinary in their appearance. The ways of beetles, in fact, have been but little studied, and it is perhaps not too much to say that if for every thousand that fill the show-cases in museums we could know the life-history of one, we might with infinite advantage, in exchange for this knowledge, throw the whole pin-forest of them into the sea.