Shall we attribute altruism among families to the Dung-beetle? Shall we do her the signal honour of allowing that she administers relief to foundlings? That would be madness. The mother who so diligently assists the children of others thinks, beyond a doubt, that she is working for her own. The victim of my experiment had two pills that belonged to her; my intervention gave her ten more. And, in the jar filled with prunes to the top, her assiduous care draws no distinction between the real household and the casual family. Her intellect therefore is incapable of the most elementary conception of quantity; she cannot even distinguish between the singular and the plural, the few and the many. Can it be because of the darkness? No, for my frequent visits give the Copris an opportunity, when the opaque screen is lifted, of looking around her and discovering the strange accumulation, that is if light be really the guide which she lacks. Besides, has she not another means of information? In the natural burrow, the pills, three or at most four in number, all lie on the ground, forming one row only. With my additions they pile up into four stories. In order to clamber to the top, in order to hoist herself up through such a maze as never Copris mansion knew before, the Beetle must rub against and touch the units of the heap. But she counts none the better for that. To the insect all this is just the home, is just the family, worthy of the same care at the summit as at the base. The twelve produced by my trickery and the two of her own laying are the same thing in her arithmetic. I present this strange mathematician to any one who comes and talks to me of a glimmer of reason in the insect, as Darwin claimed. It is one of two things: either this glimmer does not exist, or else the Copris reasons divinely and becomes a St. Vincent de Paul of insects, moved to pity by the sad lot of the homeless. Make your choice. It is possible that, rather than abandon the principle, men will not shrink from sheer folly and that the compassionate Copris will one day figure in the evolutionists’ Book of Moral Deeds. Why not? Does it not already, with an eye to the same argument, contain a certain tender-hearted Boa Constrictor who, on losing his master, lay down and died of grief? Oh, the fond reptile! These edifying stories, compiled with the object of tracing man back to the Gorilla, procure me a few moments of mild amusement when I come across them. But we will not labour the point. Better that you and I, friend Copris, should speak of things that do not raise storms. Would you mind telling me the reason of the reputation which you enjoyed in the days of antiquity? Ancient Egypt extolled you in pink granite and porphyry; she venerated you, O my fair horned one, and awarded you honours similar to the Scarab’s! You ranked second in the entomological hierarchy.