And do not run away with the idea that this filthy task entails an inelegant shape and a ragged dress. Our squalor is unknown to the insect. In its world, a navvy dons a sumptuous jerkin; an undertaker decks himself in a triple saffron sash; a wood-cutter works in a velvet coat. In like manner, the Onthophagus has his special gorgeousness. True, the costume is always severe: brown and black are the predominant colours, now dull, now polished as ebony. That is the general groundwork, but how chaste and elegant are the decorative details! One (O. lemur) has wing-cases of a light chestnut colour, with a semicircle of black dots; a second (O. nuchicornis) has similar chestnut wing-cases covered with splashes of Indian ink not unlike the square Hebrew characters; a third (O. Schreberi), who is a glossy black like that of jet, decks himself with four vermilion cockades; a fourth (O. furcatus) lights up the tip of his short wing-cases with a gleam similar to that of dying embers; many (O. vacca, O. cænobita and others) have corselets and heads bright with the metal sheen of Florentine bronze. The graver’s work completes the beauty of the dress. Dainty chasing in parallel grooves, delicate embroidery, knotty chaplets are distributed in profusion among nearly all of them. Yes, the little Onthophagi, with their short bodies and their nimble activity, are really pretty to look at. And then how original are their frontal decorations! These peace-lovers delight in the panoply of war, as though they, the inoffensive ones, thirsted for battle. Many of them crown their heads with threatening horns. Let us mention a couple of the horned ones whose story will occupy us more particularly. I mean, first, the Bull Onthophagus (O. taurus), clad in raven black. He wears a pair of long horns, gracefully curved and branching to either side. No pedigree bull, in the Swiss meadows, can match them for curve or elegance. The second is the Forked Onthophagus (O. furcatus), who is much smaller. His equipment consists of a fork with three vertical prongs. There you have the two chief subjects of this brief Onthophagus biography. The others are equally worthy of being chronicled. From first to last, they would all supply us with interesting details, some of them even with peculiarities unknown elsewhere; but we must draw the line somewhere in this multitude, which is difficult to observe in the aggregate. And there is this more serious circumstance, that my choice has not been free: I have had to content myself with the few lucky discoveries made as the result of chance encounters out of doors and with the few successful experiments made in the vivarium.