Are we to look upon them as means of defence? Not that either. The ruminants, the main feeders of the dung-eaters, are also given to wearing frontal armour. The analogy of taste is obvious, though it is impossible for us to suspect its remote reasons. The Ram, the Bull, the Goat, the Chamois, the Stag, the Reindeer and the rest of them are armed with horns and antlers which they use in amorous jousts or for the protection of the threatened herd. The Onthophagi know nothing of these contests. There is no strife among them; and, should danger arise, they content themselves with shamming death by gathering their legs under their abdomen. Their armour then is a mere ornament, the fine feathers of masculine coquetry. According to life’s law of competition, the best-dressed carry off the palm. Though we may regard those rapiers on the nose as queer, their wearers are of another opinion; and the most eccentric enjoy the highest favour. The smallest extra pimple, springing up by accident, is an added beauty which may decide the choice among the suitors. The best-adorned captivate the mothers, perpetuate the breed and hand down to their offspring the cornicle or the knob that caused their triumph. Thus by degrees was the ornamentation at which the entomologist wonders to-day formed and transmitted from generation to generation, improving as it went. To this dictum of the evolutionists the nymph of the Onthophagus replies as follows: ‘I have on my back a budding horn, the germ of a bit of ornamentation that can be very handsome, as witness the Bison Bubas, who turns it into a splendid prow-shaped protuberance; witness also various exotic relatives of mine, who lengthen their corselet into a magnificent spur. I possess the wherewithal to bring about a revolution among my kin. If I retained it, my bump, that charming innovation, would relegate my rivals to the second rank; I should be preferred above all others; I should become the founder of a family; and my descendants, completing and improving on my first attempt, would behold the extinction of those antiquated old things. Why should the lump on my back wither purposeless? Why should my endeavour, repeated year after year for centuries, never achieve the promised result?’ Listen to me, O ambitious one! The theorists, it is true, declare that every casual acquisition, however trifling, is handed down and increases if it be profitable; but don’t rely overmuch on that assertion. I do not doubt the advantages which you might gain from a little ornament. What I do very much doubt is the efficacity of time and environment as an evolutionary factor. You will be well-advised to believe that, born in the dim and distant past with a transient callosity, you are continuing and will continue to be born with that rudimentary excrescence without any chance of fixing it, hardening it into a horn or obtaining an additional decoration for your wedding-garment.