Be we men or Dung-beetles, we are all created in the image of an unalterable prototype: the changing conditions of life alter us slightly on the surface but never in the framework of our being. The verdigris of the ages may encrust our medals, but it can give them neither a new image nor a new superscription. Nothing will give me the wings of a bird, desirable though these would be in the midst of our human squalor; nor will anything bestow upon your adult age the triumphal crest which your nymphal knob seemed to prognosticate. The nymphs of both the Onthophagus and the Oniticellus attain their maturity in some twenty days. During August the adult form appears with the half-white, half-red costume which has become familiar to us from our earlier studies. The normal colouring is fixed pretty quickly. Nevertheless the insect is in no hurry to burst its shell: the difficulty would be too great. It waits for the first showers of September, which will come to its assistance by softening the casket. The liberating rain arrives; and behold, issuing from the earth to rush after food, the joyous small fry of the Onthophagi. Among the domestic secrets which my cages reveal to me at this period, one above all attracts my attention. I possess at the same time, in separate establishments, the newcomers and the veterans, which last are as brisk and eager in their pursuit of the victuals as are their sons, now banqueting for the first time in the open. The cages are stocked with two generations. The same synchronizing of fathers and sons is observable among all the Dung-beetles that build their nests in the spring: Sacred Beetles, Copres and Geotrupes. The precaution which I have taken to watch the hatchings and to place the youngsters in a special compartment as and when they appeared confirms this remarkable simultaneity. It is an entomological principle that the ancestor shall not see his descendants; he dies once the future of his family is assured. By a glorious privilege, the Sacred Beetle and his rivals are allowed to know their successors: fathers and sons meet at the same banquet, not in my cages, where the problems under consideration compel me to keep them separate, but in the open fields. Together they gambol in the sun, together they exploit the patch of dung encountered; and this life of revelry lasts as long as autumn continues to supply fine days. The cold weather arrives. Sacred Beetles and Copres, Onthophagi and Gymnopleuri dig themselves a burrow, go down into it with provisions, shut themselves in and wait. In January, on a frosty day, I dig into the cages, which have no protection against the inclemencies of the season. I go to work discreetly, so as not to submit all my captives to the harsh test. Those whom I exhume each sit huddled in a shell, beside the remaining provisions. All that the lethargy produced by the cold allows them to do is to move their legs and antennæ a little when I expose them to the sun.