With the Dung-beetles you can sing a different song! These are the ones if you want to fill the greediest of asphyxiating-phials to the neck. They, especially the smaller ones, are a numberless multitude when the others are few and far between. I remember Onthophagi and Aphodii swarming by the thousand under one shelter. You could have shovelled them up if you wished. To this day I am still astonished when I see these crowds again; as of old, the abundance of the Dung-beetle family forms a striking contrast with the comparative scarcity of the others. If it occurred to me to go a-hunting once more and renew the quest to which I owe moments of such sheer delight, I should be certain of filling my flasks with Scarabæi, Copres, Geotrupes, Onthophagi and other members of the same corporation before achieving any measure of success with the rest of the series. By the time that May comes, the distiller of ordure is there in numbers; and in July and August, those months of blazing heat which see the suspension of labour in the fields, the dealer in unsavoury matter is still at work while the others have taken to earth and are lying in motionless torpor. He and his contemporary, the Cicada, [48] represent almost by themselves such activity as prevails during the torrid days. May not this greater frequency of the Dung-beetles, at least in my part of the world, be due to the longevity of the adult form? I think so. Whereas the other insects are summoned to enjoy the fine weather only in successive generations, these receive a general invitation, father and sons together, daughters and mother together. Being equally prolific, they are therefore represented twice over. And they really deserve it, in consideration of the services which they render. There is a general hygienic law which requires that every putrid thing shall disappear in the shortest possible time. Paris has not yet solved the formidable problem of her sewage, which sooner or later will become a question of life or death for the monstrous city. One asks one’s self whether the centre of light is not doomed to be extinguished some day in the reeking exhalations of a soil saturated with putrescence. What this agglomeration of millions of men cannot obtain, with all its treasures of wealth and talent, the smallest hamlet possesses without going to any expense or even troubling to think about it. Nature, so lavish of her cares in respect of rural health, is indifferent to the welfare of cities, if not actively hostile to it. She has created for the fields two classes of scavengers, whom nothing wearies, whom nothing repels. One of these, consisting of Flies, Silphæ, Dermestes, Necrophori, Histers is charged with the dissection of corpses. They cut and hash, they elaborate the waste matter of death in their stomachs in order to restore it to life.