Let us ask them first of what feats they are capable as buriers. There are a dozen of them in all. The cage is previously swept clean of what remains of the former provisions, hitherto supplied without stint. This time, I propose to find out what a Geotrupes can stow away in one night. At sunset, I serve to my twelve captives the whole of a heap which a Mule has just dropped in front of my door. There is plenty of it, enough to fill a basket. On the morning of the next day, the mass has disappeared underground. There is nothing left outside, or very nearly nothing. I am able to make a fairly close estimate and I find that each of my Geotrupes, presuming each of the twelve to have done an equal share of the work, has buried pretty nearly sixty cubic inches of matter: a Titanic task, when we remember the insignificant size of the insect, which, moreover, has to dig the warehouse to which the booty must be lowered. And all this is done in the space of a night. Having feathered their nests so well, will they remain quietly underground with their treasure? Not they! The weather is magnificent. The hour of twilight comes, gentle and calm. Now is the time when long flights are undertaken, when joyous humming fills the air, when the insects go afar, searching the roads by which the herds have lately passed. My lodgers abandon their cellars and mount to the surface. I hear them buzzing, climbing up the wirework, bumping wildly against the walls. I have anticipated this twilight animation. Provisions have been collected during the day, plentiful as those of yesterday. I serve them. There is the same disappearance during the night. On the morrow, the place is once again swept clean. And this would continue indefinitely, so fine are the evenings, if I always had at my disposal the wherewithal to satisfy these insatiable hoarders. Rich though his booty be, the Geotrupes leaves it at sunset to dally in the last gleams of daylight and to go in search of a new workplace. With him, one would say, the wealth acquired does not count; the only thing of value is that to be acquired. Then what does he do with his warehouses, renewed each twilight in favourable weather? It is obvious that the Dung-beetle is incapable of consuming all those provisions in a single night. He has such a superabundance of victuals in his larder that he does not know how to dispose of them; he is surfeited with good things by which he will not profit; and, not satisfied with having his store crammed, the acquisitive plutocrat slaves, night after night, to store away more.