Let us be content with this list, or we shall never have done. A whole world is benefited by the agricultural industry of the Dung-beetle, that burier of manure: first the plant and then all that live upon the plant. A small world, a very small world, as small as you please, but after all not a negligible world. It is of such trifles that the great integral of life is composed, even as the integral of the mathematicians is composed of quantities neighbouring on 0. Agricultural chemistry teaches us that, to employ the stable-dung to the best purpose, we should put it into the ground, so far as possible, while fresh. When diluted by the rain and dissipated by the air, it becomes lifeless and devoid of fertilizing elements. This highly important agronomic truth is quite familiar to the Geotrupes and his colleagues. In their burying-work they invariably aim at materials of recent date. Just as they are eager to put away the produce of the moment, all saturated with its potassium, its nitrates and its phosphates, even so do they scorn the stuff hardened into brick by the sun or rendered infertile by long exposure to the air. The valueless residue does not interest them; they leave this barren rubbish to others. We now know about the Geotrupes as a sanitary expert and a collector of manure. We are going to see him in a third aspect, that of the sagacious weather-prophet. It is popularly believed, in the country-side, that a swarm of agitated Geotrupes, skimming the ground with an air of great business in the evening, is a sign of fine weather on the morrow. Is this rustic prognostication worth anything? My cages shall tell us. I watch my boarders closely all through the autumn, the period when they build their nests; I note the state of the sky on the day before and register the weather of the next day. I use no thermometer, no barometer, none of the scientific implements employed in the meteorological observatories. I confine myself to the summary information derived from my personal impressions. The Geotrupes do not leave their burrows until after sundown. With the last glimmer of daylight, if the air be calm and the temperature mild, they roam about, flying low with a humming noise, seeking the materials which have accumulated for them in the course of the day. If they come upon something that suits them, they drop down heavily, tumbling over in their clumsy eagerness, thrust themselves into their new treasure and spend the best part of the night in burying it. In this way the dirt of the fields is made to disappear in a single night.