In common with others, I admire the classifier who, studying the mouth, the legs and the antennæ in the dead insect, is sometimes happy in his grouping and able, for instance, to include in the same family the Scarab and the Sisyphus, who differ so greatly in appearance and so little in habits. Yet this method, which ignores the higher manifestations of life in order to pore over the smallest details of the corpse, too often misleads us as to the insect’s real talent, which is a much more important characteristic than a joint more or less in the antennæ. The Bison, like many others, warns us to be careful where we are going. Though akin to the Copris in structure, he is much nearer the Geotrupes in his industry. Like them, he packs sausages in a cylindrical mould; like them again, he has the paternal instinct. I inspect my one couple in the middle of June. Under a plentiful pile provided by the Sheep is a perpendicular shaft a finger’s-breadth in diameter, open freely throughout its length and running some nine inches down. The bottom of this well branches out into five different galleries, each occupied by a roly-poly pudding similar to the Geotrupes’, but less bulky and not so long. The mass of fodder has a warty surface, is rounded off clumsily and has a hatching-chamber scooped out of it at the lower end. This chamber is a little round cell, coated with a semifluid wash. The egg is oval, white and comparatively large, as is the rule among Dung-beetles. In short, the Bison’s rustic work is a very close reproduction of the Geotrupes’. I am disappointed: I expected better things. The insect’s elegance seemed to promise something more artistic, a finer craftsmanship, skilled in the modelling of pears, gourds, balls and ovoids. Once again, be careful how you judge animals, any more than men, by appearances. The structure gives us no idea of the insect’s all-round ability. I surprise the couple at the cross-roads where the five blind-alleys, the sausages, start. The intrusion of the light has frightened them into immobility. Before the disturbance caused by my excavations, what were the two faithful partners doing at this spot? They were watching over the five cells, ramming down the last column of provisions, completing it with new contributions of material, brought down from above and taken from the heap that forms a cover to the shaft. They were perhaps preparing to dig a sixth chamber, if not more, and to stock it like the others. I realize at any rate that there must be many ascents from the bottom of the pit to the rich warehouse on the surface, whence the bundles of material are carried down in the legs of the one to be methodically pressed on top of the egg by the other.