I follow its movements with the magnifying-glass. It curves itself into a loop, closes the circuit of the digestive apparatus, brings its two ends into contact and, with the tip of its mandibles, seizes a pellet of dung evacuated at that moment. This pellet is extracted very neatly and moulded into a brick which is measured most carefully. A slight bend of the creature’s neck sets the brick in place. Others follow, laid in the most scrupulously regular courses one above the other. Giving a tap here and there with its palpi, the grub makes sure of the steadiness of the parts, their accurate binding, their orderly arrangement. It turns round in the centre of the work as the edifice rises, even as a mason does when building a turret. Sometimes the brick that has been laid becomes loose, because the cement has given way. The grub takes it up again with its mandibles, but, before replacing it, coats it with an adhesive moisture. It holds it to its anus, whence a gummy consolidating-extract trickles immediately and almost imperceptibly. The hump supplies the materials; the intestines give, if necessary, the glue that sticks them together. In this way an attractive house is obtained, ovoid in form, polished as stucco within and adorned on the outside with slightly projecting scales, similar to those on a cedar-cone. Each of these scales is one of the bricks that have been produced from the hump. The casket is not large: a cherry-stone would about represent its dimensions; but it is so accurate, so prettily fashioned that it will bear comparison with the finest products of entomological industry. The Bull Onthophagus has not a monopoly of this jeweller’s art: all, throughout the group, excel in it to the same degree. One of the smallest, the Forked Onthophagus, whose work is hardly larger than a pepper-corn, is as expert as the others in the manufacture of boxes shaped like a cedar-cone. It is a family gift, an invariable gift, despite all differences in size, costume or hornery. The Bison Onitis, the Yellow-footed Oniticellus and certainly many others retire, for the transformation, into a residence similar in architecture to that of the Onthophagi; they too tell us that instincts are independent of structure. In the first week of July let us complete the destruction of the Bull Onthophagus’ cell, already much impaired by the grub, which, after exhausting the contents of its knapsack, has gnawed the inner layer of the walls. The ruins are removed as easily as the husk of a ripe walnut. A sort of shelling process gives us the seed, that is to say, the nymphal casket, which comes out quite neatly, without sticking to its wrapper at any point. Break open the gem. The nymph is there, half-transparent and as it were carved out of crystal. Fortune favours me with a male, who is more interesting because of his frontal armour.