The horns outline a splendid crescent, leaning backwards and resting on the shoulders. They are swollen; they are colourless, like everything that life elaborates in the midst of a generating-fluid; and at their base are the dark ocular specks, not yet capable of sight, but promising to become so. The clypeus is expanding and beginning to stand out. Seen from the front, the head is that of a Bull, with a wide muzzle and enormous horns, copied from those of the Aurochs. If the artists in the time of the Pharaohs had known the immature Onthophagus, they would certainly have used him for their hieratical images. He is quite as good as the Sacred Beetle and even better from the point of view of those oddities which offer such scope to sacerdotal symbolism. On the front edge of the corselet, a single horn rises, as powerful as the two others and shaped like a cylinder ending in a conical knob. It points forward and is fixed in the middle of the frontal crescent, projecting a little beyond it. The arrangement is gloriously original. The carvers of hieroglyphics would have beheld in it the crescent of Isis wherein dips the edge of the world. Some other peculiarities complete the nymph’s curious appearance. To right and left the abdomen is armed, on either side, with four little horns resembling crystal spikes. Total, eleven pieces in the creature’s harness: two on the forehead; one on the thorax; eight on the abdomen. The beast of yore delighted in queer horns: certain reptiles of the geological period stuck a pointed spur on their upper eyelids. The Onthophagus, more greatly daring, sports eight on the sides of his belly, in addition to the spear which he plants upon his back. The frontal horns may be excused: they are fairly common; but what does he propose to do with the others? Nothing at all. They are passing fancies, jewels of early youth; the adult insect will not retain the least trace of them. The nymph matures. The appendages of the fore-head, at first quite crystalline, now show, when held up to the light, a streak of reddish brown, curved like a bow. This is the real horn taking shape, consistency and colour. The appendage of the corselet and those of the belly, on the other hand, preserve their glassy appearance. They are barren sacks, void of any germ capable of development. The organism produced them in a moment of impulse; now, scornful, or perhaps powerless, it allows its work to wither and become useless. When the nymph sheds its covering and the delicate tunic of the adult form is rent, these strange horns crumble into fragments, which fall away with the rest of the cast clothing. In the hope of finding at least a trace of the vanished things, the lens vainly explores the bases but lately occupied. There is nothing appreciable left: the nymph is now smooth; the real has given place to the non-existent. Of the accessory panoply so full of promise, absolutely naught remains: everything has vanished into thin air.