The Bull Onthophagus is not the only one endowed with these fleeting appendages, which completely disappear when the nymph sheds its clothes. The other members of the tribe possess similar horny manifestations on their bellies and corselets. One of them, the Spectral Onthophagus, on achieving the perfect state, adorns the front of his corselet with four tiny studs arranged in a semicircle. The two end ones stand alone; the two middle ones are together. These last correspond exactly with the base of the nymph’s thoracic horn and might easily be taken for the atrophied remnant of the vanished appendage. We must abandon this idea, however, for the lateral studs, which are more developed than the middle ones, occupy points where the nymph had no horns. In this Onthophagus, as in the others, the nymphal armour is misleading and abortive. Certain Dung-beetles related to the Onthophagi likewise possess horned nymphs. One of these is the Yellow-footed Oniticellus, the only one whom circumstances have allowed me to examine from this point of view. He wears, in the nymphal stage, a magnificent horn on his corselet and a row of four spikes on each side of his abdomen, as is the rule among the Onthophagi. This all disappears entirely in the adult insect. It seems likely that, if I had known how to improve the occasion some years ago, when I was successfully rearing the Bison Onitis sent me from Montpellier, I should have perceived the same armour on the nymph’s thorax and abdomen. Not having been warned by earlier observations and being anxious also to disturb the pair of strangers as little as possible, I let the opportunity slip. Let us remark lastly that the Onitis, Oniticellus and Onthophagus genera all three construct for the nymphosis a scaly cabin whose shape suggests the cedar-cone and the fruit of the alder. One may therefore admit, without being too venturesome, that the various builders of similar caskets are all acquainted with the nymphal panoply of a horn on the corselet and a diadem of eight spikes around the abdomen. This is not equivalent to saying that the armour determines the casket or the casket the armour. These curious details go together without influencing each other. A simple setting forth of the facts is not enough: we should like to see the motive of this horned magnificence. Is it a vague reminiscence of the customs of olden time, when life spent its excess of young sap upon quaint creations, banished to-day from our better-balanced world? Is the Onthophagus the dwarfed representative of an ancient race of horned animals now extinct? Does it give us a faint image of the past?