The surmise rests upon no valid foundation. The Dung-beetle is recent in the general chronology of created beings; he ranks among the last-comers. With him there is no means of going back to the mists of the past, which lends itself to the invention of imaginary precursors. Geological and even lacustrine schists, rich though the latter be in Diptera and Weevils, have hitherto furnished not the slightest relic of the dung-workers. This being so, it is wiser not to claim horned ancestors from the distant past as accounting for those degenerate descendants, the Onthophagi. Since the past explains nothing, let us turn to the future. If the thoracic horn be not a reminiscence, it may be a promise. It represents a timid attempt, which the ages will harden into a permanent weapon. It lets us assist at the slow and gradual evolution of a new organ; it shows us life in travail of a thing not yet existing on the adult Beetle’s corselet, a thing which will exist one day. We catch the genesis of the species in the act; the present teaches us how the future is prepared. And what does the Beetle propose to do with this object of his ambition, this spear which he hopes by and by to place upon his spine? At any rate as a dazzling piece of masculine finery the thing is already fashionable among the various foreign Scarabs that feed themselves and their grubs on decaying vegetable matter. These giants among the wearers of armoured wing-cases delight in associating their placid corpulence with halberds terrible to gaze upon. Look at one, Dynastes Hercules by name, a denizen of rotten tree-stumps under the scorching skies of the West Indies. The peaceable colossus well deserves his epithet: he measures three inches long. Of what service can the threatening rapier of the corselet and the toothed lifting-jack of the forehead be to him, unless it be to make him look grand in the presence of his female, herself deprived of these extravagances? Perhaps also they are of use to him in certain operations, even as the trident helps the Minotaurus to crumble his pellets and cart his rubbish. Implements of which we do not know the use always strike us as singular. Having never been intimate with the West-Indian Hercules, I must content myself with suspicions touching the purpose of his fearsome equipment.