Now here is something to give us food for thought. The nymph of the Onthophagus of the female sex, a nymph with an unarmed forehead, carries on its thorax a vitreous horn as long, as rich in promise as that of the other sex. If this latter excrescence be the design of an incipient ornament, then the former would be so too, in which case the two sexes, both anxious for self-embellishment, would work with equal zeal to grow a horn upon their thorax. We should be witnessing the genesis of a species that would not be really an Onthophagus, but a derivative of the group; we should be beholding the commencement of singularities banished hitherto from among the Dung-beetles, none of whom, of either sex, has thought of planting a spear upon his chine. Stranger still: the female, always the more humbly attired throughout the entomological kingdom, would be vying with the male in her hankering after quaint adornment. An ambition of this sort leaves me incredulous. We must therefore believe that, if the possibilities of the future should ever produce a Dung-beetle carrying a horn upon his corselet, this upsetter of present customs will not be an Onthophagus who has succeeded in maturing the thoracic appendage of the nymph, but rather an insect resulting from a new model. The creative power throws aside the old moulds and replaces them by others, fashioned with fresh care, in accordance with plans of an inexhaustible variety. Its laboratory is not a peddling rag-fair, where the living assume the cast clothes of the dead: it is a medallist’s studio, where each effigy receives the stamp of a special die. Its treasure-house of forms, illimitable in its riches, makes niggardliness impossible: there is no patching up of the old in order to create the new. It breaks every mould once used; it does away with it, without resorting to shabby after-touches. Then what is the meaning of those horny preparations, which are always blighted before they come to anything? With no great shame I confess that I have not the slightest idea. My reply may not be couched in learned phraseology, but it has one merit, that of absolute sincerity. NOTES [1] Chapters I. and II. of the present volume, forming the first two chapters of Vol. I. of the Souvenirs entomologiques. The remaining chapters on the Sacred Beetle appeared, in the original, in Vol. V. of that work, for which volume the above was written as a preface.—Translator’s Note. [2] A village in the department of the Gard, facing Avignon.—Author’s Note. [3] ‘When you and I start housekeeping, alas, what shall we do? You in front and I behind, we’ll shove the tub along!’ [4] Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), the French socialist, author of Qu’est-ce que la propriété? etc.—Translator’s Note. [5] Émile Blanchard (b. 1819), a French naturalist, best known by his works on entomology.—Translator’s Note. [6] The Scarabæi also bear the name of Ateuchus.—Author’s Note.