It probably also explains my failure in the old days with my cages. In my profound ignorance of the Sacred Beetle’s domestic life, I used to supply her with what I could pick up here and there, droppings of Horse or Mule; and the Beetle refused it for her children and declined to build a nest. To-day, taught by my experience in the fields, I go to the Sheep for my supplies and all is well in the cages. Does this mean that the insect never employs for its breeding-pears materials derived from the Horse, even if selected from the finest strata and carefully cleansed from objectionable matter? If the best cannot be obtained, is the middling refused? I prefer to be cautious and give no opinion. What I can declare is that I inspected over a hundred burrows with a view to writing this story, and that in every case, from first to last, the larva’s provisions had been obtained from the Sheep. Where is the egg in that nutritive mass so novel in shape? One would be inclined to place it in the centre of the fat, round paunch. This central point is best protected against accidents from the outside, best off in the matter of temperature. Besides, the nascent grub would here find a deep layer of food on every side of it and would not be liable to make mistakes in the first mouthfuls. Everything being of the same kind all round it, there would be no necessity for it to pick and choose; wherever it chanced to apply its prentice tooth, it could continue without hesitation its first dainty repast. All this sounds so very rational that I allowed myself to be led away by it. In the first pear that I examined, layer by layer, shaving off slices with my penknife, I looked for the egg in the centre of the paunch, feeling almost certain of finding it there. To my great surprise, it was not there. Instead of being hollow, the centre of the pear is full and consists of one continuous uniform alimentary mass. My deductions, which any observer in my place would certainly have shared, seemed very reasonable; the Scarab, however, is of another way of thinking. We have our logic, of which we are rather proud; the dung-kneader has hers, which is better than ours in this instance. She has her own foresight, takes her own precautions; and she places the egg elsewhere.