I have described my former vain attempts to find the larva’s abode; I have described the pitiful failure of my efforts at rearing under cover; and perhaps the reader commiserated my woes when he saw me on the outskirts of the town stealthily and ingloriously gathering in a paper bag the donation dropped by a passing Mule for my charges. Certainly, as things were, my task was no easy one. My boarders, who were great consumers, or more correctly speaking great wasters, used to beguile the tedium of captivity by indulging in art for art’s sake in the glad sunshine. Pill followed on pill, all beautifully rounded, to be abandoned unused after a few exercises in rolling. The heap of provisions, which I had so painfully acquired in the friendly shadow of the gloaming, was squandered with disheartening rapidity; and there came a time when the daily bread failed. Moreover, the stringy manna falling from the Horse and the Mule is hardly suited to the mother’s work, as I learned afterwards. Something more homogeneous, more plastic is needed; and this only the Sheep’s somewhat laxer bowels are able to supply. In short, though my earlier studies taught me all about the Scarab’s public manners, for several reasons they told me nothing of his private habits. The nest-building problem remained as obscure as ever. Its solution demands a good deal more than the straitened resources of a town and the scientific equipment of a laboratory. It requires prolonged residence in the country; it requires the proximity of flocks and herds in the bright sunshine. Given these conditions, success is assured, provided that one have zeal and perseverance; and these conditions I find to perfection in my quiet village. Provisions, my great difficulty in the old days, are now to be had for the asking. Close to my house, Mules pass along the high-road, on their way to the fields and back again; morning and evening, flocks of Sheep go by, making for the pasture or the fold; not five yards from my door, my neighbour’s Goat is tethered: I can hear her bleating as she nibbles away at her ring of grass. Moreover, should food be scarce in my immediate vicinity, there are always youthful purveyors who, lured by visions of lollipops, are ready to scour the country to collect victuals for my Beetles. They arrive, not one but a dozen, bringing their contributions in the queerest of receptacles. In this novel procession of gift-bearers, any concave thing that chances to be handy is employed: the crown of an old hat, a broken tile, a bit of stove-pipe, the bottom of a spinning-top, a fragment of a basket, an old shoe hardened into a sort of boat, at a pinch the collector’s own cap. ‘It’s prime stuff this time,’ their shining eyes seem to proclaim. ‘It’s something extra special.’