There can be no question of a cold breeze, which would be painful to a very sensitive skin; and nevertheless the air is the enemy to be avoided at all costs. If it flowed in at all plentifully through a breach, with the dryness which the July heat imparts to it, the provisions would be dried up. Faced with an uneatable biscuit, the grub would become languid and anæmic and would soon perish of hunger. The mother, to the best of her abilities, has guarded her offspring against death from starvation by making her pear round and giving it a stout rind; but, for all that, her children are not released from every obligation to watch their rations. If they want bread that keeps soft and fresh to the last, they must in their turn see to it that the provision-jar is properly closed. Crevices may appear, fraught with grave danger. It is important to stop them up without delay. This, if I be not utterly at fault, is the reason why the grub is a plasterer armed with a trowel and provided with a workshop that can always furnish plenty of putty. The pot-mender repairs his cracked jar in order to keep his bread nice and soft. A serious objection suggests itself. The slits, the breaches, the vent-holes which I see so zealously cemented are the work of my instruments: tweezers, penknife, dissecting-needles. It cannot be maintained that the grub is endowed with its strange talent to protect itself against the troubles brought upon it by human curiosity. What has it to fear from man, in its life underground? Nothing, or next to nothing. Since the Sacred Beetle started rolling his ball under the broad canopy of the sky, I am probably the first to worry his family in order to make them talk to me and instruct me. Others will come after me perhaps; but they will be very few! No, man’s destructive interference is not worth the pains of providing one’s self with a trowel and cement. Then why this art of stopping crevices? Wait. In its apparently peaceful home, in its round shell which seems to give it such perfect security, the grub nevertheless has its troubles. Which of us has not, from the greatest to the smallest? They begin at birth. Though I have only touched the fringe of the matter, I am already aware of three or four sorts of grievous accidents to which the Sacred Beetle’s larva is liable. Plants, animals, blind physical forces, all work its ruin by destroying its larder.