But, without saying anything positive on this point, I will draw attention to certain deep fissures which seem to threaten the soft bread with desiccation, inadequately protected as it is by the cracked jar. Have no fear that these spontaneous breaches will do any harm: the larva will soon put them right. In the distribution of gifts, it was not for nothing that the trowel and putty were awarded to the Sacred Beetle’s grub. We will now give a brief description of the larva, without stopping to enumerate the articulations of the palpi and antennæ, which are wearisome details of no immediate interest. It is a fat grub and has a fine, white skin, with pale slate-coloured reflections proceeding from the digestive organs, which are visible when you hold the creature to the light. Bent into a broken arch or hook, it is not unlike the grub of the Cockchafer, but has a much more ungainly figure, for, on its back, at the sudden bend of the hook, the third, fourth and fifth segments of the abdomen swell into an enormous hump, a tumour, a bag so prominent that the skin seems on the point of bursting under the pressure of the contents. This is the animal’s most striking feature: the fact that it carries a knapsack. The head is small, in proportion to the grub’s size, is slightly convex, bright-red and studded with a few pale bristles. The legs are fairly long and sturdy, ending in a pointed tarsus. The grub does not use them as a means of progression. When taken from its shell and placed upon the table, it struggles in clumsy contortions without succeeding in shifting its position; and the helpless creature betrays its anxiety by repeated discharges of its mortar. Let us also mention the terminal trowel, that last segment lopped into a slanting disk and rimmed with a fleshy pad. In the centre of this inclined plane is the open stercoraceous slit, which thus, by a very unusual inversion, occupies the upper surface. A huge hump and a trowel: that gives you the insect in two words. In his Histoire naturelle des coléoptères de France, Mulsant describes the larva of the Sacred Beetle. He tells us with meticulous detail the number and shape of the joints of the palpi and antennæ; he sees the hypopygium [25] and its pointed bristles; he sees a multitude of things in the domain of the microscope; and he does not see the monstrous knapsack that takes up almost half the insect, nor does he see the strange configuration of the last segment. There is not a doubt in my mind that the writer of this minute description has made a mistake: the larva of which he speaks is nothing like that of the Sacred Beetle.