And this in fact is where it lies, lodged in a tiny hatching-chamber and wrapped on every side in a blanket of air, which is easily renewed through a slender partition and a matted plug. This position did not surprise me; from what the Sacred Beetle had already taught me I expected it. The point of my knife, this time no novice, went straight to the ovoid’s pointed teat and scratched. The egg appeared, magnificently confirming the argument which had at first been merely suspected, then dimly seen and finally changed into certainty by the recurrence of the fundamental facts under varying conditions. Scarabs and Gymnopleuri are modellers who were not educated in the same school; they differ in the outline of their masterpiece. With the same materials, the first manufacture pears, the second for the most part ovoids; and yet, despite this divergence, they both conform to the essential conditions demanded by the egg and by the grub. The grub wants provisions that are not liable to become prematurely dry. This condition is fulfilled, so far as may be, by giving the mass a round shape, which evaporates less quickly because of its smaller surface. The egg requires unrestricted air and the heat of the sun’s rays, conditions which are fulfilled in the one case by the pear with its neck and in the other by the ovoid with its pointed end. Laid in June, the egg of either species of Gymnopleuri hatches in less than a week. The average is five or six days. Any one who has seen the larva of the Sacred Beetle knows, so far as essentials go, the larva of the two small pill-rollers. In each case it is a big-bellied grub, curved into a hook and carrying a hump or knapsack which contains a portion of the mighty digestive apparatus. The body is cut off slantwise at the back and forms a stercoral trowel, denoting habits similar to those of the Sacred Beetle’s larva. We see repeated, in fact, the peculiarities described in the story of the big pill-roller. In the larval state, the Gymnopleuri also are great excreters, ever ready with mortar to make good the imperilled dwelling. They instantly repair the breaches which I make, either to observe them in the privacy of their home or to provoke their plastering-industry. They fill up the chinks with putty, solder the parts that become disjointed, mend the broken cell. When the nymphosis approaches, the mortar that remains is expended in a layer of stucco, which reinforces and polishes the inner walls. The same dangers give rise to the same defensive methods. Like the Sacred Beetles’, the shell of the Gymnopleuri is liable to crack. The free admission of air to the interior would have disastrous consequences, by drying the food, which must keep soft until the grub has attained its full growth. An intestine which is never empty and which displays unparalleled docility gets the threatened grub out of its trouble. There is no need to enlarge upon this point; the Sacred Beetle has told us all about it.