The Sacred Beetle and Others 



reminiscence of the customs of olden time, 

 when life spent its excess of young sap upon 

 quaint creations, banished to-day from our 

 better-balanced world? Is the Onthophagus 

 the dwarfed representative of an ancient race 

 of horned animals now extinct? Does it 

 give us a faint image of the past? 



The surmise rests upon no valid founda- 

 tion. The Dung-beetle is recent in the 

 general chronology of created beings; he 

 ranks among the last-comers. With him 

 there is no means of going back to the mists 

 of the past, which lends itself to the inven- 

 tion of imaginary precursors. Geological 

 and even lacustrine schists, rich though the 

 latter be in Diptera and Weevils, have hither- 

 to furnished not the shghtest relic of the 

 dung-workers. This being so, it is wiser not 

 to claim horned ancestors from the distant 

 past as accounting for those degenerate 

 descendants, the Onthophagi. 



Since the past explains nothing, let us turn 

 to the future. If the thoracic horn be not 

 a reminiscence, it may be a promise. It 

 represents a timid attempt, which the ages 

 will harden into a permanent weapon. It 

 lets us assist at the slow and gradual evolu- 

 tion of a new organ; it shows us life in 

 travail of a thing not yet existing on the 

 412 



