90 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



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, 

 so favourable to the invention of imaginary precursors. 

 The geological layers and even the lacustrian layers, 

 rich in Diptera and Weevils, have so far furnished not the 

 slightest relic of the Dung-workers. This being so, it is 

 wiser not to refer to distant horned ancestors as accounting 

 for their degenerate descendant, the Onthophagus. 



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 evolution of a new organ ; it 

 shows us life working on a portion of the adult's corselet, 

 which does not yet exist, but which is to exist some day. 

 We take the genesis of the species in the act ; the present 

 teaches us how the future is prepared. 



And what does the insect that has conceived the 

 ambition of later planting a spear upon its chine propose 

 to make of its projected work ? At least as an adjunct of 

 masculine finery, the thing is in fashion among various 

 foreign Scarabs that feed themselves and their grubs 

 on vegetable matters in a state of decomposition. These 

 giants among the wing-cased tribe delight in associating 

 their placid corpulence with halberds terrible to gaze 

 upon. 



Look at this one — Dynastes Hercules his name — an 

 inmate of the rotten tree-stumps under the torrid West- 

 Indian skies. The peaceable colossus well deserves 

 his name : he measures three inches long. Of what 

 service can the threatening rapier of the corselet and the 

 toothed Ufting-jack of the forehead be to him, unless it 



