also are plentiful, each lying next to the skin of the victim on which the
larva has fed. They are all open but still fresh: they date from the
present generation; the Scoliae whom I unearth have quitted them not long
since. I learnt later, in fact, that the hatching took place in the course
of July.

In the same heap of mould is a swarming colony of Scarabaeidae in the form
of larvae, nymphs and adult insects. It includes the largest of our
Beetles, the common Rhinoceros Beetle, or Oryctes nasicornis. I find some
who have been recently liberated, whose wing-cases, of a glossy brown, now
see the sunlight for the first time; I find others enclosed in their
earthen shell, almost as big as a Turkey's egg. More frequent is her
powerful larva, with its heavy paunch, bent into a hook. I note the
presence of a second bearer of the nasal horn, Oryctes Silenus, who is much
smaller than her kinswoman, and of Pentodon punctatus, a Scarabaeid who
ravages my lettuces.

But the predominant population consists of Cetoniae, or Rosechafers, most
of them enclosed in their egg-shaped shells, with earthen walls encrusted
with dung. There are three different species: C. aurata, C. morio and C.
floricola. Most of them belong to the first species. Their larvae, which
are easily recognized by their singular talent for walking on their backs
with their legs in the air, are numbered by the hundred. Every age is
represented, from the new born grub to the podgy larva on the point of
building its shell.

This time the problem of the victuals is solved. When I compare the larval
slough sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the Cetonia-larvae or, better,
with the skin cast by these larvae, under cover of the cocoon, at the
moment of the nymphal transformation, I establish an absolute identity. The