Consider the male and female Geotrupes, which prepare together the patrimony of their larvae; in their case the father assists his companion with the pressure of his robust body in the manufacture of their balls of compressed nutriment.

These domestic habits are astonishing amidst the general isolation.
To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as interesting.

All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles.

I will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history is the same as that of the Sacred Scarabaeus, the Spanish Copris, and others.
The first example is the Sisyphus beetle (_Sisyphus Schaefferi_, Lin.), the smallest and most industrious of our pill-makers.

It has no equal in lively agility, grotesque somersaults, and sudden tumbles down the impossible paths or over the impracticable obstacles to which its obstinacy is perpetually leading it.