Note 4 — Chapter xi · ONTHOPHAGI AND ONITICELLI

This fleeting organ, which disappears without leaving even an excrescence, this temporary horn at a spot destined in the end to be unmailed, gives rise to a few reflections. The Dung-beetles, those placid creatures, generally favour a warlike harness: they love outlandish weapons, halberds, spears, grappling-irons, scimitars. Let us hurriedly recall the horn of the Spanish Copris. No Rhinoceros in the Indian jungles boasts one to compare with it upon his nose. Broad at the base, pointed at the tip, curved like a bow, when the head is lifted the horn bends back till it touches the keel of the obliquely truncated corselet. It might be a harpoon intended for ripping up some monster. Remember also the Minotaur,4 who looks as though he were going to spit his foe with his sheaf of three couched lances, and the Lunary Copris, horned on the forehead, armed with a pike on each shoulder and wearing a corselet notched with little crescents that remind us of the short curved knife of the pork-butcher.