The Life of the Weevil 



the Mediterranean, contains hardly anything 

 identical with the population of the vanished 

 gulf. To find a few features of resemblance 

 between the present and the past, we should 

 have to seek them in the tropical seas. 



The climate therefore has become colder; 

 the sun is slowly approaching extinction; the 

 species are dying out. Thus I am told by 

 the numismatics of my stone window-sill. 



Without leaving my field of observation, 

 so modest and restricted and yet so rich, let 

 us once more consult the stone and this time 

 on the subject of the insect. The country 

 around Apt abounds in a curious rock that 

 breaks off in flakes, not unHke sheets of 

 whity-grey cardboard, which burn with a 

 sooty flame and a bituminous smell. It was 

 deposited at the bottom of the great lakes 

 haunted by Crocodiles and giant Tortoises. 

 Those lakes were never beheld by human 

 eye. Their basins have been replaced by the 

 range of the hills; their muds, slowly depo- 

 sited in thin layers, have become mighty 

 ridges of stone. 



Let us remove a slab and subdivide it into 

 flakes with the point of a knife, a task as 

 easy as separating the superimposed sheets 



12 



