The Life of the Weevil 



rescued from trie agents of destruction, they 

 have endured through time and will endure 

 indefinitely, under the cover of their wind- 

 ing-sheet." 



The same flood brought from the adjacent 

 rain-swept shores a host of refuse, both vege- 

 table and animal, so much so that the lacus- 

 trian deposit tells also of things on land. It 

 is a general record of the life of the time. 



Let us turn a page of our slab, or rather 

 of our album. Here are winged seeds, 

 leaves outlined in brown impressions. The 

 stone herbal rivals the botanical clearness 

 of our ordinary herbals. It repeats what 

 the shells have already taught us: the world 

 is changing, the sun is losing its strength. 

 The vegetation of modern Provence is not 

 what it was in the old days; it no longer 

 includes palm-trees, laurels oozing with cam- 

 phor, tufted araucarias and many other trees 

 and shrubs whose equivalents belong to the 

 torrid regions. 



Continue to turn the pages. We now 

 come to insects. The most frequent are 

 Diptera, of moderate size, often very humble 

 Flies and Gnats. The teeth of the great 

 Squali surprised us by their smooth poHsh 

 14 



