The Life of the Weevil 



Weevil? There is not the least vestige of 

 those tribes, so prosperous to-day. 



Where are the Hydrophilus,^ the Gyrinus,^ 

 the Dytlscus,^ all inhabitants of the water? 

 These lacustrians had every chance of being 

 handed down to us as mummies between two 

 sheets of marl. If there were any in those 

 days, they used to live In the lake, whose mud 

 would have preserved these horn-clad insects 

 even more effectually than the little fishes 

 and more especially the Fly. Well, of these 

 aquatic Beetles there is no trace either. 



Where were they, where were those who 

 are missing from the geological reliquary? 

 Where were the Inhabitants of the thickets, 

 of the greenswards, of the worm-eaten tree- 

 trunks: Capricorns, borers of wood; Sacred 

 Beetles, workers In dung; CarabI, disem- 

 bowellers of game? One and all were In the 

 limbo of the time to come. The present of 

 that period did not possess them; the future 

 awaited them. The Weevil, if I may credit 



1 The Great Water-beetle. Cf. The Gloiv-ivorm and 

 Other Beetles: chap. x. — Translator's Note. 



2 The Whirligig Beetle. Cf. The Life of the Fly, by 

 J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixira de 

 Mattos: chap. vii. — Translator's Note. 



3 A carnivorous Water-beetle. Cf. idem : chaps, -"ii 

 and viii. — Translator's Note. 



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