The Elephant Weevil 



hair, reddish, almost straight and so long 

 that the insect is obliged to carry it extended 

 hke a lance at rest, lest it should stumble, 

 hampered by its instrument. What does it 

 do with this enormous pike, with this ridic- 

 ulous nose? 



Here I see some shrugging their shoulders. 

 In fact, if the sole object of life is to make 

 money by hook or by crook, such queries are 

 sheer madness. Happily there are others to 

 whom nothing in the majestic problem of 

 things is trivial. They know of what humble 

 dough the bread of thought is kneaded, a 

 bread no less necessary than that made from 

 wheat; they know that husbandmen and 

 enquirers alike feed the world with an 

 accumulation of minute fragments. 



Let us take pity on the question and 

 proceed. Without seeing it at work, we 

 already suspect the Weevil's paradoxical 

 beak of being a drill similar to those which 

 we employ to bore through the hardest sub- 

 stances. Two diamond-points, the man- 

 dibles, form Its terminal bit. Like the 

 Larini, but under conditions of greater 

 difficulty, the Weevil must use it to prepare 

 the way for Installing the egg. 

 89 



