The Life of the Weevil 



endowed with a probe which makes its way 

 through the Chahcodoma's ^ masonry and 

 sHps the egg into the cocoon of the fat, sleepy 

 larva; but this Weevil of ours has none of 

 these rapiers, daggers or larding-pins ; she 

 has nothing at the tip of her abdomen, ab- 

 solutely nothing. And yet she has but to 

 apply that tip to the narrow opening of the 

 well for the egg to be lodged, forthwith, at 

 the very bottom. 



Anatomy will supply the key to the riddle, 

 which is otherwise undecipherable. I open 

 the mother's abdomen. What meets my 

 eyes astounds me. There is here, occupying 

 the whole length of the body, an extraor- 

 dinary piece of mechanism, a stiff, red, horny 

 rod, I was almost saying a rostrum, so closely 

 does it resemble that of the head. It is a 

 tube, slender as a horse-hair, widening 

 slightly like a blunderbuss at the free end 

 and swollen hke an egg-shaped capsule at 

 the base. 



This is the laying-tool, equalling the brad- 



1 The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xiv. — Translator's 

 Note. 



2 The Mason-bee. Cf. The Mason-bees: passim. — 

 Translator's Note. 



114 



