The Life of the Weevil 



work of the transformation be effected? 

 Besides, the subsoil is full of dangers. It 

 is damp and cold; its roughness makes it 

 painful to the touch for a skin as fine as 

 yours. A formidable enemy lurks there, a 

 cryptogam that implants itself upon any 

 buried larva. In my jars I have great diffi- 

 culty in protecting the buried larvae which I 

 am trying to rear. Sooner or later white 

 tufts form upon the glass wall, thread-like 

 fluffs whose lower portion will clasp and 

 drain a poor grub turned into a scrap of 

 plaster: it is the mycelium of one of the 

 Sphjeriacea^ whose allotted field of exploita- 

 tion is the bodies of insects undergoing 

 nymphosis underground. In the nut, a 

 hygienic cell, free from devastating germs, 

 nothing of the sort is to be feared. Why 

 leave it?" 



These arguments the Balaninus meets with 

 a refusal. It shifts its quarters and it is 

 right. On the ground, where the nut is 

 lying, it has reason, to begin with, to dread 

 the Field-mouse, a great hoarder of nuts. 

 He collects in his stone-heap everything 

 yielded by his nightly rounds; then, at his 

 leisure, with a patient tooth, he pierces a 

 132 



