The Life of the Weevil 



fancies, will admit that the cigar-roller can 

 have tired of her cylinder one day and 

 proceeded, as a crazy innovator, to make a 

 hole in the casket of a fruit-stone. Such 

 dissimilar industries do not suggest mutual 

 connection. The first leaf-rollers, never 

 knowing any lack of leaves, may perhaps 

 have gone from one tree to others more or 

 less like it; but to give up the art of leaf- 

 rolling, so easy to acquire, and to become, 

 when nothing compelled them to, strenuous 

 nibblers of hard wood: that would have been 

 idiotic. No acceptable reason would explain 

 the desertion of the original trade. Such 

 follies are unknown in the insect world. 



The exploiter of the sloe refuses in her 

 turn to acknowledge herself as inspiring the 

 cigar-maker: 



"What, I !" she says, "I, give up my little 

 blue plum, so savoury in its tartness! I, a 

 chaser of goblets, abandon my chisel and, in 

 a moment of madness, become a folder of 

 leaves! What do you take me for? My 

 grub dotes on the floury kernel; confronted 

 with any other fare, above all with the 

 meagre, tasteless roll of my colleague of the 

 poplar, it would let itself die of hunger. So 



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