The Life of the Weevil 



glass prisons. Gaseous exchanges are 

 effected, since the kernel, itself a living body, 

 continues to thrive. But what suffices to 

 maintain the life of a seed must be insuffi- 

 cient for the much more active life of the 

 insect. The larva of the Weevil, during the 

 few weeks which it spends nibbling its kernel, 

 would thus be in great jeopardy if it had no 

 other resources for breathing than the air in 

 the sloe-stone, so limited in quantity and so 

 scantily renewed. 



Everything seems to prove that if the air- 

 hole, the work of its chisel, were to be 

 plugged with a drop of gum, the recluse 

 would perish, or at least drag out a languish- 

 ing existence and would be incapable of mi- 

 grating underground at the proper time. 

 This suspicion is worth confirming. 



I therefore prepare a handful of sloes; I 

 myself bring about what would have hap- 

 pened naturally but for the mother's pre- 

 cautions. I deluge the crater and its central 

 cone with a drop of thick solution of gum 

 arabic. My sticky preparation takes the 

 place of the product of the sloe-bush. The 

 drop hardens; I add others until the top of 

 the cone disappears in the thickness of the 



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