The Life of the Weevil 



deserted. The young abandon their famine- 

 stricken dweUing on the day when they are 

 hatched. They are bold innovators and 

 practice a method which is held in detestation 

 among the Weevils, who are all preeminently 

 stay-at-homes: they dare the dangers of the 

 outer world : they travel, passing from one 

 leaf to another in search of food. This 

 strange exodus, unprecedented in a Weevil, is 

 not a mere caprice but a necessity imposed 

 on them by hunger; they migrate because 

 their mother has not provided them with any- 

 thing to eat. 



If traveling has its pleasures, enough to 

 make the insect forget the delights of the cell 

 in which it digests at peace, it also has its 

 drawbacks. The legless grub can progress 

 only by a sort of creeping gait. It has no 

 Instrument of adherence which will enable it 

 to remain fixed to the twig, whence the least 

 breath of wind may make it fall. Necessity 

 is the mother of invention. To guard 

 against the danger of falling, the wanderer 

 smears itself with a viscous fluid, which var- 

 nishes it and makes it adhere to the trail 

 which it is following. 



But this is not all. When the ticklish 

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