The Life of the Weevil 



of the thapsus. On this occasion, I am glad 

 to see, the term could not possibly be 

 happier: it enables the novice to identify the 

 insect exactly, without other data than the 

 name of the plant on which it lives. 



The botanist gives the name of Verhascum 

 thapsus to the common mullein, or shepherd's 

 club, a lover of the tilled fields in both the 

 north and the south. Its bloom, instead of 

 branching out like that of the scollop-leaved 

 mullein, consists of one thick cone of yellow 

 flowers. These flowers are followed by 

 close-packed capsules about as big as a fair- 

 sized olive. Here we no longer have the 

 niggardly pods in which the grub of the 

 Cionus would die of starvation if it did not 

 abandon them as soon as it is hatched; these 

 caskets contain plenty of victuals for one 

 larva and even for two. A partition divides 

 them into two equal compartments, both of 

 them crammed with seeds. 



The fancy took me to estimate roughly 

 the mullein's wealth of seeds. I have 

 counted as many as 321 in a single shell. 

 Now a spike of ordinary size contains 150 

 capsules. The total number of seeds is there- 

 fore 48,000. What can the plant want with 



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