More Beetles 



examined my specimens again. This 'time I 

 have gone too far. All the grubs are dead, 

 reduced to dark brown granules; only those 

 in the oak are alive and already well-grown. 

 The experiment is conclusive; the Great 

 Capricorn has the oak for her domain; any 

 other tree is fatal to her grub. 



Let us recapitulate these details, to which 

 it were easy to add indefinitely. Among the 

 vegetarian insects are some that are omniv- 

 orous, by which we mean that they are able 

 to feed on a great variety of plants, but not 

 on all indifferently: that goes without saying. 

 These consumers of miscellaneous foodstuffs 

 are in the minority. The others specialize, 

 some more and others less strictly. One 

 guest at the great banquet of the animal 

 world requires a vegetable family, a group, 

 a genus flavoured with certain alkaloids; 

 another needs a given plant, sometimes 

 faintly and sometimes highly flavoured; a 

 third demands a seed, apart from which 

 nothing is of use to it; and others require 

 their pod, bud, or blossom, their bark, root 

 or bough respectively. So it is with one and 

 all. Each insect has its exclusive tastes, nar- 

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