180 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



The carcase of a mastodont, defying time in its sandy 

 bed, already astonishes us : a gnat of exquisite delicacy, 

 preserved intact in the thickness of the rock, staggers our 

 imagination. 



Certainly, the Mosquito, carried by the rising swells, did 

 not come from far away. Before his arrival, the hurly- 

 burly of a thread of water must have reduced him to that 

 annihilation to which he was so near. He lived on the 

 shores of the lake. Killed by the joys of a morning — the 

 old age of gnats — he fell from the top of his reed, was 

 forthwith drowned and disappeared in the muddy cata- 

 combs. 



Who are those others, those dumpy ones, with hard, 

 convex elytra, the most numerous next to the Diptera ? 

 Their small heads, prolonged into a snout, tell us plainly. 

 They are proboscidian Coleoptera, Rhynchophora, or, in 

 less hard terms. Weevils. There are small ones, middling 

 ones, large ones, similar in dimensions to their counter- 

 parts of to-day. 



Their attitudes on the chaUiy slab are not as correct as 

 those of the Mosquito. The legs are entangled anyhow ; 

 the beak, the rostrum is at one time hidden under the 

 chest, at another projects forward. Some show it in 

 profile ; others — more frequent these — stretch it to one 

 side, as the result of a twist in the neck. 



These dislocated, contorted insects did not receive the 

 swift and peaceful burial of the Dipteron. Though sundry 

 of them may have lived on the plants on the banks, 

 the others, the majority, come from the surrounding 

 neighbourhood, brought by the rains, which warped their 

 joints in crossing such obstacles as branches and stones. 

 A stout armour has kept the body unscathed, but the 

 delicate articulations of the members have given way 



