196 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



grass which one would believe known to the botanist 



alone. 



The man of the soil is interested first and foremost in 

 the plant, the great foster-mother ; the rest leaves him 

 indifferent. Magnificent adornment, curious habits, 

 marvels of instinct : all these say nothing to him. But 

 to touch his vme, to eat grass that doesn't belong to one : 

 what a heinous crime ! Quick, give the malefactor a 

 nickname, to serve as a penal collar ! 



This time, the Provengal peasant has gone out of his 

 way to invent a special t\ ord : he calls the cigar -roller 

 the Becaru. Here the scientific expression and the rural 

 expression agree fully. Bhyncliiies and Becaru are exact 

 equivalents : each refers to the insect's long beak. 



The Vine Weevil adopts the same method in her work 

 as her cousin of the poplar. The leaf is first pricked with 

 the rostrum at a spot in the stalk, which provokes a 

 stoppage of the sap and flexibility in the withered blade. 

 The rolling begins at the comer of one of the lower lobes, 

 with the smooth, green upper surface within and the 

 cottony strongly-veined lower surface without. 



But the great width of the leaf and its deep indentations 

 hardly ever allow of regular work from one end to the 

 other. Abrupt folds occur instead and repeatedly alter 

 the direction of the rolling, leaving now the green and 

 now the cottony surface on the outside, without any 

 appreciable order or arrangement, as though by chance. 

 The poplar-leaf, with its simple form and its moderate 

 size, gives a neat scroll ; the vine-leaf, with its cumber- 

 some girth and its complicated outline, produces a shape- 

 less cigar, an untidy parcel. 



