The Old Weevils 



the modest records which I am able to 

 consult, must therefore be the oldest of the 

 Beetles. 



In the beginning, life fashioned oddities 

 which would be screaming discords in the 

 present harmony of things. When it 

 invented the saurian, it revelled at first in 

 monsters from fifteen to twenty yards long. 

 It placed horns upon their noses and above 

 their eyes, paved their backs with fantastic 

 scales and hollowed their necks into spiny 

 pouches wherein their heads withdrew as into 

 a hood. It even tried, though with no great 

 success, to give them wings. After these 

 horrors, the procreating ardour calmed down 

 and produced the charming Green Lizard of 

 our hedges. 



When it invented the bird, it filled its beak 

 with the reptile's pointed teeth and 

 suspended from its rump a long, feather- 

 clad tail. These indeterminate and revolt- 

 ingly hideous creatures were the distant 

 prelude to the Robin Redbreast and the 

 Dove. 



All these primitives are noted for a very 

 small skull, an idiot's brain. The prehistoric 

 animal is first and foremost an atrocious 

 19 



