The Nut-Weevil 



It is done: daylight enters the coffer. 

 The window is opened, round, widening a 

 little inwards and carefully polished over the 

 whole circumference of its embrasure. 

 Under the burnisher of the mandibles any 

 roughness that might presently increase the 

 difficulty of the emergence has disappeared. 

 The holes in our steel draw-plates are 

 scarcely more accurate. 



The comparison with a draw-plate comes 

 in quite aptly here: the larva actually frees 

 itself by a wire-drawing-operation. Like a 

 length of brass wire which is reduced by 

 being passed through an orifice too narrow 

 for its diameter, it escapes through the 

 window in the shell by decreasing its girth. 

 The wire is drawn by an exertion on the part 

 of the workman's pincers or by the rotation 

 of the machine; it subsequently retains the 

 reduced thickness which the operation has 

 given it. The grub knows another method : 

 it lengthens and thins itself by its own efforts; 

 and, directly it has passed through the 

 narrow orifice, it returns to its natural size. 

 Apart from these differences the resemblance 

 is striking. 



The exit-aperture is 'precisely the same 

 127 



