INSECTS : THEIR EAES AND EYES. 161 



rather with her jaws at its tip, as with a gimlet, bored a 

 tiny hole through the yielding shell into the very interior ; 

 then turning round, and inserting the extremity of her 

 abdomen, with its ovipositor, she had shot an egg into this 

 dark cavity. The juices poured forth at the wound soon 

 healed the orifice ; the nut grew ; and presently the egg 

 became a little white grub. He then rioted in plenty ; 

 prolonged his darkling feast 



" From night to morn, from morn to dewy eve ; " 



'twas all " dewy eve " to him, by the way, for no ray 

 of light saw he, till that prosperous condition of existence 

 was done. No wonder he grew fat ; and fat those rogues 

 of nut-weevils always are, as you well know. Well, when 

 the nut fell, in October, the kernel was all gone, com- 

 pletely devoured, and our little highway robber was ready 

 for his winter sleep ; he gnawed a fresh hole through the 

 now hard shell, made his way out, and immediately bur- 

 rowed into the earth, where he lay till June ; then became 

 a pupa, and emerged just what you see him, a long- 

 snouted beetle like his mother, in the beginning of 

 August. 



Such is his " short eventful history ; " and you now 

 see that the long beak is formed entirely with reference 

 to this economy : it is an auger, fitted to bore holes into 

 shell-fruits, through their envelopes, for the reception of 

 eggs. 



There is a very extensive family of Beetles known as 

 Lamellicornes, because the antennal joints are singularly 

 flattened, and applied one over the other, like the leaves 

 of a book (lamella, a leaf). Here is a very common little 

 Chafer found on the droppings in pastures (Aphodius 

 fimetarius), in which the last three joints, constituting the 

 club of the antenna, are of an ovate form, and flattened, 

 so as to lie one on another quite close, like three oval 



M 



