220 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



finds the dried leaf-substance on which it feeds ready prepared for 

 its use ; and after having exhausted its stores, drops down to 

 seek a new refuge in the bosom of mother earth. The rynchites 

 betuleti, which is very destructive in the vineyards of the Ehine 

 and the Moselle, is equally clever in rolling together several of 

 the top-leaves of a branch like a cigar, by covering their borders 

 with a glutinous substance, and then smoothing them down with 

 the hind-part of its body. 



A great number of similar examples might be cited among 

 the rynchophorous insects alone, of which more than 7,000 



Calandra longipes. 



species have already been described by entomologists : but not 

 to tire the reader I shall merely remark, that wherever they 

 deposit their eggs, in blossoms or in leaves, in fruits or in seeds, 

 in branches or in roots, it is al way s % done with the same admira- 

 ble prevision, as if they were endowed with an intuitive know- 

 ledge of the development of vegetation and the progress of the 

 seasons. 



The dung-feeding lamellicorns provide in a different but no 

 less ingenious manner for the future wants of their progeny, by 

 rolling balls of excrementitious matter in which they enclose 

 their eggs. These balls are at first irregular and soft, but by 

 degrees, and during the process of rolling along, become rounded 

 and harder ; they are propelled by means of the hind-legs ; and 

 the insects occasionally mount to the top when they find a 

 difficulty of urging them along, probably in order to destroy the 

 equilibrium. Sometimes these balls are an inch and a-half or 

 even two inches in diameter, and in rolling them along, the 



