INSECTS: THEIR EARS AND EYES 189 



Now, a word or two in explanation of this very singu- 

 lar form of head and head-organs. The larva or grub 

 stage of these insects is destined to be passed in the in- 

 terior of fruits and seeds; the individual which we have 

 been examining (Balaninus nucum) was born one morning 

 in August in the interior of a hazel-nut. Its parent had 

 chosen a suitable nut, just then when it is set for fruit, 

 and as yet green and soft; and had with her proboscis, or 

 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 ab- 

 domen 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 



