The Life of the Weevil 
Weevil? There is not the least vestige of 
those tribes, so prosperous to-day. 
Where are the Hydrophilus,' the Gyrinus,? 
the Dytiscus,? all inhabitants of the water? 
These lacustrians had every chance of being 
handed down to us as mummies between two 
sheets of marl. If there were any in those 
days, they used to live in the lake, whose mud 
would have preserved these horn-clad insects 
even more effectually than the little fishes 
and more especially the Fly. Well, of these 
aquatic Beetles there is no trace either. 
Where were they, where were those who 
are missing from the geological reliquary? 
Where were the inhabitants of the thickets, 
of the greenswards, of the worm-eaten tree- 
trunks: Capricorns, borers of wood; Sacred 
Beetles, workers in dung; Carabi, disem- 
bowellers of game? One and all were in the 
limbo of the time to come. The present of 
that period did not possess them; the future 
awaited them. The Weevil, if I may credit 
1The Great Water-beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and 
Other Beetles: chap. x—Translator’s Note. 
2The Whirligig Beetle. Cf. The Life of the Fly, by 
J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixira de 
Mattos: chap. vii—Translator’s Note. 
3A carnivorous Water-beetle. Cf. idem: chaps. vii 
and viiii—Translator’s Note. 
18 
