The Life of the Weevil 
machine for grabbing, with a stomach for 
digesting. The intellect does not count as 
yet. That will come later. 
The Weevil, in his fashion, repeats these 
aberrations to a certain extent. See the 
extravagant appendage to his little head. 
It is here a short, thick snout; there a sturdy 
beak, round or cut four-square; elsewhere 
a foolish reed, thin as a hair, long as the 
body and longer. At the tip of this 
egregious instrument, in the terminal mouth, 
are the fine shears of the mandibles; on 
either side, the antenna, with their first joints 
fitting into a groove. 
What is the use of this beak, this snout, 
this caricature of a nose? Where did the 
insect find the model for it? Nowhere. 
The Weevil invented it and retains the 
monopoly. Outside his family, no Beetle 
indulges in these nasal eccentricities. 
Observe also the smallness of the head, a 
bulb that hardly swells beyond the base of the 
snout. What can it have inside? A very 
poor nervous equipment, the sign of exceed- 
ingly limited instincts. Before seeing them 
at work, we have a poor opinion of the 
intelligence of these microcephalics; we 
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