The Life of the Weevil 
window-sill. A couple has just broken apart. 
Careless of what will happen next, the male 
retires to browse for a while, not on the blue 
thistle-heads, which are choice morsels re- 
served for the young, but on the leaves, 
where a superficial scraping enables the beak 
to remove some frugal mouthfuls. The 
mother remains where she is and continues 
the boring already commenced. 
The rostrum is driven right into the ball 
of florets and disappears from sight. The 
insect hardly moves, taking at most a few 
slow strides now in one direction, now in 
another. What we see is not the work of a 
gimlet, which twists, but of an awl, which 
sinks steadily downwards. The mandibles, 
the sharp shears affixed to the implement, 
bite and dig; and that is all. In the end, the 
rostrum used as a lever, that is to say, bend- 
ing upon its base, uproots and lifts the de- 
tached florets and pushes them a little way 
outwards. ‘This must cause the slight un- 
evenness which we perceive at any inhabited 
point. The work of excavation lasts a good 
quarter of an hour. 
Then the mother turns about, finds the 
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