The Life of the Weevil 
glass panes of the lantern may not be clean. 
No matter: his work is not in vain who first 
recognizes and shows to others one speck of 
the vast unknown. 
However far our ray of light may pene- 
trate, the illuminated circle is checked on 
every side by the barrier of the darkness. 
Hemmed in by the unfathomable depths of 
the unknown, let us be satisfied if it be vouch- 
safed to us to enlarge by a span the narrow 
domain of the known. Seekers, all of us, 
tormented by the desire for knowledge, let 
us move our lantern from point to point: 
with the particles explored we shall perhaps 
be able to piece together a fragment of the 
picture. 
To-day the shifting of the lantern’s rays 
leads us to the Bear Larinus (L. ursus, 
Fasr.), the exploiter of the carline thistles. 
We must not let this inappropriate name of 
Bear give us an unfavourable notion of the 
insect. It is due to the whim of a nomen- 
clator who, having exhausted his vocabulary, 
baffled by the never-ending stream of things 
already named, uses the first word that comes 
to hand. 
Others, more happily inspired, perceiving 
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