The Elephant Weevil 
hair, reddish, almost straight and so long 
that the insect is obliged to carry it extended 
like a lance at rest, lest it should stumble, 
hampered by its instrument. What does it 
do with this enormous pike, with this ridic- 
ulous nose? 
Here I see some shrugging their shoulders. 
In fact, if the sole object of life is to make 
money by hook or by crook, such queries are 
sheer madness. Happily there are others to 
whom nothing in the majestic problem of 
things is trivial. They know of what humble 
dough the bread of thought is kneaded, a 
bread no less necessary than that made from 
wheat; they know that husbandmen and 
enquirers alike feed the world with an 
accumulation of minute fragments. 
Let us take pity on the question and 
proceed. Without seeing it at work, we 
already suspect the Weevil’s paradoxical 
beak of being a drill similar to those which 
we employ to bore through the hardest sub- 
stances. Two diamond-points, the man- 
dibles, form its terminal bit. Like the 
Larini, but under conditions of greater 
difficulty, the Weevil must use it to prepare 
the way for installing the egg. 
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