The Nut-Weevil 
It is done: daylight enters the coffer. 
The window is opened, round, widening a 
little inwards and carefully polished over the 
whole circumference of its embrasure. 
Under the burnisher of the mandibles any 
roughness that might presently increase the 
difficulty of the emergence has disappeared. 
The holes in our steel draw-plates are 
scarcely more accurate. 
The comparison with a draw-plate comes 
in quite aptly here: the larva actually frees 
itself by a wire-drawing-operation. Like a 
length of brass wire which is reduced by 
being passed through an orifice too narrow 
for its diameter, it escapes through the 
window in the shell by decreasing its girth. 
The wire is drawn by an exertion on the part 
of the workman’s pincers or by the rotation 
of the machine; it subsequently retains the 
reduced thickness which the operation has 
given it. The grub knows another method: 
it lengthens and thins itself by its own efforts; 
and, directly it has passed through the 
narrow orifice, it returns to its natural size. 
Apart from these differences the resemblance 
is striking. 
The exit-aperture is precisely the same 
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