The Life of the Weevil 
work of the transformation be effected? 
Besides, the subsoil is full of dangers. It 
is damp and cold; its roughness makes it 
painful to the touch for a skin as fine as 
yours. A formidable enemy lurks there, a 
cryptogam that implants itself upon any 
buried larva. In my jars I have great diffi- 
culty in protecting the buried larve which I 
am trying to rear. Sooner or later white 
tufts form upon the glass wall, thread-like 
fluffs whose lower portion will clasp and 
drain a poor grub turned into a scrap of 
plaster: it is the mycelium of one of the 
Spheriaceez whose allotted field of exploita- 
tion is the bodies of insects undergoing 
nymphosis underground. In the nut, a 
hygienic cell, free from devastating germs, 
nothing of the sort is to be feared. Why 
leave it?” 
These arguments the Balaninus meets with 
a refusal. It shifts its quarters and it is 
right. On the ground, where the nut is 
lying, it has reason, to begin with, to dread 
the Field-mouse, a great hoarder of nuts. 
He collects in his stone-heap everything 
yielded by his nightly rounds; then, at his 
leisure, with a patient tooth, he pierces a 
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