The Life of the Weevil 
selection, takes up her stand on the stalk 
of the leaf and there patiently inserts her 
rostrum, turning it with a persistency that 
denotes the great importance of this stiletto- 
thrust. A little wound opens, a fairly deep 
wound, which soon becomes a speck of decay. 
It is done: the conduits are cut and allow 
only a small quantity of sap to ooze into the 
edge. At the injured point the leaf yields 
under its own weight; it droops perpend- 
icularly, becomes slightly withered and 
soon acquires the requisite flexibility. The 
moment has come for operating on it. 
That stiletto-thrust represents, though 
much less scientifically, the prick of the 
Hunting Wasp’s sting. The latter wants 
for her offspring a prey now dead, now 
paralysed: she knows, with the thoroughness 
of a consummate anatomist, at what points 
it behoves her to insert her lancet to procure 
either sudden death or merely a suppression 
of movement. The Rhynchites requires for 
hers a_ leaf rendered flexible, half-alive, 
1 Cf. The Hunting Wasps: passim; also More Hunting 
Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander 
Teixeira de Mattos: passim—Translator’s Note. 
144 
