The Life of the Weevil 
me to reply. However, to me the word is 
explained by the insect’s colour. 
The Apoderus is a skinless creature, 
displaying its naked and bleeding misery. 
Its colour is vermilion, as bright as sealing- 
wax. It is like a drop of arterial blood 
coagulated on the dark green of a leaf. 
To this loud costume, rare among insects, 
are added other, equally unusual character- 
istics. The Weevils are all microcephalous. 
This one exaggerates the absurd dispropor- 
tion even further: she retains only the 
indispensable minimum of a head, as though 
she were trying to do without one altogether. 
The cranium in which her poor brain is 
lodged is a paltry, glittering, jet-black speck. 
In front of this speck is no beak, but a very 
short, wide snout; behind is an unsightly 
neck, which one might imagine to have been 
strangled in a halter. 
Standing high on her legs, clumsy in her 
gait, she ambles step by step across her leaf, 
which she pierces with round windows. The 
material removed is her food. Faith, a 
strange creature: a reminiscence, may be, of 
some ancient mould, cast aside by life’s 
progress! 
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