The Life of the Weevil 
of caskets; with the same bodkin that serves 
her relatives for fastening the last layer of 
a leaf-roll, she hollows a little cup in the 
surface of a shell hard as ivory. The tool 
that is able to roll a flexible sheet now wears 
away the invincible and works like a digger’s 
pick-axe. And stranger still: when it has 
finished its arduous piece of carving, it sets 
up above the egg a little miracle whose 
exquisite delicacy we shall have occasion to 
admire. 
The grub amazes me no less. It changes 
its diet. When a denizen of the vine and 
the poplar, it eats a leaf; when a denizen of 
the sloe, it takes to starchy food. It 
changes its means of liberation. When they 
have attained their full growth and the mo- 
ment comes for them to go underground, the 
first two have nothing in front of them but a 
yielding obstacle, the surface layer of the 
leafy sheath, softened and wasted by decay; 
the third, like the Nut-weevil, has to pierce 
a wall of exceptional strength. 
What singular contrasts might we not 
discover in facts of this kind, if we were 
better-acquainted with the habits of the 
Rhynchites group? A fourth example is 
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