The Sloe-Weevil 
long as sloes or kindred fruits have existed, 
my race, thriving upon them, has never 
committed the folly of forsaking them in 
favour of a leaf. So long as they exist, we 
shall remain faithful to them; and, if ever 
they fail us, we shall perish to the last grub.” 
The lover of the apricot is no less positive. 
She, who is so easy to establish in soft pulp, 
has taken good care not to advise her child- 
ren to undertake the laborious task of per- 
forating a shell or rolling a leaf into a cigar. 
According to the locality and the abundance 
of the fruit, her boldest innovation has been 
to pass from the apricot to the plum, the 
peach, or even the cherry. But how are we 
to admit that these lovers of fruit-pulp, 
well satisfied with their rich living, which 
has always been possible, in the old days and 
to-day alike, can ever have risked leaving the 
soft for the hard, the juicy for the dry, the 
easy for the difficult? 
None of these four is the head of the line. 
Is the common ancestor then an unknown 
species, dumped down, perhaps, in the schist- 
foliations whose venerable archives we began 
by consulting? Even if he were there, we 
should be none the wiser. ‘The library of.the 
203 
