The Life of the Weevil 
winter in a state of torpor. The plane- 
tree, which strips itself of its own initiative 
during the heat of summer, furnishes ex- 
cellent shelters for homeless paupers under 
its patches of loose-hanging bark. I have 
often found our Pea-thief in one of these 
winter sanctuaries. Sheltered under the 
dead covering of the plane, or otherwise 
protected while the winter raged, she woke 
from her slumbers at the first kisses of a 
kindly sun. The almanack of the instincts 
has taught her; she knows as well as the 
gardener when the peas are in flower and 
she comes to her plant more or less from 
every direction, ambling at a slow pace, but 
swift in flight. 
A small head, a slender snout, a dress of 
ashen grey sprinkled with brown, flat wing- 
cases, a squat, thick-set figure, with two large 
black dots on the flat of the tail: there you 
have a rough sketch of my visitor. The 
van-guard arrives by the end of the first 
fortnight in May. 
The Weevils settle on the flowers, which 
are like so many white Butterflies’ wings: I 
see some installed at the foot of the upper 
petal, I see some hidden in the casket of the 
234 
