The Pea-Weevil: The Eggs 
is laid. Our friend possesses only a short 
snout, which does capitally for sipping a few 
sweet mouthfuls, but which is of no value 
as a boring-tool. 
Therefore the method of installing the 
family is quite different. Here we see no 
ingenious preparations, such as the Balanini, 
the Larini and the Rhynchites showed us. 
Having no probe among her tools, ‘the 
mother scatters her eggs in the open, with no 
protection against the heat of the sun or the 
inclemencies of the weather. Nothing could 
be simpler and nothing more dangerous to 
the germs, in the absence of a special con- 
stitution made to withstand the alternate 
trials of heat and cold, drought and wet. 
In the mild sunshine of ten o’clock in the 
morning, the mother, with a jerky, capri- 
cious, unmethodical step, runs up and down 
the chosen pod, first on one and then on the 
other surface. She protrudes at every 
instant a short oviscapt, which swings right 
and left as though to scrape the skin. An 
egg follows and is abandoned as soon as 
laid. 
A hasty touch of the oviscapt, first here, 
then there, on the green skin of the pea-pod; 
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