The Life of the Weevil 
you are welcome to my humble porringer. 
We shall be friends to the last. 
To-day it is not my intention to extol your 
deserts: I want to ask you a question, simply 
out of curiosity. What is your country of 
origin? Did you come from Central Asia, 
with the horse-bean and the pea? Did you 
belong to the collection of seeds which the 
first pioneers of husbandry handed to us from 
their garden patch? Were you known to 
antiquity ? 
Here the insect, an impartial and well- 
informed witness, answers: 
“No, in our parts antiquity did not know 
the haricot. The precious legumen did not 
reach our country by the same road as the 
broad bean. It is a foreigner, introduced 
into the old continent at a later date.” 
The insect’s statement merits serious exam- 
ination, supported as it is by very plausible 
arguments. Here are the facts. 
Though I have followed agricultural mat- 
ters closely for many years, I have never 
seen the haricots attacked by any ravager 
whatever of the insect series, nor in partic- 
ular by the Bruchi, the licensed despoilers of 
leguminous seeds. 
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