The Life of the Weevil 
fectly dry. This will make them easier to 
beat in order to separate the beans. It is 
now that the Weevil, finding things as she 
wants them, begins her laying. By getting 
in his crop a little late, the peasant gets the 
marauder into the bargain. 
But the Bruchus attacks more especially 
the seeds in our stores. Copying the Corn- 
weevil, who eats the wheat in our granaries 
and disregards the cereal swaying in the ear, 
in the same way she abhors the tender bean 
and prefers to make her home in the peace 
and darkness cf our warehouses. She is a 
formidable enemy of the corn-chandler rather 
than of the farmer. 
What a fury of destruction, once the rava- 
ger is installed amidst our hoards of beans! 
My flasks proclaim the fact aloud. A single 
haricot-bean harbours a numerous family, 
often as many as twenty. And not only one 
generation exploits it, but quite three or four 
in the year. So long as any edible matter 
remains within the skin, so long do new 
consumers settle down in it, until in the end 
the haricot becomes a loathsome sugar-plum 
stuffed with stercoral droppings. The skin, 
which the grubs refuse to eat, is a sack 
284 
