The Life of the Weevil 
and dead blades of the Graminee. Gener- 
ally, however, they occupy the little twigs of 
the mullein, stripped of their bark and 
withered. The adult insect emerges sooner 
or later in September. The gold-beater’s- 
skin capsule is not torn irregularly, at ran- 
dom; it is neatly divided into two equal 
parts, like the two halves of a soap-box. 
Has the enclosed insect gnawed the casing 
with its patient tooth and made a fissure 
along the equator? No, for the edges of 
either hemisphere are perfectly clean-cut. 
There must, therefore, have been a circular 
line ready to facilitate the opening. All that 
the insect had to do was to hunch its back 
and give a slight push, in order to unfasten 
the roof of its cabin all in one piece and set 
itself free. 
I can just see this line of easy rupture on 
certain intact capsules. It isa faint line ring- 
ing the equator. What does the insect do 
beforehand to contrive that its cell shall open 
in this way? A humble plant, flowering 
early in the spring, the blue or scarlet pim- 
pernel, has also its soap-box, its pyxidium, 
which splits easily into two hemispheres 
when the time comes for the seed to be scat- 
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