The Life of the Weevil 
experts will not help me much. I do not ask 
the insect, ‘‘what are you called?” but “what 
are you able to do?” 
The anonymous parasite hatched in my 
jars has no implement similar to that of the 
Leucospis,! the chief of the Chalcidide; it 
has no probe which is able to penetrate a 
wall and place the egg, at some distance, on 
the food-ration. Her germ, therefore, was 
laid in the very flanks of the Cionus’ larva, 
before the latter had built its shell. 
The methods of these tiny brigands ap- 
pointed to the task of thinning out the too 
numerous are extremely varied. Each guild 
has its own method, which is always horribly 
effective. How should so small a creature 
as the Cionus cumber the earth? No 
matter: it has to be massacred, to perish in 
its cradle, a victim of the Chalcid. Like 
other creatures, the peaceful dwarf must 
furnish its share of organizable matter, 
which will be further and further refined as it 
passes from stomach to stomach. 
Let us recapitulate the habits of the 
Cionus, very strange habits in an insect of 
1 The Life of the Fly: chaps. ii. and iii—Translator’s 
Note. 
330 
