The Life of the Weevil 
deserted. The young abandon their famine- 
stricken dwelling on the day when they are 
hatched. They are bold innovators and 
practice a method which is held in detestation 
among the Weevils, who are all preeminently 
stay-at-homes: they dare the dangers of the 
outer world: they travel, passing from one 
leaf to another in search of food. This 
strange exodus, unprecedented in a Weevil, is 
not a mere caprice but a necessity imposed 
on them by hunger; they migrate because 
their mother has not provided them with any- 
thing to eat. 
If traveling has its pleasures, enough to 
make the insect forget the delights of the cell 
in which it digests at peace, it also has its 
drawbacks. The legless grub can progress 
only by a sort of creeping gait. It has no 
instrument of adherence which will enable it 
to remain fixed to the twig, whence the least 
breath of wind may make it fall. Necessity 
is the mother of invention. To guard 
against the danger of falling, the wanderer 
smears itself with a viscous fluid, which var- 
nishes it and makes it adhere to the trail 
which it is following. 
But this is not all. When the ticklish 
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