on
of acorns, nuts, and other similar fruits.

The most remarkable, in my part of France, is the Acorn Elephant
(_Balaninus elephas_, Sch.). It is well named; the very name evokes a
mental picture of the insect. It is a living caricature, this beetle
with the prodigious snout. The latter is no thicker than a horsehair,
reddish in colour, almost rectilinear, and of such length that in order
not to stumble the insect is forced to carry it stiffly outstretched
like a lance in rest. What is the use of this embarrassing pike, this
ridiculous snout?

Here I can see some reader shrug his shoulders. Well, if the only end of
life is to make money by hook or by crook, such questions are certainly
ridiculous.

Happily there are some to whom nothing in the majestic riddle of the
universe is little. They know of what humble materials the bread of
thought is kneaded; a nutriment no less necessary than the bread made
from wheat; and they know that both labourers and inquirers nourish the
world with an accumulation of crumbs.

Let us take pity on the question, and proceed. Without seeing it at
work, we already suspect that the fantastic beak of the Balaninus is a
drill analogous to those which we ourselves use in order to perforate
hard materials. Two diamond-points, the mandibles, form the terminal
armature of the drill. Like the Larinidae, but under conditions of
greater difficulty, the Curculionidae must use the implement in order to
prepare the way for the installation of their eggs.

But however well founded our suspicion may be, it is not a certitude. I
can only discover the secret by watching the insect at work.

Chance, the servant of those that patiently solicit it, grants me a
sight of the acorn-beetle at work, in the earlier half of October. My
surprise is great, for at this late season all industrial activity is as
a rule at an end. The first touch of cold and the entomological season
is over.

To-day, moreover, it is wild weather; the _bise_ is moaning, glacial,
cracking one's lips. One needs a robust faith to go out on such a day in
order to inspect the thickets. Yet if the beetle with the long beak
exploits the acorns, as I think it does, the time presses if I am to
catch it at its work. The acorns, still green, have acquired their full
growth. In two or three weeks they will attain the chestnut brown of
perfect maturity, quickly followed by their fall.

My seemingly futile pilgrimage ends in success. On the ev