ment
which the insect carries on his head. It is a tube, fine as a horsehair,
slightly enlarged at the free extremity, like an old-fashioned
blunderbuss, and expanding to form an egg-shaped capsule at the point of
origin.

This is the oviduct, and its dimensions are the same as those of the
rostrum. As far as the perforating beak can plunge, so far the oviscapt,
the interior rostrum, will reach. When working upon her acorn the female
chooses the point of attack so that the two complementary instruments
can each of them reach the desired point at the base of the acorn.

The matter now explains itself. The work of drilling completed, the
gallery ready, the mother turns and places the tip of the abdomen
against the orifice. She extrudes the internal mechanism, which easily
passes through the loose debris of the boring. No sign of the probe
appears, so quickly and discreetly does it work; nor is any trace of it
to be seen when, the egg having been properly deposited, the implement
ascends and returns to the abdomen. It is over, and the mother departs,
and we have not caught a glimpse of her internal mechanism.

Was I not right to insist? An apparently insignificant fact has led to
the authentic proof of a fact that the Larinidae had already made me
suspect. The long-beaked weevils have an internal probe, an abdominal
rostrum, which nothing in their external appearance betrays; they
possess, among the hidden organs of the abdomen, the counterpart of the
grasshopper's sabre and the ichneumon's dagger.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PEA-WEEVIL--_BRUCHUS PISI_

Peas are held in high esteem by mankind. From remote ages man has
endeavoured, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and
sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment
the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us
what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far
beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond
the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first
man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the
half-jaw of a cave-bear, whose powerful canine tooth would serve him as
a ploughshare!

Where is it, this original pea, in the world of spontaneous vegetation?
Our own country has nothing resembling it. Is it to be found elsewhere?
On this point botany is silent, or replies only with vague
probabilities.

We find the