sect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows
with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like
the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin
of the pea as a large circular spot, which is darkened by the obscurity
of the interior. What passes behind it is invisible, hidden as it is
behind a sort of ground glass window.

A pretty invention, this little closed porthole, this barricade against
the invader, this trap-door raised by a push when the time has come for
the hermit to enter the world. Shall we credit it to the Bruchus? Did
the ingenious insect conceive the undertaking? Did it think out a plan
and work out a scheme of its own devising? This would be no small
triumph for the brain of a weevil. Before coming to a conclusion let us
try an experiment.

I deprive certain occupied peas of their skin, and I dry them with
abnormal rapidity, placing them in glass test-tubes. The grubs prosper
as well as in the intact peas. At the proper time the preparations for
emergence are made.

If the grub acts on its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its
boring directly it recognises that the outer coating, auscultated from
time to time, is sufficiently thin, what will it do under the conditions
of the present test? Feeling itself at the requisite distance from the
surface it will stop boring; it will respect the outer layer of the bare
pea, and will thus obtain the indispensable protecting screen.

Nothing of the kind occurs. In every case the passage is completely
excavated; the entrance gapes wide open, as large and as carefully
executed as though the skin of the pea were in its place. Reasons of
security have failed to modify the usual method of work. This open
lodging has no defence against the enemy; but the grub exhibits no
anxiety on this score.

Neither is it thinking of the outer enemy when it bores down to the skin
when the pea is intact, and then stops short. It suddenly stops because
the innutritious skin is not to its taste. We ourselves remove the
parchment-like skins from a mess of pease-pudding, as from a culinary
point of view they are so much waste matter. The larva of the Bruchus,
like ourselves, dislikes the skin of the pea. It stops short at the
horny covering, simply because it is checked by an uneatable substance.
From this aversion a little miracle arises; but the insect has no sense
of logic; it is passively obedient to the s