Besides the Spotted Larinus, my notes mention other Weevils, for instance, the Garlic-weevil (Brachycerus algirus), whose larvæ possess the art of coating their cells with a thin glaze provided by the rump. This intestinal artifice seems, therefore, to be pretty frequently employed by the Weevils that build little chambers in which the metamorphosis is to take place; but none of them excel in it as does the Cionus. Its task becomes yet more interesting when we consider that, in the same factory, after a very brief interval, three different products are compounded: first a liquid glue, a means of adhesion to the swaying support of the mullein lashed by the winds; then a siccative fluid which transforms the sticky coating into gold-beater’s-skin; and lastly a cement which strengthens the bladder separated from the larva by a sort of moult. What a laboratory, what exquisite chemistry in a scrap of intestine! What use are these minute details, noted hour by hour? Why these puerilities? What matters to us the industry of a wretched grub, hardly known even to the professional experts? Well, these puerilities involve the most weighty problems that we are privileged to discuss. Is the world an harmonious creation, governed by a primordial force, a causa causarum? Or is it a chaos of blind conflicting forces, whose reciprocal thrusts produce a chance equilibrium, for better or for worse? Minute entomological details examined with some thoroughness, may serve us better than syllogisms, in the scientific investigation of these trifles and others like them. The humble Cionus, for its part, tells us of a primordial force, the motive power of the smallest as of the greatest things. A day is not too long to give the bladder a good lining. Next day the larva moults and passes into the nymphal state. Let us complete its story with the data gleaned in the fields. The cocoons are often found on the grass near the food-plant, on the stalks and dead blades of the Gramineæ. Generally, however, they occupy the little twigs of the mullein, stripped of their bark and withered. The adult insect emerges sooner or later in September. The gold-beater’s-skin capsule is not torn irregularly, at random; it is neatly divided into two equal parts, like the two halves of a soap-box. Has the enclosed insect gnawed the casing with its patient tooth and made a fissure along the equator? No, for the edges of either hemisphere are perfectly clean-cut. There must, therefore, have been a circular line ready to facilitate the opening. All that the insect had to do was to hunch its back and give a slight push, in order to unfasten the roof of its cabin all in one piece and set itself free.