In June and July, let us open the shells marked with brown specks. Nearly always we find two grubs, looking fat as butter, with their fore-parts swollen and their hinder parts shrunken and curved like a comma. Not a vestige of legs, which members would be very useless in such a lodging. Lying at its ease, the grub has plenty of food ready to its mouth: first the tender, sugary seeds; then the placenta, their common support, which is likewise fleshy and highly flavoured. It is pleasant to live under such conditions, motionless and devoting one’s self entirely to the joys of the stomach. It would take a cataclysm to upset the smug hermit. This cataclysm I bring about by opening the cell. Then and there, the grub begins to twist and wriggle desperately, hating any exposure to the air and light. It takes more than an hour to recover from its excitement. Here assuredly is a grub that will never be tempted to leave its home and go wandering about like the Cionus’ larva. It is most highly domestic by inheritance and domestic it will remain. It refuses even to go next door. In the same capsule, on the other side of the partition, a neighbour is nibbling away. Never does it pay the neighbour a visit, though it could easily do so by perforating the partition, which at this moment is an actual sort of cake, no less tender than the seeds and the placenta. Each holds the other’s share of the capsule inviolable. On the one hand is one grub; on the other hand is another; and never do the two hold the least communication through the little skylight. A grub’s home is its castle. The Gymnetron is so happy in her cell that she stays there a long time after assuming her adult form. For ten months out of the twelve she does not leave it. In April, when the buds of the new twigs are swelling, she pierces the natal capsule, now a mighty donjon; she comes out and revels in the sun on the recent flower-spikes, which grow daily longer and thicker; she frisks in couples and, in May, establishes her family, which will obstinately repeat the sedentary habits of the elders. With these data before us, let us philosophize awhile. Every Weevil spends its larval life on the spot where the egg was laid. Various larvæ, it is true, when the time of metamorphosis approaches, migrate and make their way underground. The Brachycerus abandons its clove of garlic, the Balaninus its nut or acorn, the Rhynchites its vine-leaf or poplar-leaf cigar, the Ceuthorhynchus its cabbage stalk. But these instances of desertion on the part of grubs which have attained their full growth do not in any way invalidate the rule: all Weevil-larvæ grow up in the actual place where they are born.