Here, I told myself, the adult would pass the winter, protected against the damp, which is more to be dreaded than the cold. I was wrong. By the end of September most of the cells are empty, though their support, the blue thistle, eager to open its last blooms, is still in fairly good condition. The Weevils have gone, in all the freshness of their flowered costume; they have broken out through the top of their cells, which now gape like broken pitchers. A few loiterers still lag behind at home, but are quite ready to make off, judging by their agility when my curiosity chances to set them free. When the inclement months of December and January have arrived, I no longer find a single cell inhabited. The whole population has migrated. Where has it taken refuge? I am not quite sure. Perhaps in the heaps of broken stones, under cover of the dead leaves, in the shelter of the tufts of grass that grow beneath the hawthorn in the hedges. For a Weevil the country-side is full of winter-resorts. We need not be anxious about the emigrants; they are well able to look after themselves. None the less, in the face of this exodus, my first impression is one of surprise. To leave such an excellent lodging for a casual shelter, of doubtful safety, seems to me a rash and ill-advised expedient. Can the insect be lacking in prudence? No; it has serious motives for decamping as quickly as possible when the autumn draws to an end. Let me explain matters. In the winter the echinops is a brown ruin which the north-wind tears from its hold, flings on the ground and reduces to tatters by rolling it in the mud of the roads. A few days of bad weather turn the handsome blue thistle into a mass of lamentable decay. What would become of the Weevil on this support, now the plaything of the winds? Would her tarred cask resist the assaults of the storm? Would she survive rolling over the rough soil and prolonged steeping in the puddles of melted snow? The Weevils foreknow the dangers of a crazy support; warned by the almanac of instinct, they foresee the winter and its miseries. So they move house while there is yet time; they leave their cells for a stable shelter where they will no longer have to fear the vicissitudes of a dwelling blown along the ground at random. The desertion of the casket is not a sign of rash haste on the part of the Larinus: it shows a clear perception of coming events. In fact, a second Larinus will teach us presently that, when the support is safe and solidly rooted in the ground, the natal cell is not deserted until the return of the fine weather. In conclusion, I ought perhaps to mention an apparently insignificant, but very exceptional fact, which I have only once observed in my dealings with the Spotted Larinus. Considering the scarcity of authentic data as to what becomes of instinct when the conditions of life are altered, we should do wrong to neglect these trifling discoveries.