Since the grub has once developed without hindrance on a site alien to its habits, it will continue to thrive there from generation to generation; with its intestinal cement it will continue to shape a protective pitcher of the same pattern as the old, but, for want of materials, lacking the thatch of withered florets; in short, its talents will remain what they were in the beginning. This example tells us that the insect, as long as it can accommodate itself to the novel conditions imposed upon it, works in its accustomed fashion; if it cannot do so, it dies rather than change its methods. CHAPTER III THE BEAR LARINUS I sally forth in the night, with a lantern, to spy out the land. Around me, a circle of faint light enables me to recognize the broad masses fairly well, but leaves the fine details unperceived. At a few paces’ distance, the modest illumination disperses, dies away. Farther off still, everything is pitch-dark. The lantern shows me—and but very indistinctly—just one of the innumerable pieces that compose the mosaic of the ground. To see some more of them, I move on. Each time there is the same narrow circle, of doubtful visibility. By what laws are these points, inspected one by one, correlated in the general picture? The candle-end cannot tell me; I should need the light of the sun. Science too proceeds by lantern-flashes; it explores nature’s inexhaustible mosaic piece by piece. Too often the wick lacks oil; the glass panes of the lantern may not be clean. No matter: his work is not in vain who first recognizes and shows to others one speck of the vast unknown. However far our ray of light may penetrate, the illuminated circle is checked on every side by the barrier of the darkness. Hemmed in by the unfathomable depths of the unknown, let us be satisfied if it be vouchsafed to us to enlarge by a span the narrow domain of the known. Seekers, all of us, tormented by the desire for knowledge, let us move our lantern from point to point: with the particles explored we shall perhaps be able to piece together a fragment of the picture. To-day the shifting of the lantern’s rays leads us to the Bear Larinus (L. ursus, Fabr.), the exploiter of the carline thistles. We must not let this inappropriate name of Bear give us an unfavourable notion of the insect. It is due to the whim of a nomenclator who, having exhausted his vocabulary, baffled by the never-ending stream of things already named, uses the first word that comes to hand. Others, more happily inspired, perceiving a vague resemblance between the sacerdotal ornament, the stole, and the white bands that run down the Weevil’s back, have proposed the name of Stoled Larinus (L. stolatus, Gmel.). This term would please me; it gives a very good picture of the insect. The Bear, making nonsense, has prevailed. So be it: non nobis tantas componere lites.