Let us leave the Blackbird to sing and hark back to the Weevil’s egg. We know where it is: at the base of the acorn, in the tenderest and juiciest part of the fruit. How did it get there, so far from the entrance, which is situated above the edge of the cup. A very small question, it is true, even puerile, if you will. Let us not despise it: science is built up of puerilities. The first man to rub a piece of amber on his sleeve and thereupon to discover that the piece aforesaid attracted bits of straw certainly did not suspect the electric wonders of our day. He was amusing himself in his artless fashion. When repeated and tested in every conceivable manner, this child’s plaything became one of the forces of the world. The observer must neglect nothing: he never knows what the humblest fact may bring forth. I therefore repeat the question: by what means was the Weevil’s egg placed so far from the entrance? To any one who was not yet aware of the position of the egg, but who knew that the grub attacks the base of the acorn first, the reply would appear to be as follows: the egg is laid at the entrance of the tunnel, on the surface; and the grub, crawling along the gallery dug by the mother, of its own accord reaches the point where its infant’s-food exists. At first, before I possessed adequate particulars, this explanation was also my own; but the mistake was soon dispelled. I pluck the acorn when the mother withdraws after for an instant applying the tip of her abdomen to the orifice of the tunnel which her rostrum has just bored. The egg, so it seems, must be there, at the entrance, close to the surface.... But not at all: it is not there; it is at the other end of the passage! If I dared to take the liberty, I should say that it has gone down it as a stone falls to the bottom of a well. We must hasten to abandon this silly notion: the tunnel is infinitely narrow and blocked with shavings, so that any such descent would be impossible. Besides, according to the direction of the stalk, which may be either downwards or upwards, a fall in one acorn would mean an ascent in another. A second, no less risky explanation suggests itself. You say to yourself: ‘The Cuckoo lays her egg in the grass, anywhere; she picks it up in her beak and goes and places it as it is in the Warbler’s narrow nest.’ Can the Weevil adopt a similar method? Can she use her rostrum to push her egg to the base of the acorn? I cannot see that the insect has any other implement capable of reaching this remote hiding-place. And yet we must hastily reject this quaint explanation as a despairing resource. Never does the Weevil lay her egg in the open and then take it in her beak. If she did, the delicate germ would infallibly perish, destroyed in the attempt to push it down a narrow, half-choked passage.