Raw garlic, Raspail [44] used to say, is the camphor of the poor. The camphor possibly, but not the bread. This paradox becomes a reality in the case of our grub, which is so much in love with this powerful condiment that it will not eat anything else its whole life long. How, with this fiery diet, does it put on such fine layers of fat? That is its secret; and there is room for every sort of taste in this world of ours. After eating its clove, this lover of garlic dives deeper into the soil, fearing perhaps the lifting of the bulbs, the time for which will soon arrive. It foresees the annoyance which the market-gardener would cause it; and it goes below, far from the natal plant. I have reared a dozen in a jar half full of sand. Some have established themselves right against the wall, which enables me to obtain a vague idea of how things happen in the underground cell. The builder is bent into a bow which now and again closes and forms a circle. I then seem to see it collecting, with the tips of its mandibles, as the Larini do, a sticky drop which forms at its hinder end. With this it soaks the sandy wall and smears the glass, on which the stuff hardens in cloudy streaks, white and pale-yellow. On the whole, the appearance of the cement employed and the little that I can see of the grub’s proceedings incline me to believe that the Brachycerus strengthening its cabin uses the same method as the Larinus building its thatched hut. The Brachycerus also knows the whimsical secret of turning the intestine into a factory of hydraulic cement. The sandy agglomerate thus obtained forms a fairly solid shell, in which the insect, which reaches the adult stage in August, remains until the garlic season is at hand. This method may well be general among the various Weevils that, in the larval, nymphal or adult state, spend part of the year tucked away in an underground shell. The leaf-rollers, notably the Rhynchites of the poplar and the vine, sparing though they be in the use of their cement, no doubt have a store of it in their intestine, for it would be difficult for them to find anything better. Let us, however, leave a door open to doubt and continue. For the first time, at the end of August, four months after the rolling of the cigars, I take the Poplar-weevil in her adult form out of her shell. I disinter her in all her gleaming gold and copper; but the beauty, if I had left her undisturbed, would have slept in her subterranean fortress till the young leaves sprouted on her tree, in April.