The fact is that with her mandibles the Apoderus slashes the alder-leaf cross-wise, at some distance from the base. The whole leaf is cut clean through, including even the central vein. The only part left intact is the extreme edge, from which the large severed area hangs withering. This area, the greater part of the leaf, is then folded in two along the principal vein, with the green or upper surface inside; then, starting from the tip, the folded sheet is rolled into a cylinder. The orifice above is closed with that part of the border which the cut has left untouched; the orifice below is closed with the edges of the leaf tucked inwards. The pretty little barrel hangs perpendicularly, swaying to the least breeze. It is hooped by the median vein, which projects at the upper end. Between the second and third pages, as it were, of the double sheet, near the middle of the spiral, is the egg, resin-red and, this time, single. The few cylinders which I have been able to examine afford me no circumstantial details touching the development of their inmate. The most interesting fact which I learn from them is that the grub, when it has attained its full growth, does not go underground as the others do. It remains in its barrel, which the wind soon shakes down into the grass. That half-decayed shelter would be very unsafe in bad weather. The red Weevil knows this. She hastens to assume her adult form, to don her scarlet cloak; and by the beginning of summer she abandons her cylinder, now a mere wreck. She will find a better refuge under the loose strips of old bark. Attelabus curculionoides is no less expert in the art of making a keg out of a leaf. There is one curious point of resemblance: the new cooper is red, like the other, or, more accurately speaking, crimson. The rostrum is very short and expanded into a snout. Here the likeness ceases. Our first friend is rather fine-drawn and loose-limbed; the second is a thickset, round, dumpy Weevil. We are quite surprised by her work, which seems incompatible with the worker’s awkward, clumsy build. And she does not work a docile stuff either: she rolls ilex-leaves, young ones, it is true, not yet too stiff. It is a tough material all the same, difficult to bend and slow in fading. Of the four leaf-rollers of my acquaintance, the smallest, the Attelabus, has the hardest lot; nevertheless, it is she, the dwarf, such a bungler in appearance, who by dint of patience builds the prettiest house. At other times she exploits the common oak, the English oak, whose leaves are broader and more deeply indented than those of the ilex, or holm-oak. On the spring shoots she selects the topmost leaves, of average size and medium consistency. If the position suit her, five, six or more little kegs will be dangling from the same twig.