Rivalling the exploiters of the vine and poplar in metallic lustre, she possesses, exactly as they do, a curved awl which one would say was meant for puncturing the stalk of a leaf and then fastening the edges of the rolled portion; her figure is short and squat, adapted, so it seems to me, to working in the narrow crease of a fold; she has spiked sandals which give her a firm hold on slippery surfaces. Any one acquainted with the cigar-makers has but to see her to call her straightway by the same generic name. The nomenclators have made no mistake; they are unanimous in styling her a Rhynchites. Judging the trade by the worker’s looks, we do not hesitate: we set down this third Rhynchites as a rival of the others, we class her in the leaf-rollers’ guild. Well, in this case, we are thoroughly deceived by outward appearances; we are taken in by an identity of structure. In her habits, the Rhynchites of the Sloe has nothing in common with the two with whom she is associated by her classification, which is based solely on the peculiarities of her form. What is more, until she is seen at work, no one would suspect her calling. She exploits the fruit of the sloe exclusively; her grub’s ration is the tiny kernel and its lodging the small stone of the sloe. So, unskilled in the trade of her fellows, without any change in her tools, the kinswoman of the cigar-makers becomes a driller of caskets; with the same bodkin that serves her relatives for fastening the last layer of a leaf-roll, she hollows a little cup in the surface of a shell hard as ivory. The tool that is able to roll a flexible sheet now wears away the invincible and works like a digger’s pick-axe. And stranger still: when it has finished its arduous piece of carving, it sets up above the egg a little miracle whose exquisite delicacy we shall have occasion to admire. The grub amazes me no less. It changes its diet. When a denizen of the vine and the poplar, it eats a leaf; when a denizen of the sloe, it takes to starchy food. It changes its means of liberation. When they have attained their full growth and the moment comes for them to go underground, the first two have nothing in front of them but a yielding obstacle, the surface layer of the leafy sheath, softened and wasted by decay; the third, like the Nut-weevil, has to pierce a wall of exceptional strength. What singular contrasts might we not discover in facts of this kind, if we were better-acquainted with the habits of the Rhynchites group? A fourth example is familiar to me (R. Bacchus, Lin.). Identical in shape with the manufacturers of cigars and the exploiters of fruit-stones, worthy, indeed, in all respects of the name of Rhynchites, what does this Weevil do? Does she roll leaves? No. Does she install her grub in the casket of a kernel? No.