A small head, a slender snout, a dress of ashen grey sprinkled with brown, flat wing-cases, a squat thick-set figure, with two large black dots on the flat of the tail: there you have a rough sketch of my visitor. The vanguard arrives by the end of the first fortnight in May. The Weevils settle on the flowers, which are like so many white Butterflies’ wings: I see some installed at the foot of the upper petal, I see some hidden in the casket of the keel. Others, more numerous these, explore the blossoms and take possession of them. The laying-time has not yet come. It is a mild morning; the sun is hot without being oppressive. This is the moment for nuptial exploits and for raptures amid the splendour of the light. Life therefore is enjoyed for a little while. Couples form, soon part and soon come together again. When the heat grows too great, towards the middle of the day, each Jack and Jill retire into the shade, in a fold of the flower whose secret recesses they know so well. To-morrow they will resume the festival and the next day too, until the pod, splitting the sheath of its keel, appears outside, more and more swollen from day to day. A few pregnant mothers, harder-pressed than the rest, confide their eggs to the growing pod, as it issues flat and tiny from its floral scabbard. These eggs laid prematurely, pushed out perhaps through the exigencies of an ovary which can wait no longer, seem to me in serious danger. The seed in which the grub is to make its home is as yet but a feeble granule, without substance and without floury contents. No Weevil-larva would ever find an adequate meal there, unless by biding its time until the seed ripened. But is the grub, once hatched, capable of long fasting? It is doubtful. The little that I have seen tells me that the new-born larva begins eating with all speed and, if it cannot do so, dies. I therefore regard as lost the eggs laid upon immature pods. The prosperity of the race will hardly suffer, thanks to the Weevil’s fertility. Moreover, we shall see presently with what reckless prodigality she scatters her germs, most of which are doomed to perish. The bulk of the mother’s work is finished by the end of May, when the pods begin to bulge with protuberances revealing the pressure of the peas, which have now attained their final size, or very nearly. I was anxious to see the Bruchus at work, in her quality of a Curculio, which is how she is classified. [56] The other Weevils are Rhynchophoræ, beak-wearers, armed with a rod that prepares the hollow in which the egg is laid. Our friend possesses only a short snout, which does capitally for sipping a few sweet mouthfuls, but which is of no value as a boring-tool.