A pretty invention, this little port-hole, this barricade against the invader, this trap-door lifted with a push of the hermit’s shoulder when the time has come. Shall we give the Bruchus the credit of it? Could the ingenious insect imagine the enterprise, ponder a plan and work upon a scheme of its own devising? This would be a fine triumph for the Weevil’s brain. Before deciding, let us hear what experiment has to tell us. I skin some inhabited peas; I save them from drying too quickly by placing them in glass tubes. The grubs do as well here as in the intact peas. The preparations for the deliverance are made at the proper time. If the miner acts on its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its shaft as soon as it perceives, by sounding it now and again, that the ceiling is thin enough, what ought to happen under the present conditions? Feeling that it is as near the surface as it wishes to be, the grub will stop boring; it will respect the last layer of the bare pea and will thus obtain the indispensable defensive screen. Nothing of the kind takes place. The well is excavated entirely; its mouth is open to the outside, as wide, as carefully finished as though the skin of the pea were still protecting it. Reasons of safety have in no way modified the usual work. The foe can enter this open lodging; the grub gives the matter not a thought. Nor has it this in mind when it refrains from boring right through the pea still clad in its skin. It stops suddenly, because it does not like the non-farinaceous skin. We remove the skins before making our peas into soup: they have no culinary value; they are not good. The larva of the Bruchus appears to be like ourselves: it hates the tough outside of the pea. Warned by the unpleasant taste, it stops at the skin; and this aversion causes a little miracle. The insect has no logical sense of its own. It passively obeys a higher logic; it obeys, but is as unconscious of its art as crystals are when assembling their battalions of atoms in exquisite order. Sooner or later, in August, dark circles form on the peas, always one to each seed, with no exception. These mark the exit-hatches. Most of them open in September. The lid, which looks as though cut out with a punch, comes off very neatly and falls, leaving the opening of the cell free. The Bruchus issues, freshly clad, in her final form.