Note 2 — Chapter v · THE ELEPHANT WEEVIL

My perplexity is great; and it will be shared by any of my readers who are acquainted with the Weevil’s structure. The Grasshopper owns a sabre, a laying-tool which sinks into the ground and sows the eggs at the requisite depth;2 the Leucospis is endowed with a probe which makes its way through the Chalicodoma’s3 masonry and slips the egg into the cocoon of the fat, sleepy larva; but this Weevil of ours has none of these rapiers, daggers or larding-pins; she has nothing at the tip of her abdomen, absolutely nothing. And yet she has but to apply that tip to the narrow opening of the well for the egg to be lodged, forthwith, at the very bottom.