Chapter viii
THE VINE-WEEVIL
In the spring, while the poplar-leaves are being worked into cylinders, another Rhynchites, who is likewise magnificently attired, is making cigars out of vine-leaves. She is a little bigger, of a metallic lustre, a golden green that changes to blue. Were she only larger, the resplendent Vine-weevil would occupy a very respectable place among the gems of entomology.
To attract our eyes, she has something better than her brilliancy: she has her industry, which has earned her the hatred of the vine-grower, jealous of his property. The peasant knows her: he even calls her by a special name, an honour rarely bestowed in the world of the smaller creatures.
The rural vocabulary is rich in names of plants, but very poor in names of insects. A couple of dozen words, inextricably confused because of their general character, represent the whole list of insect names in our Provençal idiom, expressive and fertile though this idiom be when it refers to the vegetable world and even, at times, to a sorry weed which one would think was known to the botanist only. [[128]]
The man of the soil is interested above all things in the plant, the great foster-mother; all else leaves him indifferent. Splendid adornment, curious habits, marvels of instinct: all these make no appeal to him. But to touch his vine, to eat other people’s grass: what a heinous crime! Quick, a name, a badge of infamy, to hang round the malefactor’s neck!
This time the Provençal peasant has taken the trouble to invent a special term: he calls the cigar-roller the Bécaru. Here the scientific name and the rural name are in complete agreement. Rhynchites and Bécaru are exact equivalents: both allude to the insect’s long beak.
But how much more correct is the vine-grower’s term, in its lucid simplicity, than the scientific name, set forth in full, with its imperative complement relating to the species! I rack my brain in vain to guess the reason why the cigar-roller of the vine was called the Rhynchites of the Birch (R. betuleti, Fab.).
If there be in fact a Weevil that exploits the birch-tree, it is certainly not the same as that of the vineyards: the two leaves to be rolled are too dissimilar in shape and size to suit the same worker.