She tells you:
‘My manufactures, which are so contrary, cannot be derived one from another. Our talents are not the legacy of a common ancestress, for, to leave us such a heritage, the original initiator would have had to be versed at one and the same time in arts which are mutually incompatible: that of leaf-rolling, that of piercing fruit-stones and that of jam-making, to say nothing of the rest, which you don’t yet know. If she was not capable of doing everything, she must, at least, in course of time, have given up a first trade and learnt a second, then a third, then a host of others, the knowledge of which is reserved for future observers. Well, to practise several industries at the same time, or [[165]]even, from specializing in one department, to begin specializing in some other, quite different department: on my word as a Rhynchites, all this would seem madness to an animal.’
Thus speaks the Weevil. Let me complete her statement. As the instincts of the three industrial guilds whose history is here related cannot in any way be referred to a common origin, the corresponding Rhynchites, despite their extreme similarity of structure, cannot be ramifications of the same stock. Each race is an independent medal, struck from a special die in the workshop of forms and aptitudes. What will it be then when dissimilarity of form is added to dissimilarity of instincts?
But enough of philosophizing. Let us make the closer acquaintance of the Sloe-weevil. At the end of July, fattened to a nicety, the grub leaves its plum-stone and descends into the ground. With its back and forehead it presses back the surrounding dust and makes itself a spherical recess, slightly reinforced with a glue furnished by the builder, to prevent the earth from falling in. Similar preparations for nymphosis and hibernation are made by the Vine-weevil and the Poplar-weevil; but these are more forward in their development. Before September is over, most of them have achieved the adult form. I see them glittering in the sand of my jars like living nuggets. These golden globules foresee the rapidly approaching winter: [[166]]as a rule they do not stir from their underground quarters. However, enticed by the hot sunlight, the last of the year, a few Poplar-weevils come up into the open air to see what the weather is like. At the first breath of the north-wind, these venturesome ones will take refuge under the strips of dead bark; perhaps they will even perish.
The guest of the sloe is not in such a hurry. Autumn is drawing to a close; and my buried captives are still in the larval state. What matters this delay? They will all be ready when the beloved bush is covered with blossom. By May, in point of fact, the insect abounds on the sloes.
This is the time of careless revelry. The fruit is still too small, with its stone not set and its kernel a transparent jelly; it would not suit the grub, but it makes a feast for the adult, who, with an imperceptible movement, without any twisting of the boring-tool, sinks her drill into the pulp, drives it half-way down, holds it there motionless and drinks ecstatically. The juice of the sloe pours over the edge of the well.
This affection for the sour sloe is not exclusive. In my breeding-jars, even when the regulation fruit is there, Rhynchites auratus very readily accepts the green cherry and also the orchard plum, as yet hardly the size of an olive. She refuses absolutely, though they are as round and as small as sloes, the fruits of the mahaleb cherry, or Sainte-Lucie cherry, a wilding frequent in the [[167]]thickets of the neighbourhood. She finds their drug-like flavour repellent.
When the egg is at stake, I cannot induce the mother to accept the cultivated plum. In time of dearth, the ordinary cherry seems to be less repugnant. Whereas the mother’s stomach is satisfied with any sort of astringent pulp, the grub’s clamours for a sweet kernel in a small casket which does not offer too much resistance. That of the cherry, seasoned with prussic acid and rather bitter, is accepted only with hesitation; that of the plum, contained in a stone whose strong walls would oppose too great an obstacle first to the entry and then to the exit of the grub, is absolutely disdained. Therefore the pregnant mother, thoroughly versed in her household affairs, refuses for her family any stone fruit other than the sloe.
Let us watch her at work. During the first fortnight of June, the egg-laying is in full swing. At this period the sloes begin to assume a purple hue. They are hard, about as large as a pea, which is not far from their final size. The stone is woody and resists the knife; the kernel has acquired consistency.
The fruits attacked show two kinds of pit, turned brown by the decayed tissues. Some, the more numerous, are shallow funnels nearly always filled up with a drop of hardened gum. At these points the insect has simply made a meal and has not gone deeper than about half the thickness of [[168]]the pulpy layer. Later, the exudations from the wound have filled the cavity with a gummy plug.