“Then they are first-rate,” was Emile’s pronouncement; “but before that they are horrid.”
“That is what the larva of the weevil would say about the shoot on which it has just hatched out. Before being treated it is bitter, it rasps the throat and sets the mandibles on edge; after treatment it is delicious.” [[318]]
“Yet it doesn’t put the branch to ripen on straw as we do medlars?”
Quince-weevil
a, side view; b, view from above; line shows natural size.
“No. In most cases larvæ show no ingenuity whatever; they eat like gluttons and without a thought for anything but eating. You know well enough that giving oneself up to gorging is hardly the way to improve the mind. For these larvæ, then, a ready-made pap has to be provided, as otherwise, not knowing how to prepare it themselves, they would stupidly starve to death. And who prepares the food and makes it just right for them? The mother, if you please, the mother whose great and only occupation it is to provide for the future needs of her unborn young. She makes it her business to find for them food that not only has no nourishment in it for herself, but which she dislikes; she denies herself the enjoyment of flowery fields and summer sunshine to devote all her energies to arduous labors that are of no advantage to her personally; and when she has spent her little span of life at this hard task she retires into a corner and dies content: the table is set, the young larvæ will not lack for food.
“When you see the weevil on a vine leaf, sparkling like a precious gem, do not think it is there to enjoy itself. It is spending itself in the difficult undertaking of sawing the leaf half-way through at the stem, after which it will roll the leaf into a sheath to [[319]]serve as lodging and first food for the larvæ. Its whole life of two or three weeks is given to this work. How can it benefit the insect itself to saw leaf stems and make the leaves wither in the sun and then roll them up? In no way whatever; the weevil does not eat these leaves or lodge in the sheath made by rolling one of them up. It spends its energies in this work solely for the larvæ that are to be hatched out after its death. Have you ever reflected, my children, on this perpetual miracle,—the miracle of a mother living only for her little ones, little ones that she is destined never to see? I will not conceal from you that every time I think of this maternal foresight, this laborious preparation for a future unknown to the mother herself, I feel myself deeply moved. The All-seeing Eye is there.
“In a way peculiar to itself the conical weevil makes ready the pap that is to feed its family. The larvæ, as I said, require the mild juices of a shoot that has been deprived of its natural vigor. What does the mother do to put the branch in the proper condition? Under the spot where the egg is laid she cuts away the bark and some of the wood in a circle, with her fine mandibles, leaving the shoot supported only by the central portion of the stem. The sap no longer circulating beyond this girdle, the leaves affected soon wither and the entire tip of the shoot turns black and acquires that state of decay best liked by the new-born grub.”
“I knew how to ripen medlars on straw,” said Emile, “but I should have been puzzled to tell how [[320]]to ripen a branch of a tree. What curious creatures those are, with their clever ways of doing things! One can do one thing and another can do another, and it is always ingenious and never the same.”